forensic pathologists

"Reflecting on twenty years of investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, an NYC death investigator, the second woman ever hired for this role, shares how, in dealing with death every day, she learned surprising lessons about life--and how some of those lessons saved her from becoming a statistic herself"--Provided by publisher.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida. The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now.

In the Louisiana bayou, a methodical killer with a taste for medical experimentation is hard at work completing his most harrowing crime yet, taunting the authorities who desperately try to catch up. Forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller is the best there is. Armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of historical crimes and years of experience, she's never encountered a case she couldn't solve. Until now. As case after case lands on Wren's examination table, she is sucked into an all-consuming cat-and-mouse chase--on the tail of a brutal murderer, getting more brazen by the day.

Pathologist Kay Scarpetta searches for the cause of death in the case of five young couples whose decomposed bodies are found without shoes and socks deep in the woods. Bones, fragments of clothing, and a jack of hearts are all that remain.

Receiving a surveillance video of her niece taken twenty years earlier that reveals disturbing secrets, Dr. Kay Scarpetta becomes increasingly isolated as she realizes the dangerous legal implications of her niece's private life.

Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles look into the murders of two cloistered nuns, but it is only when the body of another woman is found horribly mutilated that the investigators begin to grasp the scope of the crimes.

"Dr. Kay Scarpetta is about to head to Miami for a vacation when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids' game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Then she learns there's been a homicide five minutes away. A high school teacher was shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one heard or saw a thing...Soon more victims surface. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect they cause death in an instant. There is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First it was New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast. There she comes face to face with shocking news that implicates her niece, Lucy -- Scarpetta's own flesh and blood."--back cover.

"#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 Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday, and 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 Cambridge house. Is this a kids' game? 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. 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, yet they are so perfect they cause instant death. The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast of South Florida, where Scarpetta investigates a shipwreck, looking for answers that only she can discover and analyze. And it is there that she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta's own flesh and blood"--.

The memoir of a young forensic pathologist's "rookie season" as a NYC medical examiner, and the cases--hair-raising, heartbreaking, and impossibly complex--that shaped her as both a physician and a mother. Working Stiff takes readers behind the police tape of some of the most harrowing deaths in the Big Apple, including a firsthand account of the events of September 11, the subsequent anthrax bio-terrorism attack, and the disastrous crash of American Airlines flight 587.