Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil - human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder.

Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local "resurrectionists" ? those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly traces the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking.