“This has only begun...”
Door slams…
Sobbing… then
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
Then: “Please. Kill me.”

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan listens, transfixed, as the words unwind from the key chain recording device attached to a scrap of denim in a plastic baggie on her desk.  Hazel Strike, who identifies herself as a websleuth, has offered the recording as evidence that the voice belongs to Cora Teague, a young lady who has been missing for three years. Dr. Brennan has heard of the overzealous viewers of “NCIS,” “Cold Case,” “CSI” and “Bones,” who fancy themselves to be forensic scientists. Hazel is one of the more successful websleuths and wants to convince Brennan that the bones of body parts logged into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System may belong to Cora. She believes that these bones reside in the backlog of unidentified remains in the County Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Charlotte, and she challenges Brennan to help identify them.

"How Reichs manages to juggle two completely different storylines, featuring two versions of the same character, with her professional civilian life as a forensic anthropologist puts her in stratospheric dimensions as an overachiever."

And so begins what is perhaps Reichs’ most engrossing thriller to date. Brennan teams up with the county sheriff’s department to scope out a region of the Blue Ridge Mountains steeped in lore and mysticism. The area is known for the religious cults living cloistered lives who speak in tongues, handle venomous snakes and exorcise evil spirits. Strike directs her to a breakaway Catholic church in the backwoods run by a defrocked priest with a fanatical following. Brennan travels to the hiking trail where the recording device was found and locates more human bones. When she is threatened by an unknown assailant seen on the cliffs above the site, the search turns deadly.

Meanwhile, Brennan is torn about making a life-changing decision concerning her tumultuous relationship with her longtime FBI detective partner, Andrew Ryan. Now that her mother is contentedly living in a senior center and her daughter is serving a second tour of duty in Afghanistan, she wonders if this may be the right time to accept Ryan’s persistent marriage proposal.

SPEAKING IN BONES is the 18th novel in Reichs’ long and dazzling writing career. Juggling her “day job” as one of fewer than 100 accredited forensic anthropologists, she also co-produces the long-running TV series “Bones” while finding time to enthrall her readers with tightly written, scientifically correct and fascinating forensic thrillers, all featuring fully developed characters. SPEAKING IN BONES may be her best book yet, as Brennan attempts to balance her career with personal life decisions while trying to untangle the fate of the mysterious Cora Teague.

For fans of both the TV show and the books, it is tempting to compare the Temperance Brennan on the written page with the television personality. Her colleagues on the show deal regularly with the obsessively compulsive pathologist, married to Special Agent Seeley Booth, a romance that evolved out of their early investigative partnerships. The TV character, who goes by the nickname “Bones,” writes novels under the pseudonym “Kathy Reichs,” providing an interesting, if not confusing, twist. There was one of those “aha” moments in a recent episode when Special Agent Booth is asked if her novel FBI agent character, Andrew Ryan, is based on him. He smiles enigmatically and admits that it is.

How Reichs manages to juggle two completely different storylines, featuring two versions of the same character, with her professional civilian life as a forensic anthropologist puts her in stratospheric dimensions as an overachiever. For both sets of fans, SPEAKING IN BONES promises to be another New York Times bestseller. And --- drumroll here --- “Bones” has been renewed for an 11th season.