Patricia Daniels Cornwell

Kay Scarpetta and her colleague Pete Marino investigate the case of a man killed by a shotgun blast to the chest, while a woman is trapped in an abandoned house in the South after being kidnapped by an unknown captor, and on Cape Cod, Kay's niece Lucy Farinelli begins to suspect that she has made a terrible mistake.

"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. Then, with shocking speed, events begin to unfold. 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...

Kay Scarpetta offers her services pro bono to the New York City medical examiner's office, in addition to her duties as CNN's senior forensic analyst, which seems to trigger a series of unsettling events, including an apparent death threat. It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta -- despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN -- to offer her services pro bono to...

On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Scarpetta drives to the Georgia Prison for Women to meet a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against the advice of her FBI criminal intelligence agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out. Scarpetta has both personal and professional reasons to...

The devastating fire tore through the horse farm, destroying everything it touched. Picking through the wreckage, Dr. Kay Scarpetta uncovers human remains -- the work of an audacious and wily killer who uses fire to mask his brutal murders. And when Scarpetta learns that her old nemesis Carrie Grethen has escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is somehow involved, the investigation becomes personal. Tragedy strikes close to home. And...

With an eye for the absurd & with dead-accurate aim on her targets, #1 NYT bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers Isle Of Dogs, a darkly comic portrait of politically driven law enforcement run amok. Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all highways, warning that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric Isle of Tangier in the Chesapeake Bay, responds...

A woman troubleshooter is dispatched to Richmond, Virginia, to clean up the city's scandal-ridden police. For Judy Hammer, chief of police in Charlotte, North Carolina, the assignment turns out to be the most difficult of her career.

All the familiar faces--friend and foe--are here: police captain Marino, Kay's niece Lucy, the so-called Werewolf murderer, and (in memoriam) Kay's lover Benton Wesley and his killer, Carrie Grethen. Kay, who nearly killed the Werewolf in self-defense as Black Notice came to a close, now finds herself the target of a corrupt police investigation that will dredge her darkest secrets from the deepest corners of her past.

#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,...

Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where she learns the story of Oscar Bane, an injured psychiatric patient who claims he was attacked by a stalker who was killing someone else at the time. Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital?s psychiatric prison ward....