A Conspiracy of Bones

A Conspiracy of Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982138904

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with an “edgy, eerie, irresistible” (Sandra Brown) novel with “plenty of twists” (The New York Times Book Review) featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, who must use her skills to discover the identity of a faceless corpse, its connection to a decade-old missing child case, and why the dead man had her cell phone number. 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. To win answers to the others, including the man’s identity, she must go rogue, working mostly outside the system. That’s because Tempe’s new boss holds a fierce grudge against her and is determined to keep her out of the case. Tempe bulls forward anyway, even as she begins questioning her instincts. But the clues she discovers are disturbing and confusing. Was the faceless man a spy? A trafficker? A target for assassination by the government? And why was he carrying the name of a child missing for almost a decade? With help from law enforcement associates including her Montreal beau Andrew Ryan and the quick-witted, ex-homicide investigator Skinny Slidell, and utilizing new cutting-edge forensic methods, Tempe draws closer to the astonishing truth. “A complete success” (Booklist, starred review), “this is Kathy Reichs as you’ve never read her before” (David Baldacci).

Break No Bones

Break No Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2006-07-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1416535217

From bestselling author Kathy Reichs comes a book set in Charleston, South Carolina, the center of a lucrative, clandestine, sophisticated trade in body parts—the kind that leaves the donor dead. Summoned to South Carolina to fill in for a negligent colleague, Tempe is stuck teaching a lackluster archaeology field school in the ruins of a Native American burial ground on the Charleston shore. But when Tempe stumbles upon a fresh skeleton among the ancient bones, her old friend Emma Rousseau, the local coroner, persuades her to stay on and help with the investigation. When Emma reveals a disturbing secret, it becomes more important than ever for Tempe to help her friend close the case. The body count begins to climb. An unidentified man is found hanging from a tree deep in the woods. Another corpse shows up in a barrel. There are mysterious nicks on bones in several bodies, and signs of strangulation. Tempe follows the trail to a free street clinic with a belligerent staff, a suspicious doctor, and a donor who is a charismatic televangelist. Clues abound in the most unlikely places as Tempe uses her unique knowledge and skills to build her case, even as the local sheriff remains dubious and her own life is threatened. Tempe’s love life is also complicated. Ryan, her current flame, has come down to visit her from Montreal, and Pete, her former husband, is investigating the disappearance of a local woman—and he and Tempe are staying in the same borrowed beach house. Ryan and Pete compete for her attentions, and Tempe finds herself more distracted by her feelings for both men than she expected. Break No Bones is a smart, taut thriller featuring the kind of high-stakes crime that makes the headlines every week. Reichs, the inspiration for the hit Fox TV show Bones, is writing at the top of her form, and Tempe has never been more compelling.

Spider Bones

Spider Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2010-08-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439112797

Don’t miss this “whopper” (Publishers Weekly) of a thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs in her “cleverly plotted” (The New York Times) Temperance Brennan series, the inspiration for the hit FOX television series Bones. John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice, and how did an American soldier end up in Canada? Tempe sets off for the answer, exhuming Lowery’s grave in North Carolina and taking the remains to Hawaii for reanalysis—to the headquarters of JPAC, the US military’s Joint POW/ MIA Accounting Command, which strives to recover Americans who have died in past conflicts. In Hawaii, Tempe is joined by her colleague and ex-lover Detective Andrew Ryan (how “ex” is he?) and by her daughter, who is recovering from her own tragic loss. Soon another set of remains is located, with Lowery’s dog tags tangled among them. Three bodies—all identified as Lowery. And then Tempe is contacted by Hadley Perry, Honolulu’s flamboyant medical examiner, who needs help identifying the remains of an adolescent boy found offshore. Was he the victim of a shark attack? Or something much more sinister?

Flash and Bones

Flash and Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-08-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439112800

Kathy Reichs—#1 New York Times bestselling author and producer of the FOX television hit Bones—returns with a riveting new novel set in Charlotte, North Carolina, featuring America’s favorite forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan. Just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for Race Week, a body is found in a barrel of asphalt next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The next day, a NASCAR crew member comes to Temperance Brennan’s office at the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner to share a devastating story. Twelve years earlier, Wayne Gamble’s sister, Cindi, then a high school senior and aspiring racer, disappeared along with her boyfriend, Cale Lovette. Lovette kept company with a group of right-wing extremists known as the Patriot Posse. Could the body be Cindi’s? Or Cale’s? At the time of their disappearance, the FBI joined the investigation, only to terminate it weeks later. Was there a cover-up? As Tempe juggles multiple theories, the discovery of a strange, deadly substance in the barrel alongside the body throws everything into question. Then an employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention goes missing during Race Week. Tempe can’t overlook the coincidence. Was this man using his lab chemicals for murder? Or is the explanation even more sinister? What other secrets lurk behind the festive veneer of Race Week? A turbocharged story of secrets and murder unfolds in this, the fourteenth thrilling novel in Reichs’s “cleverly plotted and expertly maintained series” (The New York Times Book Review). With the smash hit Bones about to enter its seventh season and in full syndication—and her most recent novel, Spider Bones, an instant New York Times bestseller—Kathy Reichs is at the top of her game.

Cold, Cold Bones

Cold, Cold Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2022-07-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982190043

“Reichs has written her masterpiece—smart, scary, complicated, and engrossing.” —Michael Connelly “This page-turning series never lets the reader down.” —Harlan Coben “The crowning achievement of a master storyteller.” —Nelson DeMille #1 New York Times bestselling thriller writer Kathy Reichs’s twenty-first novel of suspense featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan who uncovers a series of gruesome killings eerily reenacting the most shocking of her prior cases. Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball. GPS coordinates etched into the eyeball lead to a Benedictine monastery where an equally macabre discovery awaits. Soon after, Tempe examines a mummified corpse in a state park, and her anxiety deepens. There seems to be no pattern to the subsequent killings uncovered, except that each mimics in some way a homicide that a younger Tempe had been called in to analyze. Who or what is targeting her, and why? Helping Tempe search for answers is detective Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit—and still displaying his gallows humor. Also pulled into the mystery: Andrew Ryan, Tempe’s Montreal-based beau, now working as a private detective. Could this elaborately staged skein of mayhem be the prelude to a twist that is even more shocking? Tempe is at a loss to establish the motive for what is going on…and then her daughter disappears. At its core, Cold, Cold Bones is a novel of revenge—one in which revisiting the past may prove the only way to unravel the present.

The Bone Code

The Bone Code
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982139986

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs’s twentieth “brilliant” (Louise Penny) thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events. “This is A-game Reichs, with crisp prose, sharp dialogue, and plenty of suspense” (Booklist). On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec fifteen years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become increasingly alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads. So focused is Tempe on identifying the container victims that, initially, she doesn’t register how their murders and the pestilence may be related. But she does recognize one unsettling fact. Someone is protecting a dark secret—and willing to do anything to keep it hidden. An absorbing look at the sinister uses to which genetics can be put and featuring a cascade of ever-more-shocking revelations, The Bone Code is “a murder mystery story that races across America at the speed of fright” (James Patterson).

All of Them to Burn

All of Them to Burn
Author: Beau Johnson
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2020-02-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Darkness is an attribute most of us rally against. It can consume. It can achieve. But if we so choose, it can also be held at bay. Enter Bishop Rider and the evil he’s chosen to obliterate since his family is taken from him. Operating outside the law, circumventing a system beyond repair, Bishop stalks this darkness the only way he knows how. Not only because these men deserve what he’s become, but because of a message he attempted to create has come back to haunt him, now, after all these years. It’s this story, along with other, unconnected tales that populate All of them to Burn. Come, meet Rider for the first time. Come, meet Rider for the last time. Come, watch the darkness burn. Praise for ALL OF THEM TO BURN: “Beau Johnson has done to his fiction what street thugs do to their victims: he holds it down and beats it for all its worth. I mean that in a good way. No, in a great way. Few authors are out there stamping their words onto the page the way Beau does. He’s equal parts slick, hammering, poetic and caustic. His talent is to be admired; his words are to be read.” —Ryan Sayles, author of the Richard Dean Buckner mysteries “Beau Johnson delivers another collection of masterfully written tales. Compelling and smart, these wild stories are full of twisted characters and seedy scenes. Greed. Anger. Revenge. Perhaps, justice. We are taken down a dark path, catching up with old favorites like Bishop Rider and John Batista along the way. We watch as the stories and characters connect and engage, bringing every thread together. The third in his series of connected shorts may be Beau Johnson’s best, yet.” —Marietta Miles, author of May and After the Storm “All of Them to Burn is a Molotov cocktail of classic crime fiction, but one with a sharp modern twist.” —Paul D. Brazill, author of Last Year’s Man and A Case of Noir “Beau Johnson’s stories are hard tales of revenge and sorrow. Nothing can prepare you for the darkness in these stories and nothing can make you turn away once you start reading. All of Them to Burn is an excellent collection.” —Nikki Dolson, author of All Things Violent “These chilling short stories—many featuring the return of the mythic-like hero, Bishop Rider—drop us into the darkest depths of human suffering and ruin. Beau Johnson can spin the most brutal of tales with raw emotion, savage honesty, and fierce humor. A standout collection from a seasoned storyteller.” —Sarah M. Chen, author of Cleaning Up Finn “All of Them to Burn is fast, sharp, violent, and gory. There’s something visceral at the core of Johnson’s work that simultaneously reflects the best and worst of humanity, and it shines in this collection. Come for the blood and viciousness and stay for the electric dialogue and outstanding last lines. I promise it’s all equally fun.” —Gabino Iglesias, author of Coyote Songs

Speaking in Bones

Speaking in Bones
Author: Kathy Reichs
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2015-07-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345544056

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This ebook edition contains a special preview of Kathy Reichs’s upcoming novel Two Nights and the bonus novella Bones on Ice. No one speaks the language of suspense more brilliantly than Kathy Reichs, author of the acclaimed Temperance Brennan series. In Speaking in Bones, the forensic anthropologist finds herself drawn into a world of dark secrets and dangerous beliefs, where good and evil blur. Professionally, Temperance Brennan knows exactly what to do—test, analyze, identify. Her personal life is another story. She’s at a loss, wondering how to answer police detective Andrew Ryan’s marriage proposal. But the matter of matrimony takes a backseat when murder rears its head. Hazel “Lucky” Strike—a strident amateur detective who mines the Internet for cold cases—comes to Brennan with a tape recording of an unknown girl being held prisoner and terrorized. Strike is convinced the voice is that of eighteen-year-old Cora Teague, who went missing more than three years earlier. Strike is also certain that the teenager’s remains are gathering dust in Temperance Brennan’s lab. Brennan has doubts about working with a self-styled websleuth. But when the evidence seems to add up, Brennan’s next stop is the treacherous backwoods where the chilling recording (and maybe Cora Teague’s bones) were discovered. Her forensic field trip only turns up more disturbing questions—along with gruesome proof of more untimely deaths. While local legends of eerie nocturnal phenomena and sinister satanic cults abound, it’s a zealous and secretive religious sect that has Brennan spooked and struggling to separate the saints from the sinners. But there’s nothing, including fire and brimstone, that can distract her from digging up the truth and taking down a killer—even as Brennan finds herself in a place where angels fear to tread, devils demand their due, and she may be damned no matter what. Praise for Speaking in Bones “Speaking in Bones keeps the suspense high.”—Associated Press “Temperance’s forensic sleuthing uncovers many secrets, along with a blockbuster psychological surprise.”—The Huffington Post

Bones

Bones
Author: Max Allan Collins
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1416524614

An original novel based on Fox's new hit television series, inspired by real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs, creator of the Temperance Brennan series. Original.