The Bone Code

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs is back with her twentieth suspenseful book, which centres on Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, and how her studies of unexplained remains that wash up from the sea fifteen years apart may be linked to a terrible new plague.

South Carolina is being struck by a storm that is bringing up old criminal cases.

On the way to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. A medical waste container washed ashore on the beach during the storm. Two decaying corpses strung together with electrical wire and covered in plastic sheeting are found inside. Terrifyingly, Tempe realises that a lot of the circumstances match those of an unresolved case she worked on fifteen years before in Quebec. With a growing sense of foreboding, she flies to Montreal to gather evidence and convince her boss Pierre LaManch to reopen the cold case. She also seeks the advice—and comfort—of her longtime beau Andrew Ryan.

In the meanwhile, a distinct kind of storm intensifies in South Carolina. Charleston residents are afflicted with a bacteria that, in extreme cases, may consume human flesh. In a panic, many check for a rare genetic abnormality that may have made them susceptible.

Shockingly, Tempe eventually discovers that not only are the victims in both grisly murder cases related, but that the murders and the disease outbreak also have a common cause…