Join us in the cafe at 5 PM for a reading of  Mary Tolan’s debut novel, Mars Hill Murder

Longtime reporter Mary Tolan worked as a community journalist for more than three decades, mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. She also reported on survivors of gun violence, traveling across the country to interview people devastated by their heartbreak and losses. She taught journalism at Northern Arizona University for twenty years. After retiring from teaching in 2021, she returned to her unfinished mystery novel, Mars Hill Murder, based in Flagstaff. Tolan grew up in Wisconsin, and has lived in the Southwest for more than forty years. Her long-running monthly column The Long & Winding Road can be found in The Arizona Daily Sun. When she’s not writing, spending time with friends, or running/swimming/yoga-ing, she and her dog Maxx can be found out in the woods or traveling in their van. Tolan’s sons live in California, her stepdaughter in Oregon, and her dog by her side—wondering when the heck she will stop typing and go for a walk.

MARS HILL MURDER

BY

MARY TOLAN

Reporter Miles Harper is on probation at the northern Arizona daily newspaper where he works, because his lack of attention to detail has put him on ice as thin as his notebook pages. His boss wants him out, but gives him one more chance to redeem himself. Maddy Sullivan is new to town, on the run from a violent husband who wants her back. She and Miles meet at a coffee shop, and forge a hesitant friendship. Police Detective Luis Ortega, Miles’s former college roommate, just wants to solve crimes. And an evil person or persons supplying those crimes by murdering low-level Flagstaff workers. Will these three figure out who the killer is before more people die? Will Miles help solve the mystery, write about it, and save his career? And will Maddy stay safe from the horrid man she once loved?