Temperance Brennan has a mystifying new case in this eighth novel from New York Times bestselling author and world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. Tempe is called in to interpret the wounds of a man who was shot in the head, but while she tries to make sense of the fracture patterning, an unknown man slips her a photograph of a skeleton, telling her it holds the answer to the victim's death.

The freezing Montreal winter turns even colder when blue-eyed cop Andrew Ryan is too busy mounting a sting operation and squiring a fetching youngster around to pay much attention to the forensic anthropologist who's his sometime squeeze. Temperance Brennan can't even turn to her chum Anne for much solace because Anne, on a leave of absence from her marriage, is needy herself. Work is no consolation either, since Tempe is facing a riddle she can't solve. 

It's a summer of record-breaking heat in Charlotte, North Carolina and Dr Temperance Brennan is looking forward to her first vacation in years. She's almost out the door when the bones start appearing. First there's the newborn skeleton found in a wood stove. Who put the baby there? The mother, hardly more than a child herself, has disappeared. Next, a small plane flies into a rock face on a sunny afternoon. Both pilot and passenger are burned beyond recognition, their bodies covered with a strange black substance. What could it be?

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. Families and neighbors refer to their lost members as "the disappeared". The bodies are said to lie in a mass grave. Tempe brings all her skill to uncover the savagery of the past.

Temperance, forensic anthropologist for the state of Quebec, is recalled from a course for a gruesome duty. Biker war is raging in Quebec and two of its foot soldiers have blown themselves up. She is the person best qualified to make sense of what remains.