When Charlotte police discover the body of a teenage girl along a desolate stretch of two-lane highway, Temperance Brennan fears the worst. The girl's body shows signs of foul play. Inside her purse police find the ID card of a prominent local businessman, John-Henry Story, who died in a horrific flea market fire months earlier. Was the girl an illegal immigrant turning tricks? Was she murdered? Tempe soon finds herself at the center of a conspiracy...

A serial killer is strangling young women and dumping their lifeless bodies in the steep forested ravines of southern Indiana. With each corpse he leaves a calling card: a stone figurine wedged deep inside the victim's throat. FBI forensic anthropologist Christine Prusik saw such figurines placed inside the bodies of the dead years ago when researching in Papua New Guinea. Is someone trying to send Christine a message?

"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...

"When human bones are found beneath an old chapel in the woods, evidence suggests the remains could be linked to the decades-old case of missing teen Annalise Jansen. Homicide detective Jane Munro -- pregnant and acutely attuned to the preciousness of life -- hopes the grim discovery will finally bring closure to the girl's family. But for a group of Annalise's old friends, once dubbed the Shoreview Six by the media, it threatens to expose a terrible...