Archaeologist Emma Fielding is beginning to doubt the wisdom of spending her vacation in England helping friends excavate a twelfth-century abbey, especially when they uncover an all-too-modern skeleton in a nearby medieval graveyard. But it's the second discovery -- of a murdered graduate student recently missing from the dig -- that suggests to Emma that Marchester isn't exactly the quiet riverside town it appears to be. There are dark passions and lethal secrets buried here, heinous crimes that shake the conflicted community to its core. And it's up to Emma, an outsider far from home, to delve into a past that too many people -- including her friends -- would do anything to hide.