If I’m reading Paige Shelton’s notes in her Acknowledgments correctly, The Bone Woman is the first in a new series set in a desert community in southeastern Arizona. It’s not a surprise. Shelton does an excellent job creating weird small towns and unusual, independent women, as she did in her Alaska Wild mysteries.

Hazel Dylan grew up on the edge of The Wild, a desert area outside Black Vulture, Arizona. Her father, Wilmot Dylan, was a taxidermist who disappeared when Hazel was thirteen. She learned from him to appreciate bones and the stories they told, and taught herself to become an expert, a consultant for police departments who need to identify bones and their histories. Even with her knowledge, she’s not prepared for what she sees when Sheriff Calloway asks her to view some bones discovered by a hiker. The human bones have been put together to resemble a coyote. But, she and Calloway both know there might be a connection to her missing father and taxidermy. When another bone sculpture is found, again posed, it’s hard to deny her father might be involved.

Why would Wilmot Dylan have disappeared twenty years earlier, leaving the community to raise the daughter who adored him? And, if he’s not involved in those sculptures, do those who know about his business know enough to leave his calling card, a finger bone?

Hazel Dylan is a loner who finds herself talking with too many people for comfort as she and the sheriff look for answers in Black Vulture. There are newcomers to town, and old timers who have disappeared, and a podcast about her father that Hazel has never heard. There are stories and gossip about bodies. And, the horned owl Hazel calls Jack isn’t the only one watching her home.

As in the Alaska Wild series, Shelton creates an atmospheric mystery featuring a woman who has had to build her own found family. It’s interesting that, in both series, a father has disappeared, and a woman doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead. It’s a storyline that, I’m sure, will continue in forthcoming books. There’s a reason Hazel does what she does. “Searching for my father’s remains, along with what he’d done for a living, is probably why I’d turned myself into a bone expert. I didn’t need a professional psychologist to diagnose that one.”

Although The Bone Woman is slow-moving, it’s also the first in a series. Shelton is introducing and developing characters and a setting. The next book may be just as haunting, but she won’t have to build the world in that one. She’ll jump into welcoming readers back to the eerie atmosphere in Black Vulture, Arizona.

Paige Shelton’s website is https://www.paigeshelton.com/

The Bone Woman by Paige Shelton. Crooked Lane Books, 2026. 304p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent a copy of the book, with no expectation of a positive review.