When a curator is found murdered, Ruth Galloway and Detective Inspector Nelson track down links between the murder, Aborigine skulls, and a drug-smuggling operation that forces Ruth to question her loyalties.

A Smithsonian Book of the Year A Nature Book of the Year “Provides much-needed foundation of the relationship between museums and Native Americans.” —Smithsonian In 1864 a US Army doctor dug up the remains of a Dakota man who had been killed in Minnesota and sent the skeleton to a museum in Washington that was collecting human remains for research. In the “bone rooms” of the Smithsonian, a scientific revolution was unfolding that would change our understanding of the human body, race, and prehistory. Seeking evidence to support new theories of racial classification, collectors embarked on a global competition to recover the best specimens of skeletons, mummies, and fossils. As the study of these discoveries discredited racial theory, new ideas emerging in the budding field of anthropology displaced race as the main motive for building bone rooms. Today, as a new generation seeks to learn about the indigenous past, momentum is building to return objects of spiritual significance to native peoples. “A beautifully written, meticulously documented analysis of [this] little-known history.” —Brian Fagan, Current World Archeology “How did our museums become great storehouses of human remains? Bone Rooms chases answers...through shifting ideas about race, anatomy, anthropology, and archaeology and helps explain recent ethical standards for the collection and display of human dead.” —Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors “Details the nascent views of racial science that evolved in U.S. natural history, anthropological, and medical museums...Redman effectively portrays the remarkable personalities behind [these debates]...pitting the prickly Aleš Hrdlička at the Smithsonian...against ally-turned-rival Franz Boas at the American Museum of Natural History.” —David Hurst Thomas, Nature

Forensic archeologist, Dr. Ruth Galloway is back--this time investigating a gruesome World War II war crime.

In one world, they’re ordinary university students. In another world, they are a company of heroes in a place of magic and myth called Anfractus… The Cree called the area Oscana, “pile of bones,” a fertile hunting ground where game abounded. The white settlers changed that to Wascana. And centuries later, it became Wascana Park, a wooded retreat in the midst of the urban sprawl of Regina. For a select few, who stay in the park until midnight, the land reverts into a magical kingdom, populated by heroes and monsters. They become warriors, bards, archers, gladiators. In the city called Anfractus, they live out a real-life role playing game. All harmless fun—until they find themselves in the middle of an assassination plot which threatens to upset the balance of everything. Politics are changing, and old borders are about to disappear. The magic of Anfractus is bleeding into the real world—an incursion far more dangerous than the students suspect. Only they know what is happening—and only they can stop it...

In the first of a new mystery series, we meet Nora Best as she flees her old life, cheating husband and all, and takes to the road with an Airstream trailer. Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned fifty and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US. But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going. Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda. When she is woken by a frantic Miranda after Brad has disappeared and bloodstains have been found around the campsite, Nora finds herself caught up in an adventure she could never have expected . . . facing a charge of murder.

Investigating the discovery of a murdered child on a demolition site, pregnant archaeologist Ruth Galloway teams up with Detective Harry Nelson to discern the victim's identity before realizing that she is being targeted by a dangerous assailant.

In this highly atmospheric mystery, Ruth Galloway—whom #1 New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny calls “a captivating amateur sleuth”—has her summer vacation disrupted by a murder in a medieval Italian town where dark secrets are buried as deep as bones. When archaeologist Angelo Morelli asks Ruth Galloway to come to the Italian countryside to help identify bones found in picturesque Fontana Liri, she jumps at the chance to go—and brings her daughter along for what she assumes will be a working vacation. Upon arriving, Ruth hears murmurs of Fontana Liri’s strong resistance movement during World War II, and begins to sense that the townspeople are harboring an age-old secret. But how, if at all, could this chapter in history be connected to the human remains that Angelo has unearthed? Just as she’s getting her footing in the dig, DCI Nelson appears, unexpectedly and for no clear reason. When Ruth’s findings lead her and her crew to a modern-day murder, their holiday turns into anything but as they race to find out what darkness is lurking in this seemingly peaceful place. . .and who may be on their trail.