Author(s): Katrina Watson

New Science

Shelley Conway is a medical student with a keen social conscience. However, in 1970s Australia, her medical school has no social conscience at all. The coursework is inhumane, and students have to toughen up and shut up.

Shelley is shocked to realise that not only is it compulsory for every student to purchase a box of human bones, but that nobody ever asks where the bones come from.

When Shelley finds a coded message in her box of bones, she is galvanised into action. She defies the Dean's threat to expel her from the course and goes to India to determine the origin of the bones.

What she discovers is much, much worse than she'd ever imagined.

The Bones is a gripping political mystery, wrapped up in questions of justice, trauma and humanity.