Late one night Beryl Madison turns off her burglar alarm, puts down her gun and opens her door to the man who has stalked and terrorized her for months. Hours later, her brutally mutilated body lies in the city morgue. As Scarpetta begins searching for the microscopic clues to the killer's identity, one question keeps nagging her: why did Beryl let him in?

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns with the remarkable twenty-fourth thriller in her popular high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, twenty-six-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning--except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta,...

Spunky and outgoing, nothing much bothers medical examiner Serena Hopkins--except for the thought of falling in love again. But when a serial killer is picking off her former classmates, Serena's life becomes intertwined with her old high school crush, Fbi agent Dominic Allen. Is the secret she's keeping putting her next on the killer's hit list? Can she trust Dominic with the truth before it's too late?

"In this exhilarating medical mystery-thriller by Robin Cook, fan favorites Jack and Laurie are lured into the dark underbelly of hospital dangers when an internist is murdered"--Colleagues-turned-spouses Doctor Laurie Montgomery and Doctor Jack Stapleton already have their plates full with crazy work schedules and family pressures. The last thing they need is a murder. When Laurie's longtime friend, by all accounts healthy Dr. Sue Passero dies mysteriously...

"Due to Jack Stapleton's ongoing recovery from his near-death confrontation with a serial killer, his wife Laurie Montgomery, the NYC chief medical examiner, is carrying the load both at work and at home. When she insists an underperforming pathology resident named Ryan Sullivan assist her on a suicide autopsy, Laurie unknowingly provokes an emotional storm in the trainee. So, when Ryan himself appears on the medical examiner's table days later, an...

Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles is summoned to the scene of a brutal killing and teams up with Detective Jane Rizzoli to investigate the victim's ties to Joyce O'Donnell, a cantankerous psychologist, and to a sinister cabal called the Mephisto Club.