Degrees of Freedom

Publisher: Bitingduck Press

Flashback to 1991. Minnesota winters are long and cold, physics professors are all male, and information is found in the library - whether it's clues to a homework problem, how to fix a furnace, or skeletons in colleagues' closets.

Lori Barrow has just turned 17, and she starts out her graduate career on the right foot, immediately passing the qualifying exam that's slated to eliminate at least half the class. But she soon learns that academic challenges are the easiest part of getting a PhD.

By the end of the first month, none of the new students trust each other, but no one expects it to lead to murder. When one of their classmates is found dead in front of the department's Foucault pendulum, the police focus on all the wrong suspects. It's up to the students to put their homework problems aside and catch a killer.

Susy Gage is the pen name of a physics professor who hopes to remain anonymous until tenure, retirement, or death, whichever comes first. In her scholarly life, she has published over one hundred papers on condensed matter and particle physics and traveled from pole to pole. She is also active in educational efforts aimed at teaching biology to mathematicians and the other way around. Hobbies include ultra-marathons on human powered vehicles of all descriptions, cats, and growing tropical plants. She is the author of A Slow Cold Death.