Good Bones

Everyone in Silver Pines has a theory. The only witness has three legs.

When Marcus Thorne is found at the foot of the grand staircase during the open house at his late mother's estate, the town is content to call it a terrible accident. Vivian Castellano - the realtor who staged every inch of that house - is not. Vee reads rooms for a living, and this one has been quietly rearranged. Nora Ashcroft, the veterinarian who's spent a month turning up to tend a three-legged dog nobody quite claims, isn't sure either. Nora reads bodies. And the dog who crossed the hall and sat down grave beside Marcus's outflung hand plainly knows something the whole bright room does not.

A runner that should have tripped no one. A family with a missing year and a will full of careful silences. A stranger in a grey coat who asked every question but the one every buyer asks. As Nora and Vee follow a death the county would rather forget, the answer turns out to be gentler, and sadder, and far closer to home than anyone in Silver Pines is ready to hear.

Told in three voices - a woman who reads rooms, a woman who reads bodies, and a dog who reads everything and can say none of it - Good Bones is a mystery about grief, belonging, and the things a house can never quite hide.

Tripod has been trying to tell them for a month. Someone finally has to listen.