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    Artifacts
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    Artifacts
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    Artifacts
    Ebook342 pages6 hours

    Artifacts

    By Mary Anna Evans

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    With an introduction by Mary Anna Evans.

    Faye Longchamp has lost nearly everything except for her quick mind and a grim determination to hang onto her ancestral home, Joyeuse, a moldering plantation hidden along the Florida coast. No one knows how Faye’s great-great-grandmother Cally, a newly freed slave barely out of her teens, came to own Joyeuse in the aftermath of the Civil War. No one knows how her descendants hung onto it through Reconstruction, world wars, the Depression, and Jim Crow, but Faye has inherited the island plantation—and the family tenacity. When the property taxes rise beyond her means, she sets out to save Joyeuse by digging for artifacts on her property and the surrounding National Wildlife Refuge and selling them on the black market. A tiny bit of that dead glory would pay a year’s taxes. A big valuable chunk of the past would save her home forever. But instead of potsherds and arrowheads, she uncovers a woman’s shattered skull, a Jackie Kennedy-style earring nestled against its bony cheek. Faye is torn. If she reports the forty-year-old murder, she’ll reveal her illegal livelihood, thus risking jail and the loss of Joyeuse. She doesn’t intend to let that happen, so she probes into the dead woman’s history, unaware that the past is rushing up on her like a hurricane across deceptively calm Gulf waters…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPoisoned Pen Press
    Release dateMar 7, 2017
    ISBN9781464208591
    Unavailable
    Artifacts
    Author

    Mary Anna Evans

    Mary Anna Evans is the author of the Faye Longchamp archeological mysteries, which have won the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Mississippi Author Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals. The winner of the 2018 Sisters in Crime (SinC) Academic Research Grant, she is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing.

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    Reviews for Artifacts

    4/5

    79 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The setting didn't appeal to me at all (even with the historical info. included at the beginning). I also was unclear on why Faye needed so much money. Yes, I know, something with the house, but I never quite put my finger on how it got to that point. I think my biggest obstacle was the same one that I had with the premise of Isis (TV show)--if someone is an archeologist (and supposedly a good person) I can't see how they'd remove items from a dig (official dig or not) willy-nilly. It would just seem to go against their character.
    • 3/5
      Great voice, great read and great characterization on the protagonist. I would have liked to see a lot more 'real' archeological plot as the dust jacket hinted. Those are the stories I love best. But as I always say, a solid story is a solid story and this was a solidly entertaining story-not to mention a very quick read.

      I look forward to reading the next installment!
    • 5/5
      A rivoting mystery about a strong female lead character with a problem: money. The story keeps you turning pages and leaves you satisfied while avoiding caricatures. Yes, Faye is a loner, but what detective worth his or her salt isn't? She's a scofflaw with morals, and her supporting cast is finely and sympathetically drawn.Evans weaves in a multi-generational plantation history of Faye's home, Joyeuse Isle (cleverly named from a Debussy composition), perched on the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast of Florida.Satisifying to feminists, history buffs, those with an interest in archeology and meteorology, and just plain old mystery lovers. The author's background as a scientist, musician, and mom help her create a believable and well developed world full of characters to care about. Fans of Sue Grafton, PD James, and Sara Paretsky will enjoy this book.I can hardly wait to read Relics, Faye's next adventure.
    • 4/5
      Faye Longchamp owns a house on a barrier island near the Florida panhandle. It has weathered great storms, difficult times and many owners, the last of which is Faye who is a descendant of a slave. This slave, Cally was granted her freedom and the mansion which was made of local materials sturdy enough to withstand the tests of time but it does need human help.

      Faye who is an archeologist reveres the past and is doing her best to keep up the house but turbulent happenings are surrounding the once peaceful area. There have been murders of some local students and the bones of past murders have surfaced as well.

      Fave and her companion on the island Joseph Mantooth are in murky water indeed as a storm develops in the gulf that threatens both the house and their lives, but the murderer on the loose is the more clear ad present danger.
      I enjoyed the characters, the history and the Florida ambience.
    • 4/5
      I really liked the last 2/3rds of this book but almost didn't get there. With a lot of character and a lot of history to try and get in too much of it was sort of "dumped" at the beginning which made it slow going. I'm glad I continued because this is an interesting mystery and the peeks into the historical is fascinating, especially the life of slaves in the Florida panhandle. I would highly recommend the book with the warning that it does take a while to get to the meat of the story.

      I will be looking for the next in the series because I ended up caring about Faye, an archeologist who has had to do some things she hated in order to survive and Joe a Creek Indian, who is slow in book learning, but a genius in wilderness survival and living life simply.
    • 3/5
      Easy read; enjoyable story. Likeable characters mostly. I liked how the history of Faye's ancestry was slowly revealed.
    • 5/5
      ARTIFACTS was an entertaining mystery. Faye Longchamp was an archaeology student until she was forced to drop out to take care of her mother and grandmother. Paying their last bills has made it impossible for her to return to school and threatens Faye's heritage. She is spending every cent she can scrape up to maintain Joyeuse - a mansion that has been passed down in her family since slave days. She earns most of her money doing black market archaeology and selling artifacts she discovers mostly on her family's land. She also has a job working for a dig run by one of her university professors. But when two of the student archaeologists are found murdered and buried, the dig is halted leaving Faye in even more need of money.When she is digging in a previously unexplored corner of land, she discovers bones. These aren't ancient. She identifies an earring that was popular in the 1960s. However, since she was digging illegally, telling anyone about the body threatens all her secrets. So she decides to investigate on her own not knowing that the murderer is still around and wants his secrets to stay buried too.I liked the multiple timelines that were woven together in this story. Faye discovers a diary that tells the stories of some of her ancestors who also lived in Joyeuse and those stories are woven into the contemporary story. Time also flashes back to when the girl whose bones Faye discovers lived and died.I liked the variety of characters. I liked the Florida panhandle setting. I liked the added tension that a hurricane taking aim at them brings to the story too. I also like that this is the first of what is currently a twelve-book series.
    • 3/5
      In Evans’ mystery novel, archeologist Faye Longchamp is determined to save history. With all the work her falling down mansion requires, she finds herself illegally selling artifacts she finds in the area as she works to stay off the grid of the authorities. But when two of her archeology students are murdered, and her friend Joe Wolf Mantooth is arrested for the crime, the media frenzy forces Faye to work the clues to find a killer before she loses everything that’s important to her.A fast-paced addition to A Faye Longchamp Mystery series.