The Fossil Hunter

This elegant dual narrative historical from Cooper (The Cartographer’s Secret) follows a young woman as she pieces together the fate of a 19th-century paleontologist. In 1847 Wollombi, Australia, 12-year-old Mellie Vale is put in the care of Dr. Pearson and his wife, Edna, while Mellie recovers from chicken pox and her father awaits sentencing for his murder conviction. At Edna’s behest, Mellie accompanies Edna’s two daughters for an extended stay in nearby Bow Wow with Anthea Winstanley, a paleontologist and friend of the Pearsons. Mellie takes to fossil hunting, but becomes spooked by the arrival of a London gentleman with shadowy motives angling to buy Winstanley’s land and telling stories about bunyips, the mythical amphibious creatures Mellie believes responsible for her ill-remembered trauma. In 1919 London, P.J. Martindale visits the Natural History Museum and finds a fossil with a connection to her hometown of Wollombi. Eager to outrun her grief over her brothers’ deaths in WWI, she returns to Australia and visits the Bow Wow Gorge, where her discovery of human remains leads her to investigate what became of a paleontologist rumored to have disappeared there decades earlier. Cooper’s confident prose and deep empathy for her characters will keep readers hooked as she unspools her intrigue-filled mystery. Historical fans will want to dig this one up. (Aug.)