"#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the next enthralling thriller in her high-stakes series starring Kay Scarpetta--a complex tale involving a serial sniper who strikes chillingly close to the forensic sleuth herself.It's Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday, and she's about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their Cambridge house. Is this...

"#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,...

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...

"Gwen Marcey has done a good job keeping the pain of her past boxed up. But as she investigates the case of a missing child in Lapwai, Idaho, details keep surfacing that are eerily similar to her childhood traumas. She doesn't believe in coincidences. So what's going on here? No one knows more about the impact of the past than the Nez Perce people of Lapwai. Gwen finds herself an unwelcome visitor to some, making her investigation even more difficult....

Dr. Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida. There she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock of her life.

Forensic pathologist and physician, Dr. Anya Crichton does not just examine the dead. She also treats survivors of sexual assault, and the women she now sees compel her to follow the trail of a violent serial rapist—who is becoming more brutal with each attack. When two new victims are stabbed to death, suspicion immediately falls on Geoffrey Willard, recently released from twenty years in prison for the vicious rape and murder of a teenage

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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.

"When D.C. crime scene analyst Dr. Ellie Carr is called to investigate the heartrending case of a missing baby, she's shocked to discover that the child's mother is her own cousin. Close during their impoverished childhoods, Ellie and Rebecca eventually drifted apart. Rebecca is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her wealthy lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion -- until their infant son is...

It's a fine day for a sail, and Victor Delahaye, one of Ireland's most successful businessmen, takes his boat far out to sea. With him is his partner's son, who becomes the sole witness when Delahaye points a pistol at his own chest and fires. This mysterious event immediately gains the attention of Detective Inspector Hackett and his sometime partner Quirke. The stakes are high: it soon becomes apparent that a terrible secret threatens several members...

Leaving behind her Charleston forensic pathology practice to accept an assignment in New York City, Kay Scarpetta learns the story of an injured psychiatric patient who claims he was attacked by a stalker who was killing someone else at the time.