The Bone Orchards

A murdered scholar. A five-century conspiracy. A cave full of the dead that someone will stop at nothing to destroy.

Princeton professor Dr. Fiona Wynne has seventy-two hours to save the most significant archaeological discovery of the century before a demolition team reduces it to rubble. A colleague is missing in the forest. An international conspiracy stretching from a Jesuit cell in 1549 Lisbon to the boardrooms of contemporary Brazil. And a senator with blood on his manicured hands who calls himself a gardener.

A thriller of breathtaking scope and relentless momentum, The Bone Orchards takes Dr. Fiona Wynne from the cobbled streets of Rio de Janeiro to a flooding cave in the Serra Fluminense, from a Protestant cemetery at midnight to the formal gardens of a senator who believes that history belongs to whoever manages it most effectively.

For fans of Dan Brown, Ken Follett, and Agatha Christie, The Bone Orchards delivers everything readers love about the Fiona Wynne series and takes it somewhere darker, deeper, and more dangerous than any previous adventure.

The past is not buried. It is only waiting.

Advance Praise . . .
"I have been recommending Elsie Buck's Fiona Wynne series since The Templar Cypher, but The Bone Orchards is where the series crosses from excellent to essential. The conspiracy at its heart is not merely fictional: the suppression of indigenous knowledge systems during the colonial period is documented history, and Buck handles it with the respect and rigor it deserves while never losing the propulsive momentum of a first-class thriller. Senator Fonseca is the most calculating political villain I have encountered in recent fiction, precisely because his argument is coherent and his evil is entirely ordinary. Read this book. Then read it again and pay attention to everything you missed the first time."