Forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan finds the skeletons of three young women in the basement of a pizza parlour. Homicide detective Luc Claudel believes the bones are historic. But Tempe has her doubts and sets out to prove that this is definitely a case of murder.
1961: On a summer's day, while her family picnics by the stream on, 16-year-old Laurel hides out in her tree house dreaming of a boy called Billy, a move to London, and the bright future she can't wait to seize. But before the idyllic afternoon is over, Laurel will have witnessed a shocking crime that changes everything.
'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 week after death, the body is barely recognisable. Extreme heat has accelerated decomposition, and Dr Temperance Brennan's forensic expertise is required.|PB
A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn?t been the same since her fiancé jilted her in 1941. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother?s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ?the distant hours? of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.
Dr. Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for the medical examiners in Montreal and North Carolina, departs from home turf to journey to Guatemala, where her skills will be tested to the limit. It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers entered the village of Chupan Ya and rounded up the women and children. No records were kept. Families and neighbors refer to their lost members as the disappeared. The bodies are said to lie in a mass grave. Tempe digs in the cold, damp pit. The soil begins to yield ash and cinders. Her trowel uncovers the bone of a child no more than two years old. Something savage happened in this village twenty years ago. And something savage is happening today. Four girls are missing from Guatemala City, including the daughter of a high-ranking government official. When a young archaeologist is brutally murdered, Tempe realizes that she may be the next victim in a web of intrigue that connects the historical and contemporary murders.
Two blockbusters by the "New York Times" bestselling author featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan are now available in these specially priced paperback editions. Reissue.