Reporter Colleen Caruso was never good at math. A stingy ex-husband, a teenage daughter, and a rusted-out Ford Escort have multiplied her troubles. Tripping over a dead body while on her morning jog seems like another incident for the minus column. But then her new editor at the newspaper gives her a regular column detailing the investigation. He's handsome, single, and just a bit mysterious. Suddenly, Colleen's life is on the plus side. Unfortunately, 1 dead algebra teacher + 2 secret affairs + 4 suspicious suspects quickly adds up to 3 perilous "accidents" for Colleen. Which means Colleen needs to come up with the solution to the murder … before the killer removes her from the equation.

Kenneth Salter, chairman of the math department at Marcus Rome State University, isnt a well-liked man; in fact, most people despise him. Its not surprising, therefore, when he ends up dead, slumped over in his office chair. All the animosity directed toward the professor makes this a challenging case for homicide detective Tom Warren. His list of possible suspects is long. Much to his chagrin, Warren finds himself teamed up with some law enforcement outsiders. Jim Albright is a math professor and detective wannabe, while his wife, Donna, is a sexy psychologist. Elmo Sherwin is a loveable math genius, but hes as clumsy as he is eccentric. How can these novices help Warren solve his case? Hell soon learn it takes more than crime scene know-how to catch a killer. Its going to take interviews, deduction, and reasoning to make sense of Salters murder. Everyone sees things differently, and what one person observes could be missed by everyone else. Are you clever enough to follow the clues and construct the argument that points uniquely to the guilty party?

Dr. Sophie Knowles is a math professor with a knack for creating complex puzzles that delight her students. But now, at the close of the academic year, she must solve a crime that doesn’t quite add up… At the math department’s graduation party, Sophie hears heated arguments coming from the graduates about Mayor Graves, the commencement speaker. Not the mayor’s biggest fan, Sophie is happy to escape the drama with an after-hours campus stroll accompanied by her helicopter-piloting boyfriend, Bruce Granville. However, their date is interrupted by the mayor himself—with a knife in his back. As it turns out, the knife is actually a Henley College letter opener—something that is gifted to every member of the graduating class. Sophie is led to a complicated puzzle of scandal and corruption, and it seems that Mayor Graves is at the apex of it all. When Sophie finds out that the mayor was seeking her help on the day he was murdered, she must use her top-notch logic to crack the puzzle and catch the killer running free on campus…

We all like to think we can solve a murder given the right clues. Here's another chance to use mathematics skills to identify "whodunnit" - following the great success of the first book in the series Mini Mathematical Murder Mysteries. The students are given the data or a diagram to solve a "problem" - which is always which of four characters is a murderer. To find out, the student must solve all or most of the questions on the sheet to identify wrong answers as well as correct ones. Problems are staged, so there is an element of suspense for the individual...and racing between students to solve the mystery. 12-14 years

Dr. Sophie Knowles teaches math at Henley College in Massachusetts, but when a colleague turns up dead, it's up to her to find the killer before someone else gets subtracted.

In the wrong hands, math can be deadly. Even the simplest numbers can become powerful forces when manipulated by politicians or the media, but in the case of the law, your liberty -- and your life -- can depend on the right calculation. In Math on Trial, mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez describe ten trials spanning from the nineteenth century to today, in which mathematical arguments were used -- and disastrously misused -- as evidence. They tell the stories of Sally Clark, who was accused of murdering her children by a doctor with a faulty sense of calculation; of nineteenth-century tycoon Hetty Green, whose dispute over her aunt's will became a signal case in the forensic use of mathematics; and of the case of Amanda Knox, in which a judge's misunderstanding of probability led him to discount critical evidence -- which might have kept her in jail. Offering a fresh angle on cases from the nineteenth-century Dreyfus affair to the murder trial of Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk, Schneps and Colmez show how the improper application of mathematical concepts can mean the difference between walking free and life in prison. A colorful narrative of mathematical abuse, Math on Trial blends courtroom drama, history, and math to show that legal expertise isn't't always enough to prove a person innocent.

We all like to think we can solve a murder given the right clues. Heres a chance to use mathematics skills to identify whodunit for ages 12-14.

Harry R. Albers has degrees in physics from the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University. He has previously published three books: Murder at Lake Tomahawk, The Discovery, and The 4th Icon. His career has included the Smithsonian Institution, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Barnard College and San Diego State University Research Foundation. He and his wife, Jean, have three children, five grandchildren, and live in San Diego and the Big Island of Hawai’i.

Dr. Sophie Knowles loves using puzzles to make math fun for students. But when winter seizes Henley College, she must thaw out a cold case to track down a killer--her most difficult puzzle yet . . . Winter Intersession is in full swing, and campus is buzzing over the concert celebrating the bell tower's reopening. The building has been shuttered for twenty-five years, and Sophie's shocked to learn why--a student leapt from it to her death. But she's even more troubled by the secrecy surrounding the case. After Sophie performs some quick calculations, she's left with a nagging question: Was it really suicide? When one of Sophie's favorite students, a performer in the concert, is brutally beaten and left in a coma, Sophie's mind kicks into overdrive. The horrific incidents seem too coincidental to be unrelated, but can Sophie put together the pieces from a twenty-five-year-old murder before any other students get hurt?