Linda Cargill
The Skull
language
(Edward Ware Thrillers YA, an imprint of Cheops Books, LLC April 1, 2016)
Joanne and her friends pile into Ken's Corvette with a picnic basket and climb to the top of Mount Lemmon at nine thousand feet enshrouded in pine forests. Let the senior school picnic commence! They start playing hide-and-seek. Joanne races back into the woods to conceal herself behind a tall pine. She trips over a human skull. It is just lying there on the ground staring back at her with vacant eyes.
A thug points a gun in her back and threatens her that if she tells anyone what she saw she will die. He backs her up against another tree and makes her count to one hundred before she opens her eyes. The thug and the skull are gone!
What is the lone skull doing on the mountain top? Who was killed? How long ago? Joanne finds herself ensnared in an elaborate intrigue from which she can only hope to emerge alive.