The Keepsake -- Tess Gerritsen

The Crispin Museum, an almost-forgotten museum in Boston, Massachusetts, is the center of much excitement and news coverage when an ancient Egyptian mummy is found stored in the basement. Striving to learn more about the mummy, the museum curator arranges for a CT Scan of the remains at a local hospital. The results, though, are nothing anyone expected. A bullet in one of the legs of the mummy proves that this is no ancient mummy, and the case is turned over to the Medical Examiner's office, where Dr. Maura Isles discovers that the mummy is actually a modern murder victim who has been mummified and made into a keepsake for the killer. Immediately the Crispin Museum, along with its employees, is hurled into a murder investigation, and Detective Jane Rizolli and her partner Barry Frost begin digging around in the museum's basement, searching for clues as to how and when the mummy arrived there. Before long, more modern remains turn up in the museum basement, and clues left with the bodies become quite disturbing for Josephine Pulcillo, the museum's Egyptologist.

Josephine is not disturbed only by the gruesomeness of these acts. She is also disturbed by the coincidental links to her past these clues seem to posses. And when a third victim, also mummified, is found in her car trunk, she becomes sure that the clues are not coincidental. Her past has caught up with her, and now she is faced with the task of staying one step ahead of her hunter. Meanwhile, Detectives Rizolli and Frost follow leads from New Mexico and Texas as they track down the killer, all the while learning that Josephine Pulcillo is not who she claims to be. As they uncover secrets that are 15 years old, the detectives realize they are dealing with an obsessed killer; a killer who has managed to stay hidden for decades. Will they be able to find him and stop him before Josephine becomes his next keepsake?

The Bone Garden -- Tess Gerritsen

When Julia Hamill purchases an old “fixer-upper” house following her divorce, she thinks she is on her way to realizing some of her goals and rediscovering herself. But when, while working in her garden, she uncovers a human skeleton, she finds herself plunged into the history of her new home. As Julia tries to learn the skeleton’s identity and how it came to be buried in her garden, she begins a friendship with a distant relative of the home’s previous owner; a relative who has boxes of information that once belonged to the deceased owner, and which might provide clues to the skeleton’s identity. Julia soon learns that mystery surrounds the female skeleton buried in her garden; a mystery involving grave-diggers, doctors, poverty, and murder in 19th-century Boston.

In nineteenth-century Boston, a sickness was spreading and killing women following childbirth. Most of the women who suffered this painful death were the impoverished Irish immigrants found in the maternity ward of the medical school’s hospital; the only place they could receive medical attention, because it was free. That is where Rose’s sister Aurnia dies mere hours after giving birth. When Aurnia’s husband decides to give the baby up for adoption, telling Rose the baby is not his, Rose steps in, swearing she will do all in her power to keep her niece. But when Rose happens upon the fresh murder scene of one of the nurses who tended her sister, she realizes protecting her niece and herself may not be an easy feat.

Rose finds herself embroiled in a race against time as she tries to discover the truth behind her niece’s paternity while trying to stay hidden in the slums of Boston; for she has seen the nurse’s murderer – a hideous creature with wings, and she knows she is a hunted woman. Norris, a poor medical student, becomes her only ally after he too sees the hideous creature and is accused of a second nurse’s death. Together, Rose and Norris make startling discoveries about their friends, about themselves, and about each other as they try to save their reputations, Rose’s niece, and their own lives.

As Julia delves deeper into the mystery of the skeleton in her garden, she finds herself taken through many twists and turns as she is sucked into the history of Boston. She realizes that not everything and not everyone can be taken at face-value, and she discovers how frightening and surprising the motivations of a killer can be.