Best Selling Books by Patricia Cornwell

From one of the world’s number top selling crime writers comes the extraordinary twentieth Kay Scarpetta novel. 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.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the next enthralling thriller in her high-stakes series starring Kay Scarpetta-a complex tale involving a serial sniper who strikes chillingly close to the forensic sleuth herself. It's a sunny morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday. She's about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids' game? And if so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there's been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one has heard or seen a thing. In this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect that they cause death in an instant. The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. Until Scarpetta comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, her very own flesh and blood. With the bravura storytelling and state-of-the-art forensic details that are her hallmarks, Patricia Cornwell again raises the bar with this highly entertaining new tale, her most captivating Scarpetta novel yet.

Ruth Bell Graham is known as the wife of evangelist Billy Graham. It was Ruth who influenced Billy, as his most trusted life-partner. In Ruth, a Portrait, we meet this fascinating and remarkable woman. Brimming with anecdotes, this is a breathtaking journey, with stops at many of this century's epoch-making events. The childhood years of the future Mrs. Billy Graham were spent light-years away--in the China of the 1920s and 1930s. The daughter of medical missionaries, she and her family were caught in a crucible of unspeakable hardship; in addition to pestilence and plague, there was the unstable political and military turmoil surrounding the Nationalist government, the Communists, and the Japanese invaders. These hazardous realities shaped Ruth Bell and her family, a family inured to difficulties, but buoyed up by their deep belief in God's abiding will. Virtually raised by the Grahams, the author is a repository of Ruth Bell Graham's stories and has seen firsthand the spirit of this courageous woman. Patricia Cornwell not only gives readers a full, rounded, and intimate portrait of Ruth Bell Graham, but also insight into the life of the Graham family and particularly Billy Graham.

FBI consultant Dr Kay Scarpetta is in the midst of a late-night autopsy when the call comes; Gault, a sadistic psychopath who has eluded capture for years, has struck again. It soon becomes apparent to Scarpetta that Gault is as focused on her as she is on him.

The first novel featuring Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta from the #1 bestselling author of Black Notice and Point of OriginWinner of the Edgar Award and the Macavity Award for best first mystery Four women with nothing in common, united only in death. Four brutalized victims of a brilliant monster - a "Mr. Nobody," moving undetected through a paralyzed city, leaving behind a gruesome trail of carnage . . . but few clues. With skilled hands, an unerring eye, and the latest advances in forensic research, an unrelenting female medical examiner - Kay Scarpetta - is determined to unmask a maniac. But someone is trying to sabotage Kay's investigation from the inside. And worse yet, someone wants her dead . . .

The death of a stowaway on a Belgian cargo ship leads Dr. Kay Scarpetta to Interpol headquarters, a Paris Morgue and finally home to Virginia.

#1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns to the world of gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in the seventh suspenseful novel in the forensic thriller series On a quiet day, away from the hustle of Richmond, in a small cottage on the Virginia coast, Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a disturbing phone call from the Chesapeake police. Thirty feet deep in the murky waters of Virginia's Elizabeth River, a scuba diver's body is discovered near the Inactive Naval Shipyard.As the police begin searching for clues, the wallet of investigative reporter Ted Eddings is found. Unnerved by the possible identity of the victim, Scarpetta orders the crime scene roped off and left alone until she arrives. What was he doing there, searching for Civil War relics as the officer suggested, or was there a bigger story? As she rifles through the multitude of clues, a second murder hits much closer to home. This new development puts Scarpetta and her colleagues hot on the trail of a military conspiracy.

More complex than any of the previous Kay Scarpetta books, this one finds the pathologist accused of killing Deputy Police Chief Diana Bray and of framing a psychopathic serial killer. Recovering from a murder attempt herself, Scarpetta is forced to justify her means and her past.