First Bones

An e-novella by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs that explores the origins of her vastly popular character, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. In 1980s Charlotte, North Carolina, Temperance Brennan is newly employed as a bioarchaeologist, studying the bones of the ancient dead. But a strange opportunity presents itself when two detectives appear at her lab, seeking consultation on a recently burned body. As a murder investigation unfolds, Temperance finds that there is another deadly threat at work…

Scientists not so long ago unanimously believed that people first walked to the New World from northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge at the end of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. But in the last ten years, new tools applied to old bones have yielded evidence that tells an entirely different story. In Bones, Elaine Dewar records the ferocious struggle in the scientific world to reshape our views of prehistory. She traveled from the Mackenzie River valley in northern Canada to the arid plains of the Brazilian state of Piaui, from the skull-and-bones-lines offices of the Smithsonian Institution to the basement lab of an archaeologist in Washington State who wondered if the FBI was going to come for him. She met scientists at war with each other and sought to see for herself the oldest human remains on these continents. Along the way, she found that the old answer to the question of who were the First Americans was steeped in the bitter tea of racism. Bones explores the ambiguous terrain left behind when a scientific paradigm is swept away. It tells the stories of the archaeologists, Native American activists, DNA experts and physical anthropologists scrambling for control of ancient bones of Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave, and the oldest one of all, a woman named Luzia. At stake are professional reputations, lucrative grants, fame, vindication, even the reburial of wandering spirits. The weapons? Lawsuits, threats, violence. The battlefield stretches from Chile to Alaska. Dewar tells the stories that never find their way into scientific papers — stories of mysterious deaths, of the bones of evil shamen and the shadows falling on the lives of scientists who pulled them from the ground. And she asks the new questions arising out of the science of bones and the stories of first peoples: "What if Native Americans are right in their belief that they have always been in the Americas and did not migrate to the New World at the end of the Ice Age? What if the New World's human story is as long and complicated as that of the Old? What if the New World and the Old World have always been one?"

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with her twenty-first taut novel of suspense featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan who, after receiving a box with a human eyeball in it, uncovers a series of ever more grisly killings eerily reenacting the most shocking of her prior cases. Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. For a while, temporarily idle forensic anthropologist 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 for dinner, 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 these random killings, except that each mimics in some way a killing that a younger Tempe witnessed, analyzed, or barely escaped. Who or what is targeting her, and why? Helping Tempe discover the answers is Detective Erskine “Skinny” Slidell, retired but still volunteering with the CMPD cold case unit—and still displaying his gallows humor. But as the two infiltrate a bizarre survivalist’s lair, even Skinny’s mood darkens. And then Tempe’s daughter Katy disappears. At its core, Cold, Cold Bones is a novel of revenge and why revisiting the past may be the only way to rescue the present.

In this latest blockbuster novel from bestselling author Kathy Reichs, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan investigates what looks to be a typical missing person case, only to find herself digging up bones possibly left by a serial killer, a cult, or perhaps something not entirely of this world. For every case that Temperance Brennan has solved, there remain numerous bodies that remain unidentified in her lab. Information on some of these cold cases is available online, where amateur detectives sometimes take a stab at solving cases. When Tempe gets a call from Hazel “Lucky” Strike, a web sleuth who believes she’s successfully connected a body in Tempe’s lab to a missing eighteen-year-old girl, Tempe writes it off as another false alarm. Still reeling from her mother’s diagnosis and the shock of Andrew Ryan’s potentially life-change proposal, Tempe has little patience for chasing false leads. But when the bones in the lab match the missing girl’s medical records, Tempe re-opens the case, returning to the spot where her remains were originally found. What seems at first to be an isolated tragedy takes on a more sinister cast as Tempe uncovers two more sets of bones nearby. Even more troubling is that the area is known as a viewing point for a famous unexplained light phenomenon, and that a local cult nearby has significant interest in the site. Tempe’s suspicions turn to murder by ritual sacrifice—a theory that gains even more urgency when Hazel herself turns up dead. Struggling to follow the tracks of a killer who will do anything not to be discovered, Tempe races to solve the murders and unravel the mysteries surrounding the site before the body count climbs higher. A suspenseful, modern addition to Temperance Brennan’s ongoing story, Speaking in Bones proves that Kathy’s pulse-pounding Bones series shows no signs of slowing down.

This Lively Text Sung To The Tune Of The Hokey Pokey Answers One Of Young Children's Many Questions About Their Bodies.

In the riveting fourteenth novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Temperance Brennan series by Kathy Reichs, a dead body is discovered near the North Carolina speedway right before a NASCAR competition is scheduled to begin. Just as 200,000 fans begin pouring into Charlotte, North Carolina for Raceweek, a body is found in a barrel of asphalt in a landfill next to the Lowes Motor Speedway. The following day, a NASCAR crew member visits Temperance Brennan at the MCME and tells her that his sister, Cyndi Gamble, an aspiring NASCAR driver, and her boyfriend, Cale Lovett, mysteriously disappeared twelve years earlier. Could the body be Cyndi’s? Or Cale’s? As Tempe delves into the old case, secrets begin to surface. Brennan learns that, because of Lovett’s association with right wing extremists, the FBI had joined the investigation at the time of the pair’s disappearance, only to then terminate the search a short while later. Was it a cover-up? Or a simple open-and-shut case? As Tempe considers multiple theories, another man, Ted Raines, goes missing in Charlotte. An employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Raines was in town for the big race. So when Tempe’s tests finds a surprising, secret substance mixed in with the remains in the barrel, Tempe wonders just what Raines was up to…or if the body might be his. As she struggles to uncover who is hiding what, Tempe discovers just how far the government is willing to go to keep its secrets safe.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with her twentieth gripping novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, whose examinations, fifteen years apart, of unidentified bodies ignite a terrifying series of events. 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 sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 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 is 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 Temperance Brennan’s most astonishing case yet—one that gives new meaning to today’s headlines.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Briggs comes the first “thrilling”* novel in the Hurog duology. Most everyone thinks Ward of Hurog is a simple-minded fool—and that’s just fine by him. But few people know that his foolishness is (very convincingly) feigned. And that it’s the only thing that’s saved him from death. When his abusive father dies, Ward becomes the new lord of Hurog...until a nobleman declares that he is too dim-witted to rule. Ward knows he cannot play the fool any longer. To regain his kingdom, he must prove himself worthy—and quickly. Riding into a war that’s heating up on the border, Ward is sure he’s on the fast track to glory. But soon his mission takes a deadly serious turn. For he has seen a pile of magical dragon bones hidden deep beneath Hurog Keep. The bones can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and Ward is certain his enemies will stop at nothing to possess them...