Forensic Mysteries

Medical examiner Laura Hanning has two charred corpses and no answers. Both bear mysterious tattoos but exhibit no known cause of death. Their only connection to one another is a string of puzzling miracle cures. Her preliminary investigation points to a cult in the possession of the fabled panacea - the substance that can cure all ills - but that's impossible.

On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, 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 intelligence agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out.

The only three females in a group of new residents, the women quickly become roommates and friends, face long hours, a frenetic work pace, and unwanted advances from male colleagues. One becomes involved in unsavory underworld activities, another employs questionable medical skills that are overlooked by the male administrators who value her other services, and another tries to forget a lost love.

Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware confronts a killer who takes as much pleasure in matching wits with the police as in robbing human life. A diplomat's retarded daughter is murdered on a school field trip. The girl's father denies the possibility of a political motive, leaving LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his longtime friend, Alex Delaware, stymied. When another killing occurs, Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the most menacing cases of his career.

New Orleans has been quarantined, an unknown virus sweeping the city, killing 100 percent of those infected. The Center for Disease Control, desperate to find a cure, is approached by BioDyne Pharma who reveal a former employee has turned a cutting-edge medical treatment capable of targeting specific genetic sequences into a weapon, and released it.

The inspiration for the hit Fox series Bones, Kathy Reichs explores another high-stakes crime from today's headlines, in a case that lands forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan in the middle of a gruesome international scheme.

On the way to hurricane-ravaged Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, Tempe receives a call from the Charleston coroner. The storm has tossed ashore a medical waste container. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic and bound with electrical wire. Tempe recognizes many of the details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 years earlier. With a growing sense of foreboding, she travels to Montreal to gather evidence. Meanwhile, health authorities in South Carolina become alarmed as a human flesh-eating contagion spreads.

World renowned neurosurgeon Jon Ritter is on the verge of a medical breakthrough that will change the world. His groundbreaking surgical treatment, using transplanted non-human stem cells, is set to eradicate the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease and give hope to millions. But when the procedure is slated for testing, it all comes to an abrupt and terrifying halt.

In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire: Healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years. When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her - and learns of some troubling parallels to her own life.

In an ancient tunnel underneath New York City a charnel house is discovered. Inside are 36 bodies all murdered and mutilated more than a century ago. While FBI agent Pendergast investigates the old crimes, identical killings start to terrorize the city. The nightmare has begun. Again.

No one speaks the language of suspense more brilliantly than Kathy Reichs, number-one New York Times best-selling author of the acclaimed Temperance Brennan series. In Speaking in Bones, the forensic anthropologist finds herself drawn into a world of dark secrets and dangerous beliefs, where good and evil blur. Professionally, Temperance Brennan knows exactly what to do - test, analyze, identify. Her personal life is another story.

DEATH VALLEY EARNS ITS NAME when a terrorist threatens to unleash lethal radioactive toxins in America's most fragile national park. Forensic geologists Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws embark upon a perilous mission to find and stop the terrorist. Mineral clues lead them deep into the desert, and the canyons, pushing them to their limits. The summer heat is brutal. The material they seek is hotter than the desert in August, and they are each vulnerable to its effects.

Powerful entertainment from the crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose. Best selling author Kathy Reichs "keeps the twists coming, and by the novel's climax, she has skillfully interwoven her many subplots and red herrings into a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore," says Publishers Weekly.

A top nuclear scientist goes mad and takes an innocent family hostage at gunpoint, killing one and causing a massive standoff. A plume of radiation above New York City leads to a warehouse where, it seems, a powerful nuclear bomb was assembled just hours before. Sifting through the evidence, authorities determine that the unthinkable is about to happen: in ten days, a major American city will be vaporized by a terrorist attack.

Someone is stalking the UCLA Medical Center - a depraved madman who is preying upon the staff, particularly those who are young and female. No stranger to the terrible ravages of senseless violence, E.R. Chief Dr. David Spier must keep the emergency room running smoothly and efficiently, even as his terrified co-workers wonder who will be the next victim. But when the monster himself is dragged into the E.R. in handcuffs - hideously burned, suffering, and begging for mercy - the nightmare is far from over. It has only just begun.

In Harvest, the book that introduced us to Tess Gerritsen's unique blend of medical expertise, harrowing suspense, and brilliantly crafted plot twists, the dark side of medical research is exposed. Harvest vividly portrays a young woman doctor challenging a world where medical miracles and greed fuel a lethal conspiracy - and the bright lights of the O.R. conceal the ultimate corruption of genius.

The study of twins and the genetics of aggression totally consumes research scientist Jeannie Ferrami. An accomplished and headstrong researcher, Jeannie has developed a sophisticated software program to identify identical twins reared apart. But Jeannie's breakthrough project is threatened by the appearance of a sudden impossibility - identical twins born weeks apart to different mothers at separate locations.

Eve Duncan is the most sought-after artist in the field of forensic sculpting. Dedicated to her work ever since her daughter, Bonnie, was taken and killed at the age of seven, Eve feels a sense of duty to those whose lives were lost and whose bones are now in her hands.

Evelyn Talbot knows that a psychopath can look perfectly normal. She was only 16 when her own boyfriend, Jasper, imprisoned and tortured her - and left her for dead. Now an eminent psychiatrist who specializes in the criminal mind, Evelyn is the force behind Hanover House, a maximum-security facility located in a small Alaskan town. Her job puts her at odds with Sergeant Amarok, who is convinced that Hanover is a threat to his community, even as his attraction to beautiful Evelyn threatens to tear his world apart.

A vicious killer is walking free, hiding in plain sight...When a violent crime spree erupts in small town Garnerville, Police Chief Sidney Becker puts her four person force on high alert. It starts with the vicious killing of a beekeeper in what appears to be a burglary gone horribly wrong. But the next morning a scantily clad woman is found murdered in her home. Bee-related evidence found planted on her body connects the two homicides. Becker’s team is now looking for a killer who is extremely knowledgeable about bees. As the investigation digs deeper, dark secrets of a sexual nature ...