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.