Combine a splash of Alan Bradley with a pinch of Kathy Reichs and you have a gripping new Ruth Galloway Mystery -- a good-hearted mystery series with a dark edge.
 
Set in Norfolk, England, A Room Full of Bones embroils, once again, our brainy heroine in a crime tinged by occult forces. On Halloween night, the Smith Museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event -- the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when forensic archaelogist Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the curator, Neil Topham, dead beside the coffin. Topham's death seems to be related to other uncanny incidents, including the arcane and suspect methods of a group called the Elginists, which aims to repatriate the museum's extensive collection of Aborigine skulls; the untimely demise of the museum's owner, Lord Smith; and the sudden illness of DCI Harry Nelson, who Ruth's friend Cathbad believes is lost in The Dreaming -- a hallucinogenic state central to some Indigenous Australian beliefs. Tensions build as Nelson's life hangs in the balance. Something must be done to set matters right and lift Nelson out of the clutches of death, but will Ruth be able to muster herself out of a state of guilt and foreboding in order to do what she does best?


From the Hardcover edition.

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Praise for other Ruth Galloway Mysteries:
 
"Bone-chilling stuff..."
—Times (U.K.)
 
"A heady brew of classical lore and psychopathic revelations ... the setting is enticingly atmospheric: very flat Norfolk may be, but it also has mysterious fogs and waterways that lead to a gripping chase, excellently interwoven with the Latin quotations and carbon-dating.... I closed the book...feeling the satisfaction that a really intelligent murder story can give."
—The Independent
 
"In this gripping series the central characters... have the allure of old friends, and it's great to find that the third title is just as enthralling as it's predecessors...."
—The Guardian
 
"Gripping. . . . [Ruth Galloway] is solitary and plump and smart and self-assured, and very, very likeable."
—Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail


From the Hardcover edition.

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ELLY GRIFFITH's Ruth Galloway novels are inspired by the work of her husband, who gave up a job in finance to train as an archaeologist, and by her aunt, who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece's head with the myths and legends of that area. Griffiths and her husband now have two children (twins) and live near Brighton.


From the Hardcover edition.

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