Susan Hogan is smart, pretty-and prickly. There was no other word for it. She is prickly with Jake Phillips and her Aunt Jenny, the two people who love her most in the world. And she is prickly and impatient with some of her academic colleagues and the petty jealousies in the English department at Oak Grove University. When a coed's body is found in her car and she is suspected of murder, Susan gets even more defensive. But when someone begins to stalk and threaten her-trying to run her down, killing the plants on her deck, causing a moped wreck that breaks her ankle-prickly mixes with fear. Susan decides she has to find the killer to save her reputation-and her life. What she suspects she's found on a quiet campus in Texas is so bizarre Jake doesn't believe her. Until she's almost killed. The death of one coed unravels a tale of greed, lust, and obsession.