Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has just returned from working a mass murder when she's awakened by Detective Pete Marino. A body, draped in an unusual cloth, has been discovered at MIT, and it's suspected it is computer engineer Gail Shipman. It appears she's been murdered, mere weeks before the trial in her $100 million lawsuit against her former financial managers. She also fears the case may have a connection with her computer...

"#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,...

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.

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...

Kay Scarpetta and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria, where she’s headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that’s been torn by civil and political unrest. After just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks--a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine--and as Scarpetta begins...

"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...

On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for a sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious...

"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...

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...