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Bones to Ashes
Bones to Ashes
Bones to Ashes
Audiobook10 hours

Bones to Ashes

Written by Kathy Reichs

Narrated by Linda Emond

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

In Kathy Reichs's tenth bestselling novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada might be connected to the disappearance of Tempe's childhood friend.

For Tempe Brennan, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another case. Evangeline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, Evangeline was the most exotic person in Tempe's eight-year-old world. When Evangeline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous."

Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she had lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl?

Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Two girls dead. Three missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 28, 2007
ISBN9780743566186
Bones to Ashes
Author

Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs’s first novel Déjà Dead, published in 1997, won the Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was an international bestseller. Fire and Bones is Reichs’s twenty-third novel featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Reichs was also a producer of Fox Television’s longest running scripted drama, Bones, which was based on her work and her novels. One of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Reichs divides her time between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina. Visit her at KathyReichs.com or follow her on Twitter @KathyReichs, Instagram @KathyReichs, or Facebook @KathyReichsBooks. 

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Reviews for Bones to Ashes

Rating: 3.7000001115000005 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Being a big fan of the TV series, Bones, I thought I would read one of Kathy Reichs' books. I chose this one first which might have been a mistake because I was often confused about past events. One big difference between the TV series and the books is the setting. In the TV series, the setting is centered around the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. In the book, the setting is in Canada. Not knowing a lot about the history of Canada, and no French, it was sometimes confusing for me. I did learn some details about the Acadian people which was interesting however. Also, I missed that ongoing relationship between Temperance and Booth which is depicted in the TV series. I enjoy learning about some of the techniques that Tempe uses in her crime investigations and all in all I thought this was a pretty good book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This reader, Linda Edmond, was absolutely the best! She sounded like what Tempe Brennan should sound like (in my mind). I am reading all the Kathy reichs bones books in order. This was read the best. You tried a bunch and this reader was the best. Good story, too.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am hooked on the Temperence Brennan Series. Sadly this was the last book I had left (you hear that Kathy Reichs, publish, publish, publish). I had mistakenly read the series out of order. I would recommend reading them chronologically, so the relationships that develops during the series follows. In [Bones to Ashes] we get to go back as learn about Tempe's childhood. Growing up with her grandmother and staying on Paulie?s Island. We also meet her childhood best friend Evangeline who just disappeared one summer and never came back. Tempe gets pulled back into those childhood memories when the skeleton of a teenage girl comes into her hands that she believes could be Evangeline. Her past becomes more intertwined as Detective Ryan asks for her assistance on files of some missing girls tied to Acadia where her childhood friend was from.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the newest book in the Temperance Brennan series and it is right on track. The story starts with missing girls and unidentified bodies and ends in a web of pornography and pedophilia. This is a top-notch entry in the series. We are given a look at Brennan's childhood in this book and her sister Harry is back after an absence of several books. I find Harry incredibly annoying so wasn't too pleased to see her again. Brennan's personal life also takes a nose dive and I really don't like the path her relationship has taken. But now I find myself at the end of this series and in the position of having to wait for the next book to be published. I'll be looking forward to it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Kathy Reichs' tenth Temperance Brennan novel, and my eighth. (I skipped a couple. Shocking, I know.)Andrew Ryan is still the handsomest detective in Montreal, and Tempe's personal life continues to mysteriously intertwine with her forensic investigations. There are some genuine surprises, though, and mysteries left unsolved. I'd say this is one of my favorites so far in the series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this story. Temperence is drawn into a mystery that may or may not involved a long lost friend. This Kathy Reich book and her previous one are thus far my favorities in the series. Because Temperence Brennan lives in several "worlds", her cases are intriguing and educational.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tempe is back in Montreal and working on a number of cases. When the skeleton of a young woman is found in Acadia, Tempe wonders if it isn't the skeleton of her friend Evangeline who disappeared from North Carolina when Tempe was twelve. She'd tried to track her down many times over the years with no success.Meanwhile, her off-and-on again boyfriend Ryan is investigating a series of cold cases; young girls disappearing over a number of years. It is possible that the skeleton Tempe is working on is one of his missing girls. The investigation leads to Acadia and Toronto and areas in between. The suspects include a shady Acadian businessman and an equally shady photographer. The team is led into the world of porn films as they pursue their leads. Tempe's sister Harry is visiting and gets involved with Tempe in the search for their childhood friends. The story was fast-paced and filled with interesting medical information. I enjoyed the characters and found the plot intriguing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A compelling read. A bit grisly at times, but never without reason. Some interesting twists with no loose ends. It's easy to see why this series has been so successful.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really didn't like Tempe in this one -- she seemed very I don't know maybe a snob. She was very quick to jump to stereotypes. I did find the case very interesting and I couldn't wait to get to the end. Also really loved the character of Hippo and loved how well they showed his dedication to the job.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ahh...What could be cozier than murder, mayhem, and mixed signals of the romantic nature. Another stunner from Ms. Reichs. I love these books nearly as much as I loved the series based off them. The pacing is always fabulous. So fabulous in fact, I stayed up into the wee hours three times just to finish it.
    I read these books in whatever order I can get my hands on and it doesn't hurt the story flow one iota. Someday I will reread them in order. That day is not any time soon. trigger warnings for prostitution and child sex trafficking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thought the subject matter was a tough one I do like these books and poor Tempe she's not lucky in love at least not this book
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Having watched the TV series based on the books i went in thinking i new the characters, this was true and not true. I really enjoyed the book, but being it was the 10th in the series i feel i need to go back and start from the begining to get to know the interacting of some of the characters. If you enjoy detective novels the book can stand alone and is worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My favourite Reichs books are always the ones set in Canada so I was glad this one saw Temperance back in Montreal. I keep hoping that Tempe and Ryan will make a go of it and I figure they have a better chance when they are in Canada away from Tempe's ex-husband Pete. Of course, that's just a minor subplot in the book and if that's all there was I wouldn't be keeping reading them. In this book, Ryan is investigating some disappearances and murders of young girls, some of which are cold cases but some of which are recent. Of course, Tempe is involved in the forensics. In addition, another cold case officer tells Tempe about a skeleton of a young girl that a police officer in rural Quebec has had for years in his office and Tempe tries to identify this skeleton. This leads Tempe to remember her childhood friend, Evangeline. Evangeline and her sister spent the summers at the same beach as Tempe and her sister. Evangeline's home was in the Acadian area of New Brunswick. For four years Tempe and Evangeline were close friends, spending all their summers together and writing voluminous letters to each other for the rest of the year. Then, suddenly, Evangeline and her sister disappeared one summer and Tempe could never find out where she was or what happened to her. Tempe, the adult forensic scientist, is afraid this small skeleton might be Evangeline. The investigation takes Tempe and her sister, Harry, to New Brunswick as well as Montreal so there is lots of Canadian content to satisfy me. This book seemed a little shorter than some of Reichs' other works but that didn't mean I wasn't satisfied with it. The cases are all wrapped up and there was lots of interesting forensic detail. Harry is a pretty interesting character and she adds a little extra fillip to this book. I found out something I had never known about Canadian history although I won't mention it here because it would spoil part of the book. All in all, a very satisfying read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very exciting.I couldn't wait to see how things worked out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sadly, the copy of Bones to Ashes I checked out was abridged. The Acadian history was interesting. The story of the missing girls was horrifying. I'm glad that Tempe berated herself for not thinking of the disease found in some bones because it wasn't that hard to guess. Nor was the revelation about her long-ago friend.On the other hand, I was not expecting one of the things learned about the main villain of the book. Glad to see the change in Tempe's relationship with her husband, Pete. Ryan was annoying. Harry, Tempe's younger sister, had me worried.So, when is Tempe going to show signs of brain damage from all those blows to the head? She's knocked out again in this book. Honestly, she should start wearing a hard hat or a football helmet whenever she's investigating a case.Nice that both Tempe's cat and bird got to have bit parts.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a better read than the last couple of Temperance Brennan novels. The story rocks along at a fast pace and is consistent with itself even if it is a little unrealistic in parts. But I don't read crime thrillers for realism anyway so that bit doesn't bother me. The Brennan character had been starting to annoy me in previous books but I like her more in this one, it's nice to see her having a normal relationship with her sister.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Enjoyable. Storyline kept me interested, despite lots of technical info added. Satisfying ending, although I could have used more showing, less telling.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This one begins slightly differently, giving more of an insight into Tempe’s past and early childhood. In previous books we’ve had glimpses of her youth and her life growing up, but never quite in as much sustained detail as this. Previous books have mentioned her father’s alcoholism and her baby brother’s death, but the opening chapters of this book has Tempe tell us all about how this affected her as a child. It also introduces us to a girl she made friends with at the time, Evangeline, from Canada, who after just a few years of friendship disappeared leaving Tempe wondering exactly what happened to her.Flash forward to the present and there’s a possible serial murder of young girls been discovered in Montreal, coupled with some bones which have been residing at a police station for a number of years which may be linked to the missing Evangeline. And Tempe’s on the case.This one picks up shortly after the action of Break No Bones (which ended, frustratingly, with her in a sort of romantic limbo between Andrew Ryan and her ex-husband). Tempe’s back in Canada for this case; I can’t say exactly what it is about the Canadian cases, possibly the fact that they usually include a plausible reason for Ryan to be involved in the investigation, but they’re always my favourites. I was quite relieved to discover that in this book Pete announces his engagement to a woman around the same age as his daughter, suggesting that he’s well and truly over Tempe. Unfortunately, it seems so is Ryan, though that didn’t seem to stop them hooking up midway through the book, so I’m curious to see how that’s going to play out in the future books.This is also probably a good time to mention just how dangerous it seems to be to actually befriend Tempe. I’ve mentioned before the rather formulaic structure of these books with Tempe becoming incapacitated/abducted/ill/bopped on the head/etc. somewhere around Chapter 30 (though this is a structure which hasn’t been quite so strictly adhered to in the later books). Well, in every book there is frequently a friend or family member who, usually as a result of Tempe’s activities (or if not, conveniently connected to them), is attacked or placed in some sort of deadly peril.Right from the start of this book, as soon as Evangeline was mentioned, I knew that things were not going to go well for the poor kid. Admittedly, her troubles started long before she met young Temperance Brennan and nothing her friend did influenced what ultimately happened to her, but still it seems that she was just the first in a long line of unfortunates who have associated with Tempe; in the first book it was her best friend who was murdered but since then both her sister and her nephew have been abducted by a cult/shot, Andrew Ryan has been shot, as has her husband. Whenever a new friend is mentioned in one of these books I can’t help but wonder what disaster will befall them!That probably makes it sound like I don’t really like these books, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I really like them. It was so good to finally get my hands on one which I’ve never read before. I think I would have sailed through it even if I hadn’t had so much free time to read, purely because once I start one of Kathy Reichs’ books, I really hate having to put it down. I’m sure that this being the first read of it made me read it quicker.I also felt a slight sense of smugness at figuring out what condition had caused the deformities in the bones Tempe was examining. You’d think an anthropologist would have recognised leprosy. It was a little convenient how the mystery remains linked back to Evangeline, unrealistic perhaps, but not something I can really complain about. I’ve accepted that with any case Tempe investigates, it will somehow link to another of her cases/something personal she is going through at the time. In a way it works well because it gives you two stories, the foreground one and the background one, and the two can feed off one another.My copy had the opening for the next book in the series at the back which I’m eagerly waiting to read, it feels like I’m rediscovering Kathy Reichs all over again now. That’s the problem with books like these, once you’ve read them and you know who did it you don’t get quite the same satisfaction from revisiting them. Thank goodness there’s still a handful that I’m yet to read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Typical Temperance Brennan novel, a fun quick read. Set in Montreal. Forensic anthropologist, Tempe reminisces about a childhood friend who mysteriously disappeared, and is reminded of her when a set of bones come to her attention about the approximate age of the vanished girl. Meanwhile the body of a girl is found in a lake, and she may tie into another investigation of missing girls Ryan is working.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Read this in 2011 after finding 3 of Reichs books at a thrift and buying then reading outof sequence I relized I had to read them all in order! I just love Kathy reichs books!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Since I normally purchase and read Kathy Reichs' books the moment they hit the shelves, I'm not sure how I missed this book when it was released in 2007 but better late than never.This Temperance Brennan installment takes place during one of her Montreal rotations, and it's non-stop from the first page through to the last.Homicide Detective Andrew Ryan, Temperance's love interest, is investigating cases of murdered young girls and calls in Tempe to identify them. As the investigation progresses and Tempe finishes her examinations of the bodies, they find that Ryan's cases and several of Sergent-enqueteur Hippolyte Gallant's cold cases are linked. Add to that Tempe's childhood friend, Evangeline, who has been missing for over 30 years, and Tempe's sister, Harry, who has offered her services as co-investigator, and you have a dynamite story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A bit weak for the Bones Series. I thought Bones to Ashes was a very good story for the Bones series. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was one of the best, but it was still a wonderful read. Temperance love life got a wee bit boring but I couldn't help but perk up with the portrayal of missing children. My feelings on the plot are mixed. Mainly I just wished that there were more scenes that revolved around the mystery of the bones and Ryan's cases.As always, Kathy Reich did an excellent job of describing in detail the police procedures, which I found very interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Maybe not the best book ever written by Dr.Reichs, sometimes complicated, sometimes boaring in its details, shows a very interesting part of the Canadian/American history. Always departing from Tempe's personal life, her summer holidays with her little sis and 2 french canadian girls, develops a voyage into a corner of land, Tracadie, totally unknown to European people, but very significant in history. I truly enjoy the french/english culture comparison, at its highest point in this book. It really shows the two Canadian souls. Another excellent job Mrs.Reichs!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A good, quick "filler" sort of book - for when you don't have anything else handy. I've read a couple others in this series and they're generally decently written and fast-moving with lots of forensic details (sometimes a bit too much).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Meh. I guess it served its purpose as a killing-time-while-traveling book, but I don't think the bit of new info I learned made up for the exceedingly preposterous plot line involving leprosy in Canada in the present day. Someone working in a leprosy hospital in the 1960s--in a hospital closed down because it was no longer needed--would be well aware that the disease could easily be cured with drugs. Never mind allowing her daughter to contract it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm not very critical when I read Reich's books and this one scratched the itch just fine.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fast-paced! A joy to read and easy to get lost in. I love this set of novels and Bones to Ashes lived up to my expectations of this series. There were a lot of threads in this very engaging and somewhat personal (for Tempe) plot, and I think the best part of it was that while they were all wrapped up, they weren't all wrapped up as neatly or as together as you would first assume.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the tenth book in the series featuring Temperance Brennan on which that awful TV series 'Bones' is based . Why Reichs has any affiliation with this drivel I will never understand. Anyway these are fast paced and full of interesting forensic detail. In this instalment there are three missing persons, three unidentified bodies , all female , all mid teens and is there a serial killer at work? This time it is very personal as one could be a childhood friend who disappeared long ago without trace. Temperance is a great character so flawed as a human being and after so many books it is like visiting an old friend.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I picked up this Temperance Brennan novel at the library book sale, pretty sure that I hadn't seen this before. Luckily I was right.I needed a good book to get me back into reading for fun, rather than schoolwork. This was it. I devoured this one in 2 days. The TV show Bones is based on the Temperance Brennan novels but I personally love the novels more although I really enjoy the show.Bones to Ashes takes us to Brennan's past as her baby brother dies, her father dies and her mom and sister and her are uprooted to live with her Gran. Brennan meets a girl named Evangeline and they play together every summer until Evangeline disappears. No one wants to talk about her disappearance and Brennan is told it's very "dangerous" and to go away.In present time, several corpses have landed in Brennan's lab, including the old skeleton of a girl who is possibly Brennan's old friend. Several disappearances of young girls over several years has Ryan, Hippo and Brennan rushing to trying to figure the case out before another young girl ends up missing.A very fast paced and ultimately surprising book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I really got stuck into this book, but found it hard going with all the french names. I was enjoying the storey until it turned into a paedophile storey, why oh why did she need to do that, made it all a bit sad I felt. Also not a bit like the series bones, which I expected it to be as the main character shares the same name.