ALONE WITH HER NEW HUSBAND on a tiny Pacific atoll, a young woman, combing the beach, finds an odd aluminum container washed up out of the lagoon, and beside it on the sand something glitters: a gold tooth in a scorched human skull. The investigation that follows uncovers an extraordinarily complex and puzzling true-crime story. Only Vincent Bugliosi, who recounted his successful prosecution of mass murderer Charles Manson in the bestseller "Helter Skelter," was able to draw together the hundreds of conflicting details of the mystery and reconstruct what "really" happened when four people found hell in a tropical paradise. "And the Sea Will Tell" reconstructs the events and subsequent trial of a riveting true murder mystery, and probes into the dark heart of a serpentine scenario of death.

Vincent Bugliosi (pronounced /ˌbuːliˈoʊsi/, with a silent g) (born August 18, 1934, in Hibbing, Minnesota) is an American attorney and author, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate-LaBianca murders. His most recent books are Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007), and The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (2008).

Bruce Henderson (born 1946 in Oakland, California), also known as Bruce B. Henderson, is the author of more than 20 nonfiction books. He is a member of the Authors Guild and American Society of Journalists and Authors, and teaches writing courses at Stanford University. After service in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-61) during the Vietnam War, and following California community and state college, he was a reporter for several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, before working as a magazine staff editor at New West and California Magazine. His work has appeared in periodicals such as Smithsonian Magazine ("Cook vs. Peary," April 2009), Esquire, Playboy and Reader's Digest. One of his early books, And the Sea Will Tell, written with Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, was a #1 New York Times hardcover bestseller and highly-rated CBS miniseries. "The book succeeds on all counts," reported the Los Angeles Times. "The final pages are some of the most suspenseful in trial literature." Henderson co-authored the autobiography of brother vintners Ernest Gallo and Julio Gallo, as well as Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey into the Unknown, the memoirs of one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, Gordon Cooper. Henderson's 2005 book, True North: Peary, Cook, and The Race to the Pole, examined the ongoing controversy as to which explorer reached the North Pole first: Robert Peary in 1909 or Frederick Cook in 1908. Publishers Weekly commented: "This adventure yarn delivers as both a cautionary tale and a fitting memorial to polar exploration." In 2006, Henderson co-authored Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality, the autobiography of African-American theoretical physicist Ronald Mallett which has been purchased by director Spike Lee for a feature film. Henderson is currently writing a book about U.S. Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, who was shot down over Laos in January 1966 and escaped from a Pathet Lao POW camp six months later. Henderson and Dengler served together on the aircraft carrier Ranger in 1965-66. The Dengler biography, Hero Found: The Greatest P.O.W. Escape of the Vietnam War, will be published by Smithsonian/Harper in spring 2010.