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    The Bone Garden: A Novel
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    The Bone Garden: A Novel
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    The Bone Garden: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    The Bone Garden: A Novel

    Written by Tess Gerritsen

    Narrated by Carolyn McCormick

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil-human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder.

    Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local "resurrectionists"-those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds,
    Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

    With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly traces the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 18, 2007
    ISBN9780739343258
    Unavailable
    The Bone Garden: A Novel
    Author

    Tess Gerritsen

    Tess Gerritsen left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the New York Times bestseller Harvest; she followed her debut with the bestsellers Life Support and Gravity. Her other novels include Body Double, The Sinner, The Apprentice, and The Surgeon. Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine.

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    Reviews for The Bone Garden

    4/5

    41 ratings41 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was a bit different than I am used to from this author. It was very good tho, it took me just a bit to catch on. It’s a great read for over the holidays!
    • 3/5
      Knowing that TBG was a bestseller, I was expecting banal writing and was pleasantly surprised, for the most part, that it wasn't so; BUT the mystery itself seemed a bit incidental to the exposition of medical & medical school practices of 1830's Boston, though the historical sections were better developed than the modern sections. I loved the way I was surprised by Norris' fate; but what happened to Dim Billy's body? The last we see of it, it has been rolled out of the carriage. There is no indication that his body went over the bridge into
      the Charles River; and when Rose mourns at the casket, I was confused. *Had* Norris made it and she was mourning Dim Billy? Well, no; but why wouldn't Rose also be mourning the boy she had endured so much with and had just survived? The present-day chapters didn't add anything to the story and I was furious when the
      book developed and ended with the "souls reuniting" stuff. It was a cheap ending and I had been led to expect better. I'm was happy to try Tess Gerritsen, but I don't think she's my cuppa.
    • 4/5
      This is a stand along novel and not part of the Rizoli and Isles series, however, it does, ever so briefly, feature Dr Maura Isles. The story then drifts into a 19th century Boston murder mystery retold through letters read in the present. It's an interesting read and makes a nice change from the usual crime stories by Tess Gerristen. But of course it does have a strong medical world theme.

      Worth reading.
    • 3/5
      This parallel narratives spends most of its time in 1830s Boston, a time when Irish immigrants were looked down upon and medicine was still in its infancy. Into this setting is placed a 17-year-old girl and her older sister who is laboring unsuccessfully with her first child in a foul-smelling ward. The doctor is attended by medical students, most of whom are from wealthy, privileged families like Oliver Wendell Holmes. Norris Marshall is the outcast - a farmer's son, working his way through med school by assisting a resurrectionist. When nursing staff start dying in a very unnatural way, Marshall is in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes a suspect. In the present day, recently divorced Julia Hamill tries to start a new life in a very old house until she finds human bones buried in the garden. The discovery leads her to an aged relative of the previous owner and a possible connection between her home and the famous Holmes.Not for the squeamish! The descriptions of antiquated medical practices (bleed her again!) and grave-digging are more gruesome than the murders. The present day plot is used only to introduce the letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes but it plays little role in the overall story and does not distract the reader unnecessarily. Some may find the resolution hard to believe but it's not completely far-fetched.
    • 4/5
      This medical mystery is really two tales that take place over one hundred years apart. In the present day, Julia Hamill uncovers a skeleton in her garden. This discovery leads her on a quest to solve what appears to be murder, a crime that propels her to research Boston of 1830. As Julia uncovers old letters and papers from the nineteenth century, she discovers how she is connected to the by-gone era. With mastery of word and descriptive prose, Tess Gerritsen paints a chilling picture of what medicine and the medical profession was like in the nineteen century: how bodies were obtained for surgical students and how deadly diseases were spread in wards and hospitals. In this part of the tale, a serial killer is targeting nurses and doctors, and one medical student is trying to prove he is innocent of the crimes even as he is assisting a young girl with a baby to escape from being the next victims. Fast-paced, this page-turner will have you engrossed in both past and present tales as it speeds to the conclusion. While you may disagree with the author’s rendition of the ending, it is still a satisfying read.
    • 5/5
      The Bone Garden is the 13th stand-alone novel by Tess Gerritsen. While it is not a Rizzoli/Isles book, Maura Isles does make a fleeting appearance at the beginning of the book. The novel tells two stories set in different time periods. The present day story concerns recently-divorced Julia Hamill who uncovers the skeleton of a female murder victim whilst digging the garden of her just-purchased home. It turns out the body has been buried sometime before 1840, and Julia is intrigued about the circumstances of the murder and burial. Then Henry Page, the elderly cousin of Hilda Chamblett, the recently-deceased former owner of Julia’s house, contacts her with information which may solve the puzzle. As they sift through the letters and newspaper clippings Hilda left behind, the main story comes out. It occurs in 1830 in Boston, where medical student Norris Marshall is engaging in grave robbing to pay for his tuition. When two nurses and a doctor are brutally murdered, Norris becomes a suspect. Somehow, Irish seamstress Rose Connolly and her newborn, orphaned niece, Meggie are involved. Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of Norris’s fellow med students, joins him in an effort to prove his innocence. Gerritsen gives us a gripping plot with quite a few twists, interesting characters, some of whom are not what they first seem and credible dialogue. Add to this a gutsy 19th century heroine and you have a great tale. Gerritsen also drops in snippets of information about the discovery of infection control, surgery in the 19th century, Rosicrucians and abolitionism. Julia manages to discover the identity of her skeleton, and the murderer, making this the ultimate cold case. A great Gerritsen read.
    • 3/5
      A little bit too long, and the ending is contrived.
    • 3/5
      Could have been a great book, but the story line did not flow smoothly enough. It was fun to find out that Oliver Wendell Holmes was responsible for doctors learning that they should wash their hands.
    • 5/5
      The Bone Garden, a standalone novel, is my first experience with a Tess Gerritsen book, but based upon this reading experience, it is unlikely to be my last. The bulk of the novel is set in 1830s Boston and concerns what happens when a serial killer strikes that city- with flashes forward to modern day Boston and some of the descendants of those featured in the historical section of the story.Julia Hamill, 38-years-old and freshly divorced from a jerk, is the new owner of an old Boston house that had been in the hands of the same family for well over one hundred years prior to her purchase of it. Julia is starting to doubt how wise an investment she has made by purchasing a house needing so much maintenance, but she decides to start with cleaning up the neglected garden (where the previous homeowner’s body was found) behind the house. Already having dug up several large rocks from the ground, Julia is shocked to discover that what she believed to be just another rock in her way is really a human skull. She is relieved, after authorities are called in to investigate, that the body she has unearthed dates back to the early decades of the 19th century. Thus, begins Julia’s attempt, with the help of a relative of the home’s former owner, to discover the identity of the body and its connection to her new home.At this point, Gerritsen shifts the novel’s locale to historical Boston, in particular to a medical school attached to one of the city’s larger hospitals. Here the reader meets what are actually the book’s two main characters: Norris Marshall, a poor medical student barely able to stay in school, and Rose Connolly, a 17-year-old recent Irish immigrant whose older sister will die of “childbirth fever” in the hospital’s maternity ward. When a killer, dubbed by the press the “West End Reaper,” begins to prey on those associated with the hospital and medical school, Norris and Julia will learn that only by watching out for each other are they likely to survive the Reaper experience.The strength of The Bone Garden is its focus on the medical schools of the day, a period during which these schools were often willing to purchase dissecting cadavers from whomever showed up with one to sell them – no questions asked. This was the age of grave robbing, a time during which freshly buried loved ones might disappear within hours of being buried, only to be used in some medical theater for the instruction of a few dozen medical students. It was also a time when doctors and their students spread infection from one patient to the next by not washing their hands or medical instruments. This was particularly dangerous in maternity wards attended by unwitting doctors as they examined one new mother after the other. As a thriller/mystery goes, The Bone Garden rates as pretty much average. As historical fiction, it is a very affecting look at a time during which so many big city residents struggled to stay alive in conditions that are almost unbelievable today.Rated at: 4.5
    • 3/5
      It's 1830 in Boston, a young medical student of modest means is force to become a resurrection man to make ends meat. A young Irish woman is fiercely determined to care for her baby niece after her sister dies in labor. And a Jack the Ripper-type killer is gruesomely murdering people in the West End. This historical mystery/thriller is enjoyable despite its many flaws: characters who are just "too good," coincidences, questionable historical accuracy and a modern-day counter-story that serves nothing more than exposition. I liked the medical school scenes and the body snatching for medical cadavers parts as well as the general historical feel of Boston in 1830.
    • 4/5
      This is my first book by this author.The central character, Julia Hamill, discovers a skeleton buried in the garden of the Boston house she has just moved into. The ring found with the remains suggests that the body is from the 1830s and is ruled a homicide. The book flashes from the present day to the 1830s. The flashbacks describe the medical system and childbirth as it was back then, often in graphic detail which might put some people off. I, personally, found it fascinating.I thought Gerritsen did a very good job flipping back and forth between the two time periods. She even threw some historical facts into the book, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who was ahead of his time when he argued that childbirth fever was spread by person-to-person contact via the doctor’s lack of hygiene.The narrator, Susan Denaker, was very good. I enjoyed listening to her!I will be looking for more from this author.
    • 4/5
      This was another book I struggled to get into, it is one I picked up and put back down several times, in the end though I really came to enjoy this book. Julia Hamill buys an old house after her divorce that she is working on fixing up. As she tries to salvage the backyard that used to be a garden she finds human remains. The book jumps between the past and the present in order to reveal the origins of the remains. Even though I had a hard time getting into the book, it definitely caught my attention and I couldn't put it down for the last 3/4 of the book.
    • 4/5
      Tess Gerritsen’s latest novel The Bone Garden takes us away from her popular Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series. Loyal readers of this series will be glad to know that Maura Isles does have a brief role in The Bone Garden.When reading this book, it is not hard to tell that a lot of research went into it. The history of Boston is fascinating and Gerritsen does an excellent job detailing it. Boston in the 1800’s is a place I would not want to live. It sounds dull and depressing. The book was a story of past and present. And not confuesing at all. At the beginning of each chapter it was stated if it was past or present. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the death of one of the main characters. I’m not sure the death of this character was necessary. Overall the book was enjoyable to the last page. Tess is one of my favorite authos. And I’m usually never disappointed with her books.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely riveting you wont be able to put this book down
    • 4/5
      Tess Harper has a talented way of bringing the past and the present together in an easily understood format. This book is historically correct in that there were grave diggers to get paid for freshly demised bodies for study by medical students at medical schools, At the same time, there is a serial killer on the loose, The suspense of this book is a true page turner.
    • 4/5
      The combination of being a medical mystery (finding bones in a garden) and adding the historical story (who the bones belonged to) was good. I really enjoy most historicals and that is the part of this story that kept me the most interested in this book. While I did enjoy bits of the current story line, following both and seeing how they were intertwined with each other was a great way to tell this story.
    • 5/5
      This is a GREAT novel with some really interesting historical connections like Oliver Wendell Holmes and the practice of medicine in the early 19th century. The characters - both "present" and 19th century - are all well-developed and easy to connect to which draws you quickly into the intertwining storylines. There are also a couple incredible plot twists that I DEFINITELY didn't see coming!Only possible downside to this book: Although the description mentions Dr. Maura Isles (from Gerritsen's other novels), if you're looking for an Isles novel, she's barely featured in this one. I wasn't actually looking for one, which is why I called this a *possible* downside.Bottom line: absolutely FANTASTIC novel ... HIGHLY recommended!!
    • 3/5
      Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil–human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . . Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists”–those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.
    • 4/5
      Newly divorced Julia Hamill purchases a house badly in need of repair. While giving the garden a needed facelift Julia discovers bones. Curious about the house and former owner, she digs into the history of the property and is put in touch with one of the relatives who has boxes of letters and papers dating back to the 1800s. The book flashes back to Boston in the 1830s where we meet Norris Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes, two of the medical interns. What is most fascinating to learn are the medical practices from the 1800s and how resurrectionists plundered graveyards so the students would have bodies to practice on. Norris assists in the theft at the beginning as a way to pay for medical school. He meets Rose Connelly at the hospital where Rose is caring for her ailing sister who had just given birth. It appears everyone involved with her sister is being murdered by a strange grim reaper with a cape, a reaper who deftly slices up his victims with as much expertise as a surgeon. A fascinating history lesson is woven amid an intriguing mystery plot.
    • 3/5
      Teeters uneasily between the horrors of body-snatching and the even more horrible saccharine sweetness of her romantic episodes. This is not for the faint-hearted in either respect.When Gerritsen is good,as in 'Keeping the Dead' and 'The Mephisto Club',she is a fantastic writer who sweeps you along with her stories.When she is bad,well,let us say she can badly disappoint. 'The Bone Garden' falls between these two extremes,being neither brilliant nor entirely bad.For someone new to her writing,I would keep this one on the back-burner until the better books have been read.
    • 3/5
      Tess Gerritsen's books are riveting page-turners. I have read all of her Isles/Rizzoli books. I have to say that I much prefer her later stuff to her earlier stand-alones.Back Cover Blurb:Julia Hamill is gardening one afternoon when her spade strikes something soft but unyielding - not a rock but a human skull.Medical examiner Maura Isles quickly determines that the skeleton - that of a woman - dates back to the early 1800s. Forensic evidence indicates foul play. 'But too much time has passed,' Maura warns Julia. ' We may never know the whole story of how she died.'Boston in the 1830s is a place of disease and pestilence - and no one is more aware of this than Norris Marshall, a student at Boston Medical College. Unlike most of his classmates, Norris is a man of modest means, forced to support himself by performing the most secretive job of all.Norris is a resurrectionist - a body snatcher - who procures cadavers from grave robbers in order to further his study of human anatomy. Soon he finds himself hunting the most notorious killer of his time, a shadowy figure who flits through graveyards and glittering ballrooms. What he does not realize is that the killer is far closer than he thinks....But whose are the bones discovered in Julia's garden? With Maura Isles's help, Julia uncovers a secret more shocking than they can both imagine.
    • 5/5
      I downloaded this book as an audiobook from Audible.com. I was pretty surprised when I realised that this book was completely different from the other Tess Gerritsen books I had seen before, like "The Keepsake" or "Body Double". In these books, the stories had all evolved around medical examiner Maura Isles and detective Jane Rizzoli who would work together to solve various cases, into which they often were personally involved. In "The Bone Garden", however, Jane Rizzoli is not even mentioned and also Maura Isles appears only a few times in the first few pages. The present is not very important, as the real story takes place 200 years ago - during a time when medical science started to progress and medical colleges were set up around the globe. Again, Gerritsen writes about a crime and a series of cruel murders, but without the help of DNA and modern crime scene technology a completely different approach is needed when trying to solve the mystery - a refreshing old-fashioned approach. And there is love and romance to an extent also quite unknown to readers of typical Maura Isles novels. I found this Tess Gerritsen book great in its own way and can only recommend it also to readers who usually like modern crime and detective stories.
    • 5/5
      Ms. Gerritsen does it again with The Bone Garden. A woman buys an old house, only to find an unmarked and unknown grave when she goes to put in a garden. The old theory of blood draws blood kicks in, and soon she finds herself researching an old mystery from the 1800's, and learning unknown ties to her old family. With seamless transitions between past and present, Gerritsen ties the lives of two seemingly different women together, culminating in a wonderful tale of survival and accomplishment of women and men struggling from nothing to bring about some of the most important concepts in medical science.
    • 4/5
      Pretty interesting. To go back and forth from now to the 1800s. The hunt and the 'who's the reaper' question marks hanging throughout added a touch of excitement. Also an unexpected twist to the ending.And in the name of science, we make sacrifices..even if it means seeing someone you know ending up on the dissecting table? *gulpsI cannot imagine it happening but I am thankful it did, otherwise medicals would nvr have been able to improve..
    • 4/5
      Switching between past and present, The Bone Garden is a captivating tale of murder and mystery. Although I had a rough start with it, I really got into it around pages 100-120 – once I had finally accepted that, against my expectations, the book was mostly set in the past rather than in the present.Even though Gerritsen is known as a mystery author, The Bone Garden was very close to an historical fiction work. All the descriptions of the 19th century medicine were captivating – and only made me more thankful to live in the 21st century! I thought there was a really good balance between story and medicine, and I could easily imagine the world as it was then.The narration jumped from present to past, but also from one character to the other. Since I had such a hard time getting into it, I ended up a little confused between all the names and personnalities. I also thought the story moved slowly, maybe too much at times. As the end neared though, the action quickens and I really wanted to know what would happen. I also loved how, in the end, the present was linked very closely to the past.Another thing I liked was the dark, mysterious vibe that envelops the story. There was a lot of “hiding in the dark” and “running through the night”, giving it the semblance of a gothic tale.I have a hard time rating this book and I don’t want to be too harsh on it : I think that my appreciation of it depended a lot on the mood I was in, which wasn’t one favorable to a slower story set in the past. All in all, it was still a very well written novel with a good mystery and an interesting ending.
    • 5/5
      I am a huge Tess Gerritsen fan and this book did not disappoint. It is a murder mystery with a twist. The murder took place in the 1800s and is solved in the present day. The author does an amazing job of ttelling the story by transitioning back and forth from the 1800s (based on letters) to the current times. The characters were well developed and I hated to see the book end.
    • 4/5
      A better than usual pulp ficdtion thriller that incorporates flashbacks to the 1800s. I really liked reading about what it was like to be a medical student at that time. The book started a little slow, but definitely picked up the pace in the middle so I didn't want to put it down.
    • 5/5
      Lovely intertwined past/present story. I want to go to Bosten imidiately.
    • 4/5
      Alternating between past and present, this book takes you on a journey through the history of a family. The past is set in Boston in the 1830's, centering on a group of medical students at Boston Medical College. The present focuses on a divorced woman who recently bought an old home outside Boston and stumbles on a skeleton in her yard. Through various resources, old documents and relatives, the whole story of the house, the family and the past unravels. Very well written! The characters are interesting, though I think the past story is much better written than the present (which is only there to support telling the other plot line). I wish the story in the present would have a bit more meat to it, but the book as a whole was extremely interesting.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book. It traveled between the past and present to reveal a murder mystery/love story that stayed with me long after I read the last page. A new owner of an old house discovers the skeletal remains of a woman in her garden. The autopsy reveals they are more than 100 years old. Thus the mystery of who is this long undiscovered homicide victim? She receives an unexpected call from the home's previous owner's family member who wants to share with her the papers left behind hopefully somewhere in this forgotten treasure will be the answers. Letters soon tell the story of a vicious murderer, a mysterious child, and her aunt who fiercely tries to protect her from those wanting to harm her. A good read.