My Lady of the Bog

My Lady of the Bog follows the American anthropologist, Xander Donne, as he seeks to unravel the ultimate "cold case": that of a beautiful young woman found in an English bog, her nude body pinned down with stakes. Though she's thought at first to be a recent murder victim, Donne identifies her as an ancient sacrifice, wondrously preserved by the bog's airless waters, and dead for 700 years!

During his examination of her body, he pulls off the rune-inscribed stakes. Too late he learns their inscription warns against precisely this, saying, "Do not remove these stakes. This woman is a witch." Donne's investigation into the mysterious woman's identity and frightful death takes him from contemporary England to India's medieval Moghul Empire, embroiling him in an illicit passion with a gorgeous, enigmatic Deshi princess with, just maybe, a penchant for murder.

Peter Hayes' mystery is a meditation on the meaning of human sacrifice, a love story and historical mystery enfolded within a modern one.