For decades, Patricia Cornwell has demonstrated her extraordinary ability not only to entertain and enthrall but to surprise as well. Beginning in January 2006, The New York Times Magazine will serialize a brand-new Cornwell thriller, a book filled with all the chilling suspense, rich characters, and trademark forensics that have made her an intern...more

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns to the chilling world of gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in this suspense fiction classic.Reclusive author Beryl Madison finds no safe haven from months of menacing phone calls -- or the tormented feeling that her every move is being watched. When the writer is found slain in her o...more

"Killing me won't kill the beast" are the last words of rapist-murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell, written four days before his execution. But they can't explain how Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds Waddell's fingerprints on another crime scene -- after she'd performed his autopsy. If this is some sort of game, Scarpetta seems to be the target. And if the next vic...more

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell's heart-stopping thriller featuring gutsy medical examiner Kay ScarpettaIn Richmond, Virginia, young lovers are dying. So far, four couples in the area have disappeared, only to be found months later as mutilated corpses. When the daughter of the president's newest drug czar vanishes along with...more

The postmortem is in--Black Notice, the 10th in Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series--is a gore- splattered, intensely exciting read.As winter grips Richmond, Virginia, an air of sombreness pervades chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's world. Her beloved niece Lucy is involved in a dangerous undercover police operation in Miami, and auntie f...more