The bonehunter - Tom Holland

1878. The golden days of dinosaur discoveries. In a West still being cleared of the buffalo and Indians, fossils of a monstrous size are uncovered. America’s two leading palaeontologists, Professors Marsh and Cope, both determined to establish a monopoly for their own greater fame, pursue the most vicious personal rivalry in the history of science, as their rival gangs steal or smash up each other’s collections of bones. Meanwhile, in New York, the two Professors are sniffing out tantalising rumours of the ultimate find.

Also lured by these hints is Captain Dawkins, an English scientist with an enigmatic past. On the outward voyage he meets with a naïve but wilful heiress, Miss Lilian Prescott, and soon finds that her friendship is drawing him into a New York more dangerous than he would ever have imagined. His hunt for a box of mysterious fossils uncovers a web of corruption and guilty secrets, which will lead both him and Lily to the West, and a deadly reckoning with a buried past.

At once love story and brilliantly crafted mystery, The Bonehunter is also a haunting meditation on the nature of obsession, memory and loss. Transporting the reader from the corruption and glamour of New York to a thrilling climax in the Big Horn Mountains, it is a chronicle of extraordinary discoveries and adventure.