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, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God. Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry...

"Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has just inherited one of the most notorious cases of her career. Two years ago, a former beauty queen’s body washed up on the shore of Wallops Island, Virginia. She was last seen on a boat with her fiancé, who has since been held in jail while awaiting trial. Scarpetta must act as the expert witness for the case—an investigation previously botched by another forensic pathologist. After a grueling cross-examination...

In Alberta, Canada, an eminent paleontologist disappears from a dinosaur dig site, and at the Cambridge Forensic Center, Kay Scarpetta receives a grisly communication that gives her a dreadful reason to suspect this may become her next case. A body recovered from Boston Harbor reveals bizarre trace evidence hinting of a link to other unsolved cases that seem to have nothing in common. Who is behind all this? And whom can Scarpetta trust? Her lead...

"The book of the dead is the morgue log. For Kay Scarpetta, it has a new meaning. Moving to Charleston, she opens a forensic pathology practice in which she and her colleagues, including Pete Marion and her niece, Lucy, offer expert crime-scene investigation and autopsies to communities that lack access to modern technology. It seems like an ideal situation, until the battles start with local politicians, with entrenched interests, with someone whose...

Trying to solve the murder of a thirteen-year-old boy, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and police lieutenant Pete Marino race against time when Kay is implicated in a second brutal killing.

Many years ago, Kay Scarpetta accepted a scholarship from the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt. These military ties have taken her to the port mortuary aat Dover Air Force Base for a training fellowship. Upon her return to the Cambridge Forensic Center, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility. A young man drops dead, but when his body is examined the next morning, there are indications that he may have...

Two mauled bodies in the woods. Top secret autopsies. The most chilling cases of Scarpetta's career. In this thrilling new installment of Patricia Cornwell's #1 bestselling Scarpetta series, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement. The victims have been savaged beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling, including...

A Massachusetts district attorney running for governor wants to use some radical new DNA technology to solve a long-ago murder. The result? A new round of violence.

In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wrong, Captain Calli Chase comes face-to-face with her missing twin sister - as well as the startling truth of who they really are. Now, a top secret program put in motion years ago has spun out of control, and only Calli can redirect its course. Aided by cutting-edge technologies, the NASA investigator and scientist turned Space Force pilot sets out on a frantic search for the missing link between...

A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond. Three women have been strangled and brutalized in their own bedrooms. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, fears that more victims will follow unless she can come up with new scientific evidence to help the police.