Patricia Daniels Cornwell

Dr. Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida. There she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock 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.

Virginia's chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta matches wits with a wily killer who uses fire to mask his crimes. The case begins with a fire in which many horses die and the embers yield a human body.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, a woman killer is murdering visiting businessmen and painting their genitals orange. The hunt for the killer is led by two women, one the city's chief of police, the other her deputy, and they are accompanied by a young newspaper reporter, eager to earn his spurs.

In this new work of nonfiction, Cornwell turns her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise on one of the most chilling cases of serial murder in the history of crime--the slayings of Jack the Ripper that terrorized 1880s London. With the masterful intuition into the criminal mind that has informed her novels, Cornwell digs deeper into the case than any detective before her--and reveals the true identity of this elusive madman....

"Patricia Cornwell's debut novel introduced one of crime fiction's most compelling characters: gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell's gift for combining cutting-edge criminology with nerve-shattering suspense makes this book a true modern classic. Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Kay Scarpette suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a...