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 gripping new Temperance Brennan novel from the world-class forensic anthropologist and Number 1 best-selling author Kathy Reichs. The body of a teenage girl is discovered along a desolate highway on the outskirts of Charlotte. Inside her purse is the ID card of a local businessman who died in a fire months earlier. Who was the girl? And was she murdered? Dr Temperance Brennan, Forensic Anthropologist, must find the answers.

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

Guatemala, in the searing heat.The bones of a child no more than two years old are uncovered when mass graves are excavated.Twenty-three women and children are said to lie where forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is searching for remains, in what is one of the most heartbreaking cases of her career.Then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City...

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. 

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.

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…’

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.

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.

When Tempe is called to the scene of an autoerotic death, she has little idea of the tangled chain of events that will follow. Because the man whose body she is examines apparently died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 40 years before. So who is buried in the soldier's grave?

Fourteen-year-old Tory Brennan is as fascinated by bones and dead bodies as her famous aunt, acclaimed forensic anthropologist, Tempe Brennan. However living on a secluded island off Charleston in South Carolina there is not much opportunity to put her knowledge to the test. Until her and her ragbag group of technophile friends stumble across a shallow grave containing the remains of a girl who has been missing for over thirty years.

"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.