Bone Music

by Christopher Rice

Overview

An Amazon Charts bestseller.

There’s more than one way to stoke the flames of revenge…

Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her.

Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542047784
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	08/28/2018
Series:	The Burning Girl , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	727,617
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Christopher Rice is the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and is the New York Times bestselling author of A Density of Souls and the Bram Stoker Award finalists The Heavens Rise and The Vines. He is the head writer and an executive producer of The Vampire Chronicles, a television show based on the bestselling novels by his mother, Anne Rice. Together they penned Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra. With his best friend, New York Times bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, Christopher hosts the YouTube channel The Dinner Party Show with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn (#TDPS). He lives in West Hollywood, California. Visit him at www.christopherricebooks.com.

Editorial Reviews

A stellar and gripping opening to the Burning Girl Series introduces the tough, smart Trina Pierce, aka Charlotte Rowe, who survived a childhood of murder and exploitation to discover there might be another way to fight back…Readers will be eager for the next installment in Rice’s science-fiction take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Bone Music is a taut and gripping thriller that’s as bleak and harsh as the Arizona desert. It never lets up until the final page. Rice has created a great character in Charlotte Rowe.” —Authorlink

“A simply riveting cliff-hanger of a novel, Bone Music by Christopher Rice is one of those reads that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf.” —Midwest Book Review

“Christopher Rice’s first Burning Girl novel weaves a complex, suspenseful, gritty tale with grace and energy that turns the tables on the female victim trope.” —RT Book Reviews

From the Publisher

01/08/2018
Charlotte Rowe, the harried heroine of this ambitious paranormal thriller and series launch from Rice (The Heavens Rise), used to be Trina Pierce. When she was nine months old, she was abducted by serial killers Daniel and Abigail Banning, who killed her mother. The Bannings raised Trina as their own until, after seven years, they were apprehended. Trina was sent to live with her father, who exploited her by profiting from movies based on her ordeal that portray her as a killer. Trina eventually escaped her father and established a new identity. She now lives in a remote house outside Scarlet, Ariz., with massive security, fearful of stalkers. Meanwhile, her psychiatrist, keen to use her for research, tricks her into taking a drug that gives her superhuman strength. How Charlotte uses these powers and what she does to try to prove that she isn’t evil keep the pages turning. Rice makes the most of an interesting conceit, but he could have done so just as effectively at shorter length. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2018
There's a lot of plot crammed into this series launch. When Charlotte was a baby, her mother was killed by a serial killer couple, who took Charlotte in until their capture seven years later. Now a young woman, Charlotte lives alone in the Arizona desert and trusts few people, including her therapist. When the drug he gives her for her anxiety turns out to be not quite what she expected, her carefully cloistered life falls apart quickly and puts her in the path of a serial killer. Though many of the topics seem extremely gory, most of the violence is psychological and largely off the page. Suspension of disbelief is required in this hybrid thriller/science fiction novel, but it is not hard to imagine it being turned into a high-budget action movie. The combination of Firestarter, The Silence of the Lambs, and the Elizabeth Smart story finally gels at the conclusion, while setting the stage for more. VERDICT This could be a secondary choice for fans of Stephen King or thriller series or for readers who don't mind suspense laced with a hint of science fiction.—Jamie Watson, Baltimore County Public Library

School Library Journal

A woman who endured an unthinkable abduction tries to move on with her life. But she finds herself being used as prey by a rogue agent for a company’s experimental drug. Narrator Lauren Ezzo captures the many tense moments throughout the audiobook as protagonist Charlotte Rowe chases a serial killer with the help of a family friend, Marty, and Luke, a bully turned cop. Ezzo’s best voice is for Marty, who has a consistent slight twang. She also does well with minor characters, including Luke’s boss, a stern sheriff, and the controlled CEO of the company. But her best skill is keeping up with the story’s pace, which includes many emotional buildups in assorted chase scenes. This first in a new series is a psychological thriller, to be sure. M.B. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

JULY 2018 - AudioFile