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.

In Norfolk, Virginia, a reporter is killed while scuba diving in the naval yard. As she investigates, chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta uncovers a plot by a fascist militia to take over an atomic power plant.

Attracting unwanted attentions when she is mandated to research the four-hundred-year-old murder of a Jamestown, Virginia, settler, Kay Scarpetta finds enemies among those she is sworn to protect.

Now freelancing from south Florida, Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns to her old haunts in Richmond, Virginia, only to encounter a host of baffling and unwelcome surprises as she investigates the death of a fourteen-year-old girl.

Four books in the #1 New York Times bestselling series by the author of Flesh and Blood featuring Kay Scarpetta—"an awesome force in the field of forensic science.” (New York Times Book Review)
Includes The Last Precinct, Predator, Blow Fly, and Book of the Dead.

Kay Scarpetta--now a senior forensic analyst for CNN--becomes embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom her niece Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.

Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings. The murder of an Atlanta family years ago, a young woman on death row, and the inexplicable deaths of homeless people as far away as California seem unrelated. But Scarpetta discovers connections...

Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has just returned from working one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history when she's awakened at an early hour by Detective Pete Marino. A body, oddly draped in an unusual cloth, has just been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT and it's suspected the identity is that of missing computer engineer Gail Shipton, last seen the night before at a trendy Cambridge bar. It appears she's been...

"Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter. That film clip...

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has come almost full circle, returning to Virginia as the chief medical examiner, the state where she launched her storied career. Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she's inherited not only an overbearing secretary, but also a legacy of neglect and potential corruption. She and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have...

"Chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement. The victims have been savaged beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling, including a larger-than-life footprint. After one of the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this savage, and why."--