Patricia Cornwell

After working one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history, Scarpetta returns home to Cambridge, Massachusetts, when she receives an unsettling call. The body of a young woman has been discovered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's rugby field and physical evidence links the case to a series of uniquely weird homicides in Washington, D.C., where Scarpetta's FBI husband has been deployed to help capture a serial killer dubbed the Capital...

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns with the remarkable twenty-fourth thriller in her popular high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, twenty-six-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning--except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta,...

"Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter. That film clip...

#1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns to the world of gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in the seventh suspenseful novel in the forensic thriller series

On a quiet day, away from the hustle of Richmond, in a small cottage on the Virginia coast, Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a disturbing phone call from the Chesapeake police. Thirty feet deep in the murky waters of Virginia's Elizabeth River, a scuba diver's body is discovered...

A rural North Carolina town is shaken by the brutal murder of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner, a crime reminiscent of the handiwork of a serial killer who has eluded the FBI for years. Called in to investigate, Kay Scarpetta is joined by her ingenious, rebellious, and very annoying niece, Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico's computer engineering facility. To find the answers needed to solve Emily's murder, Kay must conduct a grisly...

Scarpetta finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. Then she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno-genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta's own flesh and blood.

#1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns to the world of gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in the third suspenseful novel in the forensic thriller series that begins with Postmortem.
In Richmond, Virginia, young lovers are dying. So far, four couples in the area have disappeared, only to be found months later as mutilated corpses. When the daughter of the president's newest drug czar vanishes along with her boyfriend, Dr....

Investigating the disappearance of two sisters in Florida, Dr. Kay Scarpetta follows clues that twist and turn, leading her into the psychopathic depths of a jailed serial killer's mind.

Kay Scarpetta finds herself pitted against a possible bioterrorist in this suspense-filled read from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell.
When a woman turns up dismembered in a landfill, Scarpetta initially suspects the work of a serial killer she’s been tracking. But her investigation turns far more dangerous when she realizes the victim’s skin is covered in an unusual rash—and Scarpetta herself...

“A knockout” (People) of a thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.
“Killing me won’t kill the beast” are the last words of rapist-murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell, written four days before his execution. But they can't explain how Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds Waddell's fingerprints on another crime scene—after she’d performed his...