The gripping new Temperance Brennan novel from the world-class forensic anthropologist and number-one best-selling author Kathy Reichs. Tempe is faced with the horrifying possibility that the killer who got away in Monday Mourning is back....

The compelling new Dr. Temperance Brennan novel from the world-class forensic anthropologist and number-one best-selling author Kathy Reichs. When forensic anthropologist Dr. Tempe Brennan is approached by amateur detective Hazel 'Lucky' Strike, at first she is inclined to dismiss the woman's claims that she's matched a previously unidentified set of remains with a name.

A new-born baby is found wedged in a vanity cabinet in a rundown apartment near Montreal. Dr Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist to the province of Quebec, is brought in to investigate. While there, she discovers the mummified remains of two more babies within the same room. Shocked and distressed, Tempe must use all her skills and inner strength to focus on the facts.

In the run up to the biggest NASCAR race week of the year, Dr Temperance Brennan is called to a landfill site backing onto the Charlotte speedway track in North Carolina. Someone has discovered a barrel of hardened asphalt with a human hand poking through the top. With the country's press trained on Charlotte, it is up to Tempe to try to release and identify the body in the barrel.

‘You have an enemy, Dr. Brennan. It is in your interest to learn who placed that call.’ A routine case turns sinister when Dr. Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy of a missing heiress. Someone has made an incriminating accusation that she missed or concealed crucial evidence. Before Tempe can get to the one man with information, he turns up dead.

It’s sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she’s anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her. An identified corpse soon turns up, only partly answering her questions.

On the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 years earlier. 

Under the microscope, the outer bone surface is a moonscape of craters…‘Preliminary diagnosis?’‘Deformity of the bone. Maybe. Cortical destruction on a metacarpal. Maybe. Localised infection? Systemic disease process? Postmortem destruction, either purposeful or natural? A combination of the above? I don’t have a diagnosis…’

An underground chamber is exposed in a seedy, dilapidated house with sagging trim and peeling paint…In the dark cellar, a ritualistic display is revealed. A human skull rests on a cauldron, surrounded by slain chickens and bizarre figurines. Beads and antlers dangle overhead. Called to the scene is forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan. Bony architecture suggests that the skull is that of a young, black female.

A new, exclusive straight-to-digital Temperance Brennan short story from Kathy Reichs, world leading forensic anthropologist and number-one best-selling author of Deja Dead, Bones Are Forever and Bones of the Lost. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan has just arrived in Florida's Everglades for a much-needed break when she is unwittingly thrown into the middle of a deadly case with its roots in the darkest depths of the swamp.

When a plane crashes high in the mountains of North Carolina, forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan is called in to identify the victims. A chance discovery concerns her: a severed foot, well away from the main crash site. A deserted house close by is buried so deep in the woods that locals claim to know nothing of its existence. And her examination of the foot throws up more questions than answers. Before she can make any progress Tempe's professional standing is threatened.

Another day. Another death. Death du Jour. My God, how many such days would there be?'On a bitterly cold march night in Montreal, forensic anthropologiest Dr Temperance Brennan is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of an old church.Just hours later, Tempe is called to the scene of an horrific arson. A young family has perished, and there seems to be no witness, no motive, no explanation.

Violence is escalating, and spilling onto the streets of Montreal. A nine-year-old girl is killed in crossfire on her way to ballet class. The body of a teenager killed in North Carolina is found hundreds of miles away. Forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan has to pick up the pieces: she knows she shouldn't let emotion get in the way, but when nine-year-old Emily's body is wheeled into the morgue she cannot help but react.

It's the second-to-last day of archaeological field school. The students are working on a prehistoric gravesite when a much more recent burial is uncovered. The skeleton is articulated, the bone fresh, and the vertebrae still connected by soft-tissue. It's a case forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan has to take. But her investigations soon have her in too deep - her entire view of humanity is challenged, and the further she probes, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger.

"Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head" is the on-scene assessment, but the victim's relatives are adamant in their rejection of suicide as an explanation. Discovered in a closet, a full week after death, the body is barely recognisable. Extreme heat has accelerated decomposition, and Dr Temperance Brennan's forensic expertise is required. Advanced putrefaction has made it virtually impossible to determine the trajectory of the bullet.