A young novelist tries to write about love, but realizes he will first need some real-life experience before taking on the subject.

Wiley Roth finds a severed human finger in his kitchen one night. Understandably freaked out, in a search across Los Angeles that brings them in contact with psychics, ineffectual police, crooked taxidermists, mysterious neighbors who might be on drugs, and a nine-fingered woman named Cheryl who might, improbably, end up being the girl of his dreams.

From an Alaskan strip club, a Hawaiian island, and the streets of NYC—revelatory stories emerge about a deeper definition of love.

Dr. Temperance Brennan and her colleagues at the Jeffersonian’s Medico-Legal Lab assist Special Agent Seeley Booth with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless.