As a medical examiner, Samantha Owen's job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology. But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from her life. She's pulled into a suffocating grief until she receives a peculiar call from Washington D.C. On the end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking,...

"When D.C. crime scene analyst Dr. Ellie Carr is called to investigate the heartrending case of a missing baby, she's shocked to discover that the child's mother is her own cousin. Close during their impoverished childhoods, Ellie and Rebecca eventually drifted apart. Rebecca is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her wealthy lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion -- until their infant son is...

"In Alberta, Canada, an eminent paleontologist disappears from a dinosaur dig site, and at the Cambridge Forensic Center, Kay Scarpetta receives a grisly communication that gives her a dreadful reason to suspect this may become her next case. Then, with shocking speed, events begin to unfold. A body recovered from Boston Harbor reveals bizarre trace evidence hinting of a link to other unsolved cases that seem to have nothing in common. Who is behind...

"If you are reading this letter, I am dead and I would be most grateful if you could solve my murder..." When Owens receives a letter from a dead man imploring her to solve his murder, there's only one catch: Timothy Savage's death was so obviously the suicide of a demented individual that the case has been closed. A postmortem discovers clear signs that Savage was indeed murdered. And she finds DNA from a kidnapped child whose remains were recovered...

In 1955 England, pathologist Richard Pryor and his team tackle the cases of a mechanic's suspicious suicide, the poisoning of a cancer patient, and an English officer's death during a training session in the Middle East.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, only to find herself and her colleagues--Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy--confronted by a horrifying series of crimes that may have an underlying link.

When Scarpetta examines a young man's body, she discovers stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler of her new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties, and she races against time to discover...

New York City medical examiners Dr. Laurie Montgomery and Dr. Jack Stapleton confront a ballooning series of puzzling hospital deaths of young, healthy people after successful routine surgery. It seems impossible to determine why and how these patients are dying, yet Laurie comes to suspect that not only are the deaths related--they're intentional, suggesting the work of a remarkably clever healthcare serial killer.

"When the body of famous actress Niki Francis is unearthed from its shallow grave, the small town of Medford, Oregon is alarmed, but not shook. After all, there should be plenty of motives and suspects - Niki had fame, wealth, looks. The kill was targeted, premeditated, and it's about her celebrity. Or so they thought. Whit McKenna is licking her wounds, working as a reporter for the local Medford rag. Fresh from a harrowing assignment for her previous...

A reclusive writer is dead. And her final manuscript has disappeared ... Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone-calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in ... Thus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would...