Scarpetta Series

In this novel of “nail-biting suspense” (The Boston Globe) from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, Kay Scarpetta is thrust deep into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology, organized crime, and shocking corruption at the highest levels.

IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
A body, oddly draped in an unusual cloth, has just been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, and it’s suspected the identity is that of missing computer engineering grad student Gail Shipton, last seen the night before at a trendy Cambridge bar. It appears she’s been murdered, mere weeks before the trial in her $100 million lawsuit against her former financial manager, and Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta doubts it’s a coincidence. She also fears the case may have a connection with her computer genius niece, Lucy.
 
At a glance there is no sign of what killed Gail Shipton, but she’s covered with a fine dust that under ultraviolet light fluoresces brilliantly in three vivid colors, what Scarpetta calls a mineral fingerprint. Clearly the body has been posed with chilling premeditation that is symbolic and meant to shock, and Scarpetta worries that the person responsible is the Capital Murderer, whose most recent sexual homicides have terrorized Washington, D.C.
 
In Dust, Scarpetta and her colleagues are up against a force far more sinister than a sexual predator who fits the criminal classification of a “spectacle killer.” With unparalleled high-tension suspense and the latest in forensic technology, Patricia Cornwell once again proves her exceptional ability to surprise—and to thrill.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s investigation takes her to the prehistoric age—and alarmingly close to home—in this “nail-bitingly . . . suspenseful” (The City Paper) thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell.
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why.
 
But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.
 
When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, and FBI forensic psychologist and husband, Benton Wesley, have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s investigation leads her into a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale in this red-hot thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell.

“Cornwell remains the master of incorporating real-life science into pulse-pounding fiction.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Dr. Kay 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 agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out.
 
The quest is personal, but also professional. As the director of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with her connection to the Department of Defense, Scarpetta has urgent reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings that she feels are somehow linked to Fielding’s death. The murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other explicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace—all of these are related, but who is behind them, and why?
 
Driven by inner forces, Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding’s death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive. . . .
 
And she’s the only one who can stop it.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than twenty years into her career, Kay Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could ruin her professionally—and personally . . .
 
“Cornwell remains the master of incorporating real-life science into pulse-pounding fiction.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
Kay Scarpetta’s secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base and Port Mortuary, where she’s performing autopsies on fallen soldiers. But her new headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts—the Cambridge Forensic Center—is the first civilian facility in the U.S. to do virtual autopsies, and it is there that she encounters a devastating event.
 
A young man has died, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta’s new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the Center’s cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen—details that suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. With Benton, Marino, and Lucy at her side, Scarpetta must fight a cunning, cruel—and invisible—enemy in a race against time. . . .

In this “insistent and gripping thriller” (The Star-Ledger) from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, forensic expert Kay Scarpetta is surrounded by familiar faces, yet travels down the unfamiliar road of fame. . . .

IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta—despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN—to offer her services pro bono to New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events, culminating in an ominous package—possibly a bomb—showing up at the front desk of the apartment building where she and her husband, Benton, live. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta’s life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionaire with whom her niece, Lucy, seems to have shared a secret past.

Scarpetta’s CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a “special factor,” a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta undertakes a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of New York City, leading her much too close to home.
 
“Cornwell remains the master of incorporating real-life science into pulse-pounding fiction.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered—and more violent deaths will follow. . . .

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta must solve a string of murders more baffling—and terrifying—than any that have come before.
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
The Book of the Dead is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire a new meaning.
 
Starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, seems like the ideal situation for Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues, Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy. But then come the deaths . . .
 
A sixteen-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tournament win in Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. Meanwhile, in New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections among the deaths that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible.
 
Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never has she seen anything like what she’s facing now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names—and the pen may be poised to write her own. . . .

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Investigating a case that stretches from steamy Florida to snowbound Boston, Dr. Kay Scarpetta follows clues that twist and turn, leading her into the psychopathic depths of a jailed serial killer’s mind. . . .
 
“Sensationally plotted, with a twist at the end that will leave you gasping for breath.”—Daily Express (London)

“Cornwell brings [compulsive murderers] to full, frightening life.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, and her team—Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and her niece, Lucy—track the odd connections between several horrific crimes and the people who are the likely suspects. In Florida, Scarpetta is investigating the puzzling disappearance four people who have been abducted from their quiet home, leaving their car parked haphazardly in the driveway and a stove burner on low. Then Marino finds something in a nearby house that stops him cold: a woman who has complained of harassment from a citrus canker inspector has been viciously murdered in her bed.
 
As one psychopath, safely behind bars and the subject of a classified scientific study at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital, teases Scarpetta with tips that could be fact—or fantasy—the number of killers on the loose seems to multiply. Are these events related or merely random? And what can the study of one man’s brain tell them about the methods of a psychopath still lurking in the shadows?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Going home is never easy, especially for Dr. Kay Scarpetta, whose chance at redemption in comes at a cost to her soul in this “rich and satisfying” (Associated Press) thriller.

“Cornwell gets her Hitchcock on. . . . [She] can generate willies with subtle poetic turns.”—People
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing from South Florida, returns to the city that turned its back on her five years ago. Richmond, Virginia’s recently appointed chief medical examiner claims that he needs Scarpetta’s 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 Scarpetta dislikes instantly, meddles with the case.

Deprived of assistance from colleagues Benton and Lucy, who are embroiled in what first appears to be an unrelated attempted rape by a stalker, Scarpetta is faced with investigating the death of a fourteen-year-old girl, working with the smallest pieces of evidence—traces that only the most thorough hunters can identify. Now she must follow the twisting leads and track the strange details in order to make the dead speak. . . .

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A cold case turns red-hot when a death-row inmate renews his acquaintance with Dr. Kay Scarpetta in this “utterly chilling [and] grisly, fast-paced thriller” (Entertainment Weekly).

“Engaging and horrifying . . . a book that fans will want to read for the sheer voyeuristic quality of watching the characters they know so well go beyond their limits.”—Houston Chronicle

IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is settling into her new life as a private forensic consultant and is deep into a case that has left colleagues in Louisiana profoundly disturbed. A woman is found dead in a seedy hotel, dressed to go out, keys in her hand. Her history of blackouts, and her violent outbursts while under their spell, offer more questions than clues about the cause of her death.
 
Then Scarpetta receives news that chills her to the core: Jean-Baptiste Chandonne—the vicious and unrepentant Wolfman, who pursued her to her very doorstep—has asked to see her. From his cell on death row, he demands an audience with the legendary Dr. Scarpetta.
 
With friends and family by her side, Scarpetta tries to guess what sort of endgame this madman has in mind and how, if at all, it’s related to the Louisiana case. She begins to unravel a twisting, international conspiracy and then confronts the shock of her life: a blow that will force her to question the loyalty and trust of all she holds dear.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta must prove her innocence and clear her name in this “cunningly designed [and] ingeniously laid out” (Los Angeles Times) thriller.
 
“Ignites on the first page . . . Cornwell twists escalating violence, unrelenting tension, and growing paranoia into a thick rope of horror and unfolding conspiracy.”—USA Today
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
Thwarting an attack by a suspected serial killer has inconceivably put Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta in the harsh glare of the spotlight. As her personal and professional lives come under suspicion, she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past. A formidable prosecutor, a female assistant district attorney from New York, is brought into the case—and Scarpetta must struggle to make what she knows to be the truth prevail against mounting and unnerving evidence to the contrary. Tested in every way, she turns inward to ask, Where do you go when there is nowhere left?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta is on a deadly mission that will pull her in two opposite directions: toward protecting her career or toward the truth . . .
 
“A fast-paced, first-rate thriller.”—The San Francisco Examiner

“Brainteasing . . . [a] hair-raising tale with a French twist.”—People
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond’s Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway.
 
The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither cause of death nor an identification. But the victim’s personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: Go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career—and places her and the ones she holds dear at mortal risk.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “gripping” (People) thriller, the clues to a series of remorseless killings go up in smoke—and only Kay Scarpetta can find them.
 
“[Point of Origin] sears its way into the psyche . . . ablaze with Cornwell’s finest, scariest writing.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
The devastating fire tore through the horse farm, destroying everything it touched. Picking through the wreckage, Dr. Kay Scarpetta uncovers human remains—the work of an audacious and wily killer who uses fire to mask his brutal murders. And when Scarpetta learns that her old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, has escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is somehow involved, the investigation becomes personal. Tragedy strikes close to home. And Scarpetta must match Grethen’s every move with one of her own to douse the inferno of evil that threatens everyone around her. . . .

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A psychopath with an intimate knowledge of death has a personal vendetta against Kay Scarpetta—and many different plans to kill her. . . .
 
“Cornwell remains the master of incorporating real-life science into pulse-pounding fiction.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is newly retired from Dublin, where she was called in to examine the remains of a murder victim whose limbs and head were expertly severed—a signature of a cunning killer on the loose again after an eight-year sabbatical—when the same killer apparently strikes again, this time much closer to home. After Scarpetta investigates the murder scene, the killer boldly contacts her through the Internet, inviting her to download photos of the murder victim and signing off with a chilling screen name: deadoc
 
With the help of her niece, Lucy, an FBI computer expert, she takes an extraordinary virtual tour of the background of the emailed photos. When Scarpetta determines that the victim was exposed to a rare smallpox-like virus before she died and, later, that she herself may have been infected, she realizes that she is up against a killer with access to an incredibly sophisticated arsenal of deadly force—a killer with specific animus directed toward her.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is faced with a labyrinthine case that wraps a web of danger around her and those closest to her—and threatens to wreak fear and death far beyond Virginia—in this “standout” (New York Newsday) thriller from #1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell.

“Fascinating, frightening . . . Reaffirms that Cornwell is one of the best crime fiction authors working today.”—The Miami Herald
 
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
 
On New Year’s Eve, the last day of Virginia’s bloodiest year since the Civil War, Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of the Elizabeth River to recover the very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter. Was Eddings probing the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified?
 
With the advent of a second murder—this one closer to home—the case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.