Forensic Mystery Fiction

Women are turning up dead. And Lisa O'Malley digging into a crime means trouble is soon to follow. She's a forensic pathologist and mysteries are her domain. Audio book number three in the O'Malley series brings back Lisa O'Malley and U.S. Marshal Quinn Diamond from The Guardian in a tense investigative thriller. She's not a believer, and her journey toward faith is a fascinating look at how a forensic pathologist views the Resurrection. Quinn has found loving her is easier than keeping her safe.

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives soaked to the bone at her Manhattan office, only to find that she's forgotten her keycard. When her boss shows, he's shocked to see her - because, he explains, she hasn't worked there in five years. Ally knows her name, but is having trouble coming up with much beyond that, though after a trip to the psychiatric ER, she begins to piece together important facts: She lives on the Upper West Side; she's now a freelance journalist; she's married to a terrific man named Hugh.

In Trace, Scarpetta travels to Richmond, Virginia, at the odd behest of the recently appointed Chief Medical Examiner, who claims that he needs her 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 Marino dislikes instantly, meddles with the case.

Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil � human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder.

From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind - a disease that's unknown, unstoppable, and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, operatives of SIGMA Force, search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions.

AJ Docker (Doc) and his guard dog, Banshee, move to a small town in the mountains for a slower-paced lifestyle. Doc settles into the idyllic setting with a rewarding job and enriching colleagues, as well as with a romantic interest who leads him to contemplate marriage. His new life seems perfect, until he begins to uncover the town's dirty secrets. A serial killer hunts in the woods, and dirty money flows throughout the town.

Forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny lost his wife, Shay, to the very serial killer he’d hunted for five years. When Nathaniel Conrad—known as the Alphabet Man, for his love of tattooing codes onto his victims’ bodies—was condemned to death row, Callum thought the game of cat and mouse was over. But just before execution, Nathaniel drops a bombshell: he’s not the one who murdered Shay.

Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman has finally found a place to belong. As the medical examiner for the San Francisco Police Department, working alongside homicide detective Hal Harris, she uncovers the tales the dead can't tell about their final moments. It is a job that gives her purpose—and a safe haven from her former life at the hands of an abusive husband. Although it's been seven years since she escaped that ordeal, she still checks over her shoulder to make sure no one is behind her.

When Matthew Preston was eight, his father was shot and killed in rarefied Pacific Palisades by Ted Nash, a home burglar who happened to be the Prestons' neighbor. Though Nash was sentenced to life in San Quentin, Matthew's lifelong obsession is to somehow get into the prison, gain access to Nash, and exact the ultimate personal revenge. He devises a plan to become a prison doctor to gain access to Nash.

When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population - killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant - the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power - and the strong who possess it.

For more than 13 years, special agent Winter Black has believed her little brother was dead - kidnapped and murdered by The Preacher, the same lunatic who killed her parents. A lead into Justin’s whereabouts brings her out of her hiatus to chase it, but other cases need her attention, too. At the FBI, tensions are high when a body is dug up, encased in a 55-gallon drum. The team soon realizes they aren’t hunting the typical serial killer, but a skilled surgeon.

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.

Peter Coldrick had no past; that was the conclusion drawn by years of personal and professional research. Then he employed the services of one Morton Farrier, forensic genealogist - a stubborn, determined man who uses whatever means necessary to uncover the past. With the Coldrick Case, Morton faces his toughest and most dangerous assignment yet, where all of his investigative and genealogical skills are put to the test.

When Morton Farrier, the formidable forensic genealogist, is called upon to uncover the mysterious disappearance of a housemaid working in a large Edwardian country house in 1911, he embarks on a perilous journey into the past. Uncovering surprising secrets and facing dangerous adversaries, Morton must use his comprehensive genealogical skills to solve the case. Will he be able to put the pieces together before it's too late?

It's New Year's Eve, the final night of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, and another poor soul has turned up dead. Ted Eddings, a scuba diver and investigative reporter who was a favorite at the medical examiner's office, is found 30 feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia, can't help but wonder why she received a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified.

In this chilling new novel from the one and only Robin Cook, New York City medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton rush to India to help a UCLA student investigating medical tourism - and a sinister global conspiracy.

Dr. Katheryn Newton has dedicated her brilliant mind to groundbreaking medical research. She’s attempting to save lives and hoping to start a family when a catastrophic twist turns her world upside down. Suddenly, Kate finds herself with the power to invisibly end any life. Within hours, Kate is caught in a moral conundrum and trapped in a web of deception. She fights on, fiercely determined to help her country and the planet, but it’s tough when doing good means being bad—and dangerous when someone knows your secret.

Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for years for the mission of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded and embittered him. He must watch from the sidelines as his wife prepares for her first mission to the international Space Station.

Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones is bright, energetic, the picture of health. Yet her parents rush her to the emergency room night after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Cassie's parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex Delaware is called in to investigate, instinct tells him that one of them may be a monster.