Temperance Brennan is grappling with her toughest challenge--how to answer police detective Andrew Ryan's marriage proposal--when the matter of matrimony is forced to take a backseat to the business of murder. Hazel 'Lucky' Strike, an amateur detective who mines the Internet for cold cases, is convinced she's solved the three-year-old mystery of a teenage girl's disappearance--and certain that the grim proof lies gathering dust in Brennan's lab. It's a claim that Brennan is more than a little reluctant to believe. But when the evidence seems to add up, Brennan's next stop is the treacherous backwoods of a remote county where disturbing questions await--along with traces of more untimely deaths. While local legends of satanic cults abound, it's a secretive religious sect that soon has Brennan struggling to separate the saints from the sinners. But fire and brimstone won't stop her from digging up the truth and taking down a killer--even if it means venturing into places where angels fear to tread, devils demand their due, and she may be damned no matter what.