
Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who works at the Jeffersonian Institution and also writes books, has an impressive ability to read clues from victims' bones. Consequently, law enforcement calls her to assist with investigations when remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that standard identification methods are useless. Brennan is teamed with Special Agent Seeley Booth, a former Army sniper, who mistrusts science and scientists when it comes to solving crimes but who has developed respect for Brennan, both professionally and personally.

Booth and Brennan probe what appears to be a case of jealousy and insurance money when a man is found dead at a construction site, but new clues send them in a different direction.

Brennan and Booth investigate an explosion in a Miami hotel where a young woman had burned to death.

Brennan and Booth investigate a young beauty queen's remains that are discovered at a water filtration plant; Hodgins asks Angela out on a date, which she accepts.

The skeletal remains of a federal prosecutor, who disappeared five years earlier, are discovered in the desert outside Las Vegas; an anonymous lead takes Booth and Brennan to the world of gambling and underground ultimate fighting.