The Map of Bones

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What to expect

Read by Hattie Morahan, with an author's note read by Kate Mosse.

'Mosse is a master storyteller' – Madeleine Miller, bestselling author of Circe


A sweeping story of love, adventure and adversity, The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a hostile land.

Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, arrives in search of her cousin — the notorious she-captain and pirate commander Louise Reydon-Joubert — who landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years before, then disappeared without a trace . . .

Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. Intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the crimes and tragedies still shadow the present. And now, Isabelle faces a race against time if she is to discover the truth, and escape with her life . . .

Painstakingly researched and beautifully told, The Map of Bones is the fourth – and final – novel of The Joubert Family Chronicles, following the bestselling The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship.

Praise for The Joubert Family Chronicles:

'Gripping, complex and intensely atmospheric' – The Mail on Sunday on The Burning Chambers

'A historical epic' – The Observer on The City of Tears

'Meticulously researched and stunningly written' – Santa Montefiore, bestselling author of Wait for Me, on The Ghost Ship

The Ghost Ship
by Kate Mosse was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 09-07-23

Critics Review

Mosse gives us both the satisfying intricacy of historical fact and a fictional narrative that carries us along at a rollicking pace. The long, rich, tragic history of the Huguenots deserved a series of novels as brilliant and well researched as [The Joubert Family Chronicles], in which the past is felt deep in the reader’s bones
The Observer
The fourth and final instalment in Mosse’s Joubert Family Chronicles . . . this is adventure-stuffed historical fiction in the grand tradition
The Telegraph
[The Map of Bones] demonstrates Mosse’s skill in constructing a multi-stranded narrative and filling it with memorable characters
The Sunday Times
The fourth instalment in Mosse’s Joubert Family Chronicles is a fittingly terrific conclusion, with intrepid women, perilous journeys, a search for the truth, and a narrative spanning 17th to 19th century South Africa, it's a gripping, atmospheric novel
i
A sprawling epic about women adventurers over the centuries that takes us around the globe . . . Thrilling, compelling, a page-turning read
BBC Woman’s Hour

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