Tempe vows to discover the truth, but the clues she discovers are disturbing and confusing.
Was the faceless man a spy?
A target for assassination by the government?
Credit: Marie-Reine Mattera
And why was he carrying the name of a child missing for almost a decade?
Its safe to say fans of the series are in for another chilling ride.
Reichs has shared an excerpt of the new book with EW, as well as its official cover.
Penguin
Read on below, and pre-order the book ahead of its Aug. 21 releasehere.
Excerpt fromA Conspiracy of Bones, by Kathy Reichs
PrologueFriday, June 22
Reactions to pressure vary.
Some people are ductile, able to stretch.
Others are brittle, powerless to bend.
Physicists talk of stress-strain curves.
One thing is certain.
If the burden is too great, or the loading too rapid, anyone can snap.
I reached my breaking point the summer after my boss was murdered.
The igneous rock of emotion.
To be fair, Larabees death wasnt the immediate or sole trigger.
There was also moving in with Ryan on both the Montreal and Charlotte ends of our geographically complex relationship.
His and Slidells retirements.
Katys posting in Afghanistan.
Petes news about Boyd.
A world of stressors was chafing my personal curve.
Looking back, I admit I spun out of control.
Perhaps going rogue was an attempt to steer unsteerable forces.
A bird-flip to aging.
A cry for Ryans attention?
A subconscious effort to drive him away?
Or maybe it was just the goddam Carolina heat.
I was holding my own until the faceless man finally sent me over the edge.
His remains and the subsequent investigation punched a big black hole in my smug little world.
Mama spotted the changes long before the enigmatic corpse turned up.
I denied it, of course, knowing she was right.
I was ignoring emails, the phone.
Declining invitations in favor of solo binging on old Hollywood flicks.
Twisting montages filled with dark figures and vague dangers.
Or frustrating tasks I couldnt complete.
Didnt matter the cause.
I was sleeping little, constantly restless and exhausted.
It didnt take Freud to recognize I was in a bad place.
Ole Sigmund might have offered a comment on that.
The weather was beyond Dixie summer-night warm.
The air was muggy and hot, and my Pro Cool tee was pasted to my back.
The lake was a dark void, woolly where the water met the bank.
Murky shapes glided its surface, silent, aware of their tenuous state.
Park officials fight an endless, often creative battle.
No matter the deterrent, the geese always return.
Heart pumping faster, I squinted hard.
A man was standing in the smear of shadow below the pavilions roof.
His face was down, his features obscured.
Medium height and build.
I could tell little else about him.
Despite the stifling heat, the man was wearing a trench coat.
One nervous glimpse as I jogged past.
Eight more strides, then I slowed and glanced back.
The pavilion was empty.
I stopped, panting, checking in both directions along the jogging trail.
The man was gone.
The mist began to morph back into rain.
Listless drops tested for foothold on my face and hair.
And caught a flicker of gray.
Was Trench Coat targeting me after all?
If not, what was he doing in a park in the rain in the middle of the night?
And why so elusive?
Or was my wariness a product of paranoia, another gift from my overburdened stress-strain curve.
Either way, I was glad Id shoved pepper spray into a shorts pocket when leaving home.
Unbidden, images of Larabees last moments unspooled in my head.
The gray-green pallor of his skin.
The eerie glow of the surgical trauma ICU.
The impartial pinging of the monitors recording their bloodless peaks and valleys.
The screaming silence when the pinging stopped.
Or just in my mind?
I lengthened my stride, footfalls pounding loud in the stillness.
The man was walking slowly, his back to me.
Suddenly, noise seemed to ricochet from all around.
Trench Coats geeked-out pals looking to fund more meth?
I had no valuables carried no money, wore no watch.
Would that anger them?
Or were the sounds just overwrought nerves?
I patted the pepper spray at my right hip.
A molecule of the price Id paid had been donated toward breast cancer research.
Veer off and cut through the tangle of shrubs and trees enclosing the park?
Stay on the path and time my pace to make it pass the man in the parking lot?
There were streetlamps there, overwhelmed, but trying their best.
Trench Coat was now just ten yards ahead.
My brain chose that moment to unreel a blockbuster tableau.
As I passed, the man would pull a knife and slit my throat.
Our eyes would meet.
His would be cruel and cold as death.
Why was I letting this rattle me?
In my line of work I encounter far worse than a dude dressed like Bogie inCasablanca.
Outlaw bikers who chain saw the heads and hands from their murdered rivals.
Macho pricks who stalk and strangle their terrified exs.
Drunken bullies who wall-slam fussy infants.
Those creeps dont dissuade me from focusing on my job.
They inspire me to work harder.
A journalist once described me as the Queen of Cold Flesh.
So why the drama over a guy in a belted coat?
Why the sense of threat to my person?
So, here I was, out in the woods, not home in my bed.
Or a harmless geezer overly sensitive to damp?
Before leaving the trail, I paused for one last look.
The man was in the empty lot, standing under one of the struggling lamps.
His chin was raised, his features vaguely discernable as dark blotches on a smudgy white rectangle.
The man was staring straight at me.
