Forensic Crime Mystery

It begins with an abduction. The routine of a family shopping trip is shattered when Michelle Spivey is snatched as she leaves the mall with her young daughter. The police search for her, her partner pleads for her release, but it's as if she disappeared into thin air. A month later, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, medical examiner Sara Linton is at lunch with her boyfriend Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the serenity of the summer's day is broken by the wail of sirens.

Number one New York Times best-selling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the 24th engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

Ten years ago CSI Darby McCormick investigated a child abduction case. Today, Charlie Rizzo is back and holding his family hostage. He makes only one demand. Bring me Darby McCormick... When Darby arrives to defuse the scene, she finds him horrifically mutilated, with a mask of human skin sewn in place over his own face. Within minutes, a group of men disguised as SWAT officers bursts in and releases deadly gas, killing the Rizzo family and leaving Darby barely alive.

A comatose man is given a fatal dose of insulin in the emergency room, even though he isn't diabetic. An ulcer patient dies of shock after receiving a transfusion of the wrong blood type. A recovering heart patient receives a double dose of medication and suffers a fatal heart attack. Brain surgeon Dr. Tyler Matthews suspects that something is seriously wrong with the hospital's new "Med-InDx" computerized medical record system. But he doesn't suspect that there's something murderously wrong with it.

It all starts when Dr Temperance Brennan finds a box on her porch. Inside is a fresh human eyeball with GPS coordinates etched into it. They lead her to a macabre discovery in a Benedictine Monastery, and soon after she discovers a mummified corpse in a state park. There seems to be no pattern to these killings, except that each mimics a killing connected to something a younger Tempe experienced, or barely escaped. Someone is targeting her, and she needs to figure out why before they strike again. And then her daughter Katy disappears.

A heart-pounding hunt begins when 18-year-old Monica goes missing from a dig site with an archaeologist whose shady past spills into the present. The frantic search takes her aunt Claudia to Egypt, Gibraltar, and the UK, where Claudia's skills as a forensic handwriting expert of international renown are needed to help foil a deadly terrorist plot in which Monica may become a casualty.

Jacob Malecki killed fifteen people over a thirteen-year period. At the height of the murders, Dr. Jo McCready was at university and, as an exercise, compiled a profile of Malecki, which broke open the case and helped send him down for life. Twenty-five years later a copycat killer is re-creating his murders. What's more, Malecki offers to help the police catch him from his own prison cell. Malecki claims he's repenting for his crimes. Jo doubts it, but as the body count rises, she can't ignore the killer's offer. What does he really want - and can Jo find out before anyone else dies?

Jill Quint, MD, is a forensic pathologist, vintner, and future private investigator from California. She joins her three friends in Antwerp, Belgium. In the diamond industry hub of the world, they plan to enjoy their annual girlfriends’ vacation exploring the museums, food, and beer of Belgium and the Netherlands. When a medical emergency thrusts Jill and her friends into a deadly case, they team up with Belgian police and Interpol to uncover what is so valuable in the diamond trade that someone would be willing to kill for it.

On holiday in the Scottish Highlands, forensic scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod joins a mountain rescue team on Cairngorm summit, where a mysterious plane has crash-landed on the frozen Loch A’an. Added to that, a nearby climbing expedition has left three young people dead, with a fourth still missing. Meanwhile in Glasgow, DS McNab’s raid on the Delta Club produces far more than just a massive haul of cocaine.

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-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 of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie.

People are again dropping like flies in Dr. Steele's ER. She is facing another string of unexplained deaths, but this time it's even harder. Why? Because she doesn't mind seeing them dead. They are the worst of the worst: Wife beaters, child abusers, pet killers, and downright psychopaths that the law failed to punish. Even worse, it fails to protect their innocent victims. Can this be God's work? Did God get busy cleaning their community of evil? Emma doesn't think so. She finds the answer disturbingly near. It isn't God; it's a human, way too close for comfort.

While illegally street racing in the underground tunnels of Glasgow, four Harley-Davidson riders make a horrifying discovery: a dead man left in the darkness, hands together on his chest as if peacefully laid to rest. The cause of death is unclear, the only clues being a half glass of red wine and a partially eaten chunk of bread by his side that echo the ancient religious practice of sin-eating. Called to the scene, forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is perplexed by the lack of evidence.

In a Washington, D.C. research lab, a brilliant scientist is attacked by his own test subjects. At Columbia University, a talented biochemist is lured out of her apartment and never seen again. In the Justice Department’s new Bioethics Committee, agent Les Mahler sees a sinister pattern emerging.... Zoe Kincaid is a petite college student whose rare genetic makeup may hold the key to a powerful medical breakthrough. When she is kidnapped, the very thing mankind has wanted since the dawn of time threatens to unleash our final destruction.

New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta 30 feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver is dead. Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter who was a favourite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths for a story or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call reporting the death before the police were notified?

Dunja Hougaard has gone underground to covertly investigate her former boss, Sleizner. For months, Dunja and her team have been gathering information. When a high-ranking man within the Danish intelligence service and an unknown woman are found dead at the bottom of a lake outside Copenhagen, the trap is finally ready to close. The only question is: whom will it catch? And meanwhile, on the other side of the strait in Helsingborg, the Swedish police Fabian Risk detective receives a message that changes everything.

Someone...or something...is stalking the citizens of Miami. First, the chief of the triage morgue at Dade County Hospital is strangled; the skulls of two homeless men are crushed under a highway overpass, followed by drug dealers, frat boys, and workers at a local diner brutally bludgeoned. Detectives Issy Ruiz and Andy Molinaro can find no motive, no clues, and no links among the victims, just a description of four muscular young men with fixed eyes and stiff gaits as though animated by some otherworldly force.

When the bizarrely mutilated body of a young woman is found near the tiny isolated Norfolk village of Manham, it isn't just the fact that she was a friend that disturbs Dr David Hunter. A one-time high-profile forensic anthropologist, he was once all too familiar with the different faces of death, until a devastating personal tragedy made him abandon his former life and career.

Dr. Strangeways meets the only woman he has ever really cared for, the hermit-like yet mysterious Angelina Frood, a striking young actress stalked by many demons. Tragedy strikes and the good doctor will do anything to solve the mystery. Following a chance encounter, he begins a correspondence with the famous Dr. Thorndyke, hoping that the medico-legal hybrid, a metaphorical centaur or merman, with a doctor's head and a lawyer's tail, can solve the case.

In a far-flung Tibetan village, prayer flags flap against whitewashed houses and a majestic monastery stretches to heaven. It's Shangri-La - the earthly paradise - until a stranger staggers out of the forest and collapses into a bloody, lifeless mass. He's the first victim of a crippling epidemic, but he's no ordinary man. Olen Grave, an American intelligence officer, heads directly into the hot zone to investigate. Posing as a journalist, he joins a Chinese research team led by a headstrong female virus hunter, Dr. Zhou Weilin.

Dr. Harry Corbett heads to the hospital to visit his wife, Evie, scheduled for surgery the next day, and finds, much to his shock, that Evie is dead. The police suspect homicide. Their only suspect is Harry. Harry is unprepared for the stunning revelations that follow: his bright, beautiful, highly ambitious wife was leading a double life. But what secret was explosive enough for her to die for?