Most Popular Books by Patricia Cornwell

Now available in a tall Premium Edition, the novel that introduces one of suspense fiction''s most compelling heroines--Dr. Kay Scarpetta--from a #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author. Reissue.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta is on a deadly mission that will pull her in two opposite directions: toward protecting her career or toward the truth . . . The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond’s Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither cause of death nor an identification. But the victim’s personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: Go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career—and places her and the ones she holds dear at mortal risk.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A psychopath with an intimate knowledge of death has a personal vendetta against Kay Scarpetta—and many different plans to kill her. . . . Dr. Kay Scarpetta is newly retired from Dublin, where she was called in to examine the remains of a murder victim whose limbs and head were expertly severed—a signature of a cunning killer on the loose again after an eight-year sabbatical—when the same killer apparently strikes again, this time much closer to home. After Scarpetta investigates the murder scene, the killer boldly contacts her through the Internet, inviting her to download photos of the murder victim and signing off with a chilling screen name: deadoc With the help of her niece, Lucy, an FBI computer expert, she takes an extraordinary virtual tour of the background of the emailed photos. When Scarpetta determines that the victim was exposed to a rare smallpox-like virus before she died and, later, that she herself may have been infected, she realizes that she is up against a killer with access to an incredibly sophisticated arsenal of deadly force—a killer with specific animus directed toward her.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s investigation leads her into a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale in this red-hot thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Dr. Kay 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 agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out. The quest is personal, but also professional. As the director of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with her connection to the Department of Defense, Scarpetta has urgent reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings that she feels are somehow linked to Fielding’s death. The murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other explicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace—all of these are related, but who is behind them, and why? Driven by inner forces, Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding’s death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive. . . . And she’s the only one who can stop it.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta faces a bold, brilliant killer from her past—and soon realizes she may be his next target—in this “nerve-jangling game of cat and mouse” (People). “[Cornwell’s] prose grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until the last page.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia and consultant for the FBI, is in the midst of a late-night autopsy at the morgue when the call comes: Gault, the sadistic psychopath who has eluded capture for years, has struck again. She and longtime FBI and police colleagues Benton Wesley and Captain Pete Marino fly to the eerie early-morning scene, where they immediately recognize Gault’s grizzly handiwork. But no one seems to know his bald female victim, whose naked body has been propped up against a frozen fountain. It makes no sense that she apparently disrobed in the bitter cold without a struggle and walked barefoot over snow to her death. While Scarpetta sorts through the strange forensic evidence, Gault kills again. But the prey he ultimately seeks is Scarpetta, for it becomes increasingly apparent that he is as focused on her as she is on him. It may be possible that he kills to impress her, and that he’s trying to get at her through her young niece, Lucy, who is the brains behind CAIN, the worldwide FBI computer network. Through what proves to be Scarpetta’s most frightening chase, she can almost sense the evil, electric presence of her nemesis. But when she draws close, he slips back into the darkness, waiting for the time when they at last meet. . . .

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist and her colleagues, investigates a couple killer.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Investigating a case that stretches from steamy Florida to snowbound Boston, Dr. Kay Scarpetta follows clues that twist and turn, leading her into the psychopathic depths of a jailed serial killer’s mind. . . . Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, and her team—Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and her niece, Lucy—track the odd connections between several horrific crimes and the people who are the likely suspects. In Florida, Scarpetta is investigating the puzzling disappearance four people who have been abducted from their quiet home, leaving their car parked haphazardly in the driveway and a stove burner on low. Then Marino finds something in a nearby house that stops him cold: a woman who has complained of harassment from a citrus canker inspector has been viciously murdered in her bed. As one psychopath, safely behind bars and the subject of a classified scientific study at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital, teases Scarpetta with tips that could be fact—or fantasy—the number of killers on the loose seems to multiply. Are these events related or merely random? And what can the study of one man’s brain tell them about the methods of a psychopath still lurking in the shadows?

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than twenty years into her career, Kay Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could ruin her professionally—and personally . . . Kay Scarpetta’s secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base and Port Mortuary, where she’s performing autopsies on fallen soldiers. But her new headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the Cambridge Forensic Center—is the first civilian facility in the U.S. to do virtual autopsies, and it is there that she encounters a devastating event. A young man has died, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta’s new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the Center’s cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen—details that suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. With Benton, Marino, and Lucy at her side, Scarpetta must fight a cunning, cruel—and invisible—enemy in a race against time. . . .

The inspiration for the Prime Video series Scarpetta—starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis! #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell’s classic forensic thriller, featuring gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. A reclusive author, Beryl Madison finds no safe haven from months of menacing phone calls—or the tormented feeling that her every move is being watched. When the writer is found slain in her own home, Kay Scarpetta pieces together the intricate forensic evidence—while unwittingly edging closer to a killer waiting in the shadows.

Patricia Cornwell turns from forensics to police procedures in Hornet''s Nest. The gritty, heroic life of big-city police is seen through the eyes of three leading crimefighters from Charlotte, North Carolina--Police Chief Judy Hammer, Deputy Chief Virginia West, and ambitious young reporter Andy Brazil.

Scarpetta is back! In this twenty-fifth in the electrifying, landmark #1 bestselling thriller series chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta hunts an ingenious killer who has mastered cutting-edge science for the most nefarious ends. Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. She and her husband Benton are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon, in a post-pandemic world that''s been torn apart by civil and political unrest. Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to investigate a woman''s body which has been shockingly displayed on railroad tracks. As Scarpetta follows the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own neighbourhood... At the same time, two scientists are found dead in a top-secret laboratory in outer space. Scarpetta is summoned to the White House Situation Room and tasked with finding out what happened. But even as she''s working the first crime scene in space from the ground, an apparent serial killer strikes again. And this time, Scarpetta could be in greater danger than ever before... In this latest novel in her groundbreaking Kay Scarpetta series, Patricia Cornwell captivates readers with the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and forensic detail that she is famous for, proving once again why she''s the world''s #1 bestselling crime writer.

Includes an exclusive excerpt from the riveting next novel in the Kay Scarpetta series, Depraved Heart #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 a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there’s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. No one has heard or seen a thing. In this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. The shots seem impossible, yet they are so perfect they cause instant death. The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast of South Florida, where Scarpetta investigates a shipwreck, looking for answers that only she can discover and analyze. And it is there that she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta’s own flesh and blood. “When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.” —New York Times Book Review [PLEASE BOX:] CHAOS From the Ancient Greek (χάος or kháos) A vast chasm or void. Anarchy. The science of unpredictability. On a late summer evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her investigative partner, Pete Marino, respond to a call about a dead bicyclist near the Kennedy School of Government. It appears that a young woman has been attacked with almost superhuman force. Even before Scarpetta’s headquarters has been officially notified about the case, Marino and Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, receive suspicious calls, allegedly from someone at Interpol. But it makes no sense. Why would the elite international police agency know about the case or be interested? It soon becomes apparent that an onslaught of harassment might be the work of an anonymous cyberbully named Tailend Charlie, who has been sending cryptic communications to Scarpetta for over a week. Even Lucy, her brilliant tech-savvy niece, can’t trace who it is or how this person could have access to intimate information. When a second death shocks Scarpetta to her core, it becomes apparent she and those close to her are confronted with something far bigger and more dangerous than they’d ever imagined.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A cold case turns red-hot when a death-row inmate renews his acquaintance with Dr. Kay Scarpetta in this “utterly chilling [and] grisly, fast-paced thriller” (Entertainment Weekly). “Engaging and horrifying . . . a book that fans will want to read for the sheer voyeuristic quality of watching the characters they know so well go beyond their limits.”—Houston Chronicle Dr. Kay Scarpetta is settling into her new life as a private forensic consultant and is deep into a case that has left colleagues in Louisiana profoundly disturbed. A woman is found dead in a seedy hotel, dressed to go out, keys in her hand. Her history of blackouts, and her violent outbursts while under their spell, offer more questions than clues about the cause of her death. Then Scarpetta receives news that chills her to the core: Jean-Baptiste Chandonne—the vicious and unrepentant Wolfman, who pursued her to her very doorstep—has asked to see her. From his cell on death row, he demands an audience with the legendary Dr. Scarpetta. With friends and family by her side, Scarpetta tries to guess what sort of endgame this madman has in mind and how, if at all, it’s related to the Louisiana case. She begins to unravel a twisting, international conspiracy and then confronts the shock of her life: a blow that will force her to question the loyalty and trust of all she holds dear.

In this novel of “nail-biting suspense” (The Boston Globe) from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, Kay Scarpetta is thrust deep into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology, organized crime, and shocking corruption at the highest levels. IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS A body, oddly draped in an unusual cloth, has just been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, and it’s suspected the identity is that of missing computer engineering grad student Gail Shipton, last seen the night before at a trendy Cambridge bar. It appears she’s been murdered, mere weeks before the trial in her $100 million lawsuit against her former financial manager, and Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta doubts it’s a coincidence. She also fears the case may have a connection with her computer genius niece, Lucy. At a glance there is no sign of what killed Gail Shipton, but she’s covered with a fine dust that under ultraviolet light fluoresces brilliantly in three vivid colors, what Scarpetta calls a mineral fingerprint. Clearly the body has been posed with chilling premeditation that is symbolic and meant to shock, and Scarpetta worries that the person responsible is the Capital Murderer, whose most recent sexual homicides have terrorized Washington, D.C. In Dust, Scarpetta and her colleagues are up against a force far more sinister than a sexual predator who fits the criminal classification of a “spectacle killer.” With unparalleled high-tension suspense and the latest in forensic technology, Patricia Cornwell once again proves her exceptional ability to surprise—and to thrill.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Going home is never easy, especially for Dr. Kay Scarpetta, whose chance at redemption in comes at a cost to her soul in this “rich and satisfying” (Associated Press) thriller. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing from South Florida, returns to the city that turned its back on her five years ago. Richmond, Virginia’s recently appointed chief medical examiner claims that he needs Scarpetta’s help to solve a perplexing crime. When she arrives, however, Scarpetta finds that nothing is as she expected: her former lab is in the final stages of demolition; the inept chief isn’t the one who requested her after all; her old assistant chief has developed personal problems that he won’t reveal; and a glamorous FBI agent, whom Scarpetta dislikes instantly, meddles with the case. Deprived of assistance from colleagues Benton and Lucy, who are embroiled in what first appears to be an unrelated attempted rape by a stalker, Scarpetta is faced with investigating the death of a fourteen-year-old girl, working with the smallest pieces of evidence—traces that only the most thorough hunters can identify. Now she must follow the twisting leads and track the strange details in order to make the dead speak. . . .

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta must solve a string of murders more baffling—and terrifying—than any that have come before. The Book of the Dead is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire a new meaning. Starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, seems like the ideal situation for Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues, Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy. But then come the deaths . . . A sixteen-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tournament win in Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. Meanwhile, in New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections among the deaths that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never has she seen anything like what she’s facing now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names—and the pen may be poised to write her own. . . .

Now updated with new material that brings the killer''s picture into clearer focus. In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror. An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London’s East End. Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim. And then the Ripper’s violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun. He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene. Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper’s bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called “Ripper Walks” that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel. But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death. Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her—and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert. It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she. Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain’s greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate. She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man’s birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created. New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include: - How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests—on samples drawn by Cornwell’s forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents—yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid...

The inspiration for the Prime Video series Scarpetta—starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis! “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 medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds Waddell’s fingerprints on another crime scene—after she’d performed his autopsy. If this is some sort of game, Scarpetta seems to be the target. And if the next victim is someone she knows, the punishment will be cruel and unusual...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The gruesome murder of a young girl leads Dr. Kay Scarpetta on the hunt for an elusive serial killer in this “ingenious” (Washington Post Book World) thriller. “The Body Farm is Cornwell at her chilling best.”—USA Today IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS Eleven-year-old Emily Steiner is dead. She left a North Carolina church meeting late one October afternoon and strolled along a lakeside path toward her house two miles away. Who met her on the path? Who followed her home, kidnapped her from her bedroom, and left her body by the lake days later? It’s a puzzling and terrifying crime, reminiscent of the work of serial killer Temple Gault, who has long eluded Dr. Kay Scarpetta and law enforcement for years. Into this volatile atmosphere comes Scarpetta’s ingenious, rebellious niece Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico’s computer engineering facility—until she is accused of a shocking security violation. While coming to terms with Lucy, Kay must conduct a grisly forensic investigation at a clandestine research facility in Tennessee known as The Body Farm. There she will find more answers to Emily Steiner’s murder—and evidence that paints a picture of a crime more horrifying than she ever imagined.

In Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell has a character as strong as any in popular fiction" —Wall Street Journal New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the newest engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Depraved Heart: “Void of social duty and fatally bent on mischief.” —Mayes v. People, 806 III. 306 (1883) 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 and then others sent soon after raise dangerous legal implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, worried, and not knowing where to turn. She doesn’t know whom she can tell—not her FBI husband Benton Wesley or her investigative partner Pete Marino. Not even Lucy. In this new novel, Cornwell launches these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the mysterious death of a Hollywood mogul’s daughter, aircraft wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta’s entire world and everyone she loves. The diabolical presence behind what unfolds seems obvious—but strangely, not to the FBI. Certainly that’s the message they send when they raid Lucy’s estate and begin building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life. In the latest novel in her bestselling series featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell will captivate readers with the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and cutting-edge forensic detail that she is famous for, proving yet again why she’s the world’s #1 bestselling crime writer.

Patricia Cornwell’s novels of big-city police have taken this classic genre to a new level. Now, with this #1 New York Times bestselling novel, she outdoes herself, with a wry tale of life and turmoil behind the blue wall. Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, and warns that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric island of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in Chesapeake Bay, responds by declaring war on its own state. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, a state trooper and Hammer’s right hand and confidant, find themselves at their wits’ end as they try to protect the public from the politicians—and vice versa—in this pitch-perfect, darkly comic romp.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell takes readers to a place where what you see can''t be believed in this pulse-punding thriller. DA Monique Lamont has a special job for Massachusetts state investigator Win Garano. As part of a new public relations campaign about the dangers of declining neighborhoods, Lamont is sending Win to Watertown to come up with a “drama,” and she thinks she knows just the case that will serve. Garano is skeptical because he knows that Watertown is also the home base for a loose association of municipal police departments called the FRONT, set up so they aren''t dependent on the state—much to Lamont''s anger. Win senses a much deeper agenda—but has no idea just how deep it goes. In the days that follow, he''ll find Lamont''s task. and the places it leads him, will resemble a house of mirrors—everywhere he turns, he''s not quite sure if what he''s seeing is true.

Dr Kay Scarpetta returns to face new challenges in Patricia Cornwell''s internationally acclaimed series.

After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer''s first strike. A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. As Scarpetta pieces together the fragments of evidence she discovers that the cases connect, yet also seem to conflict, and with so much at stake, it''s clear that she is the only one who can solve it . . . Dust is a thrilling, addictive novel featuring one of the most iconic, original and compelling characters in crime fiction today.

Scarpetta, an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis Dr. Kay Scarpetta is faced with a labyrinthine case that wraps a web of danger around her and those closest to her—and threatens to wreak fear and death far beyond Virginia—in this “standout” (New York Newsday) thriller from #1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. On New Year’s Eve, the last day of Virginia’s bloodiest year since the Civil War, Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of the Elizabeth River to recover the very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter. Was Eddings probing the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? With the advent of a second murder—this one closer to home—the case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.

Sparks fly and twists abound in this electrifying thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling crime author Patricia Cornwell. Massachusetts state investigator Win Garano is called home from Knoxville, Tennessee, where he is completing a course at the National Forensic Academy. His boss, the district attorney, attractive but hard-charging, is planning to run for governor, and as a showcase she''s planning to use a new crime initiative called At Risk—its motto: “Any crime, any time.” In particular, she''s been looking for a way to employ cutting-edge DNA technology, and she thinks she’s found the perfect subject in an unsolved twenty-year-old murder in Tennessee. If her office solves the case, it ought to make them all look pretty good, right? Win isn''t so sure—not sure about anything to do with this woman, really—but before he can open his mouth, a shocking piece of violence intervenes, an act that shakes up both their lives and the lives of everyone around them. It''s not a random event. Is it personal? Is it professional? Whatever it is, the implications are very, very bad indeed...and they''re about to get much worse.

A deeply personal story told as only a devoted personal friend could do.In 1963, at the age of seven, today''s superstar mystery writer, Patricia Cornwell, moved from Miami to Montreat and soon met Ruth Bell Graham. A close friendship began which still continues.By 1983, aspiring young author Patricia had the privilege of writing Ruth''s authorized biography, with incredibly detailed and honest help from Ruth -- now updated to help those who have never met this amazing woman and her famous husband.Here is the inside, deeply personal story of Ruth''s spirited childhood in China, the turbulent yet tender personal account of her courtship with Bill Graham, raising children, becoming a friend to the world, and yet remaining unawed by fame.What emerges is a loving portrait of a remarkable woman, deep in faith, warm, humorous, intelligent, and honest. By the time the last page is turned, Ruth Bell Graham has become the reader''s uncommon friend, known and trusted as Patricia Cornwell has forthirty-three years.