Does the COVID-19 pandemic make you want to learn a bit more about science, but you don't want to read a dry text? As a scientist with more than twenty years of teaching and research experience in the biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I think science can be interesting to everyone (including women and minorities) if the topics are relevant to real problems and the instructor is lively.

Thus I explored modern scientific controversies (e.g. weight loss, cancer immunotherapy, food safety, water conservation) in the novels of my Science Traveler Series. My protagonist is Sara Almquist—an epidemiologist who tired of academia and now applies her skills to solve medical and criminal mysteries in New Mexico and worldwide. Like me, Sara lives in New Mexico and loves to travel to exotic places (i.e. the Middle East, Bolivia, India, Cuba).

You'll also meet the perfect gentleman in my books, Sara's Japanese Chin dog—Bug. The character Bug is based on my own dog who served a pet therapy dog for twelve years at a VA Center and the pediatric wards in a university hospital. As you read the books, you may think Sara has better taste in dogs than in men.