Unknown bones untold secrets and unsolved crimes from the distant past cast ominous shadows on the present in the dazzling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess GerritsenPresent day Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts a skull buried in the rocky soilhuman female and according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder But whoever this nameless woman was and whatever befell her is knowledge lost to another time Boston In order to pay for his education Norris Marshall a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College has joined the ranks of local resurrectioniststhose who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect To prove his innocence Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer Rose Connolly a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim Joined by a sardonic keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes Norris and Rose comb the cityfrom its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin poweron the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected and who waits for his next lethal opportunity With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking Bold bloody and brilliant this is Tess Gerritsens finest achievement to datequotAn old mystery is crossed with a modern story in the latest from Gerritsen The Mephisto Club etcJulia Hamill newly divorced and still smarting purchases an old house outside Boston Determined to dig a garden she instead finds the bones of a long-dead womanthe apparent victim of murderwhich starts her on a journey to ferret out the story behind her death Julia connects with Henry a no-nonsense -year-old with boxes of documents that once belonged to the now-deceased previous owner of Julias home The two discover a mystery dating back to the s At the heart of it is a baby named Meggie born to the beautiful but doomed Irish chambermaid Aurnia Married to a man who cares nothing for her Aurnia lays dying in a maternity ward with her sister Rose at her side Rose a spirited -year-old takes Meggie to protect her from Aurnias husband but soon finds herself the target of a bizarre manhunt Someone is after the childand Rose as well because she witnessed a horrifying murder The body count piles up as Rose struggles to remain free of those who would take Meggie from her Meanwhile a young medical student becomes the chief suspect of the West End Reaper killings when he stumbles onto another terrible homicide Although he fights the prospect eventually he and Rose join forces to solve the murders and protect the baby at the heart of the mysterious deaths Readers with delicate stomachs may find Gerritsens graphic descriptions of corpse dissection hard to take but the story which digs up a dark Boston of times long past entices readers to keep turning pages long after their bedtimesquot - Kirkus Reviews starred.
