The Author

Mary Anna Evans has degrees in physics and engineering, but her heart is in the past.  Her series character, Faye Longchamp, lives the exciting life of an archaeologist, and Mary Anna envies her a little.  Mary Anna is a recent recipient of the Mississippi Library Association's Mississippi Author Award, and her novels have received recognitions including a spot on Voice of Young America's (VOYA) list of "Adult Mysteries with Young Adult Appeal."  They have been on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's (IMBA) bestseller list and have been designated Notable Books by Booksense and IndieBound.  Mary Anna has won the Florida Historical Society's Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, and a Florida Book Awards Bronze Medal.  Her books have been nominated for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year and for the SIBA Book Award.

Faye Longchamp's growing list of adventures include Artifacts, Relics, Effigies, Findings, Floodgates, Strangers, and, coming in 2012, Plunder.

They are available in hardcover, trade paper, ebook, large-print, and audio editions.

Several other works of Mary Anna'a fiction are available as ebooks. Wounded Earth is a suspense novel featuring environmental scientist Larabeth McLeod. Several short stories and a story collection called Offerings are also available at smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo, and most other vendors of electronic media.

In June 2012, join Mary Anna for a writing workshop in Provence, France. She will be offering instruction for writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and poetry as part of a long-established program, Kaydie's Tours of Provence. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to travel, learn, and return from your trip invigorated and inspired.

In the spring of 2012, Pearson Educational Publishing will release a book, co-written by Mary Anna and Dr. Faith W. Wallace, called Mathematical Literacy in the Middle and High School Grades: A Modern Approach to Sparking Student Interest. Written for math teachers, professors who train math teachers, homeschoolers looking for new approaches to math teaching, reading specialists, and media specialists hoping to provide useful materials for these people, the book helps teachers find new ways to bridge the gap between literacy and mathematics. Hands-on materials and explanatory text give real-world examples of ways to bring any text that isn't a mathematical textbook--such as blogs, poetry, websites, junk mail, and novels like Mary Anna's--into the math classroom. Mary Anna is thrilled to have this opportunity to make a difference in the lives of young people.  Math and science explain the world, so they're indispensable to any story set in that world.  And they're very handy tools for an amateur detective to have. 

While Mary Anna's novels are written with adults in mind, they have found an audience in schools, where they're being used to teach non-literature subjects like social studies, math, and science.  The social studies link was no surprise to the books' author, since her protagonist is an archaeologist, but she swears that she never once purposely included math or science in her stories.  (And her readers have never once complained that the laws of physics operate properly in her books).  Learning that she's done this unconsciously has been an inarguable example of the axiom that writers write about who they are.  They can't help it.

For the incurably curious, Mary Anna's first published work, her master's thesis, was entitled A Modeling Study of the NH3-NO-O2 Reaction Under the Operating Conditions of a Fluidized Bed Combustor.  Like her mysteries, it was a factual page-turner but, no, it's not available online.  She turned from engineering to fiction after the birth of her third child, shifting her focus from managing hazardous wastes to preparing balanced meals.  She has yet to acquire the knack of laundry management.

Mary Anna's interests include music, which has resulted in 7.5 feet of piano dominating her living room, and an arsenal of smaller musical instruments.  Her interests in music and writing collided when she was asked to contribute a story and an original song for a book/CD anthology called A Merry Band of Murderers.  She co-wrote and sang the song "Land of the Flowers" for that project.  Click here to hear it.