Trying to solve the murder of a thirteen-year-old boy, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and police lieutenant Pete Marion race against time to find a killer after the fingerprints of a recently executed murderer turn up at a new crime scene.

"#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,...

"#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...

"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 larger-than-life footprint. After one of the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this savage, and why"--Provided by the...

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...

Now freelancing from south Florida, Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns to her old haunts in Richmond, Virginia, only to encounter a host of baffling and unwelcome surprises as she investigates the death of a fourteen-year-old girl.

In New York, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner, matches wits with a sadistic killer who operates in the subway tunnels. After killing a transit policeman he infiltrates the FBI's computers and sends her taunting messages while continuing to kill. The Central Park (New York) murder of a young, homeless woman on Christmas sends medical examiner Scarpetta, her friend Captain Marino, & her niece on a chase that ends in the subway. The sixth suspense...

Leaving Virginia in search of peace and quiet, Dr. Kay Scarpetta journeys to Florida, where a series of baffling murders entangles her in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the most unexpected circumstance of her life.

Young lovers are disappearing in Richmond, Virginia, only to be found later as mutilated corpses. Following a macabre trail of evidence that ties the present homicides to a grisly crime in the past, Dr. Kay Scarpetta must track down a murderer before another missing couple become the next victims.