Showing Bones of Contention by Jeanne Matthews

With her passion for mythology, Dinah tries to sort out the complicated song lines of her own ancestors while struggling to understand the Aboriginal dreamtime and solve not one but two bizarre murders.

Dinah Pelerin's wealthy American uncle, dying of cancer, has summoned his entire family to a remote lodge in upper Australia, where he intends to end his life. Dinah hopes to at last learn the truth about her father, who died while committing a felony when she was a child. But the truth, she discovers, has darker ramifications than she'd bargained on.

Meanwhile, her artist brother thinks he's possessed by the snake god; her family is seething with resentments; her uncle, who isn't really her uncle, is obsessed by a woman he married but could never possess; and a man none of them claims to know is murdered on a nearby island.