It's sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she's anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her. An identified corpse...

"A childhood spent in a dangerous cult left Sunday Night with a bone-deep instinct for survival that's kept her alive into adulthood but left her mostly friendless. Forced into early retirement from the police force due to an injury, Sunnie retreats from an outside world she doesn't trust and sees little use for, until a wealthy woman contacts her with a plea: her teenage granddaughter has been missing since the day of a bombing near a Jewish school....