Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it’s being sabotaged from within and someone wants her dead.
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Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist
With high-tension suspense and cutting-edge technology, Patricia Cornwell—the world’s #1 bestselling crime writer—once again proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall in this remarkable novel featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Scarpetta drives to the Georgia Prison for Women to meet a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against the advice of her FBI criminal intelligence agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out.
Scarpetta has both personal and professional reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings: the murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other inexplicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace. Driven by inner forces, Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding’s death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale.
And she is the only one who can stop it.
Patricia Cornwell - Cruel and Unusual
"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 victim is someone she knows, the punishment will be cruel and unusual...
Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure
Always packed with unrelieved tension and constant surprises, a new novel from Patricia Cornwell is cause for celebration. Virginia's chief medical examiner, Kay Scarpetta, is called in to examine the remains of a woman found in a landfill, her body dismembered in the same expert way she'd seen before. And while Scarpetta is investigating, the bold killer contacts her through the Internet, inviting her to download the police photos, and signs off with the chilling name, deadoc. When Scarpetta and her niece discover that the victim was exposed to a rare smallpox-like virus before she died, she realizes that they re up against a killer with access to an incredible arsenal of deadly force -- and now it's directed at her!
Tami Hoag - Still Waters
Hidden in the Minnesota farmlands, Still Creek seems to offer a sanctuary to Elizabeth Stuart and her son following her divorce, but the locals are distinctly cool towards the newcomers. Then, when Elizabeth becomes involved in a murder case, she finds there's more to the place than meets the eye.
Jo Nesbø - The Snowman
The night the first snow falls a young boy wakes to find his mother gone. He walks through the silent house, but finds only wet footprints on the stairs. In the garden looms a solitary figure: a snowman bathed in cold moonlight, its black eyes glaring up at the bedroom windows. Round its neck is his mother's pink scarf.
Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead
The "book of the dead" is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to have a new meaning. Fresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace-not only personally and professionally, but geographically. Moving to the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues-including Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy-offer expert crime-scene investigation and autopsies to communities that lack local access to competent death investigation and modern technology.
It seems like an ideal situation, until the new battles start-with local politicians, with entrenched interests, with someone whose covert attempts at sabotage are clearly meant to run her out of town. And that's even before the murders and other violent deaths begin.
A young man from a well-known family jumps off a water tower. A woman is found ritualistically murdered in her multi-million-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is discovered dumped in a desolate marsh. Meanwhile, in distant New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible.
Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones that face her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names-and the pen may be poised to write her own.
The first name in forensics. The last name in suspense. Once again, Patricia Cornwell proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.
Chris Carter - The Crucifix Killer
When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in the middle of Los Angeles National Forest, Homicide Detective Robert Hunter finds himself entering a horrific and recurring nightmare. Naked, strung from two wooden posts, the victim was sadistically tortured before meeting an excruciatingly painful death. All the skin has been ripped from her face - while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer.
But that's impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true? Is the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him?
Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining.
Chris Carter - The Death Sculptor
_Good job you didn't turn on the lights..._
A student nurse has the shock of her life when she discovers her patient, prosecutor Derek Nicholson, brutally murdered in his bed. The act seems senseless - Nicholson was terminally ill with only weeks to live. But what most shocks Detective Robert Hunter of the Los Angeles Robbery Homicide Division is the calling card the killer left behind.
For Hunter, there is no doubt that the killer is trying to communicate with the police, but the method is unlike anything he's ever seen before. And what could the hidden message be?
Just as Hunter and his partner Garcia reckon they've found a lead, a new body is found - and a new calling card. But with no apparent link between the first and second victims, all the progress they've made so far goes out of the window.
Pushed into an uncomfortable alliance with the confident Alice Beaumont, Hunter must race to put together the pieces of the investigation... before the Death Sculptor puts the final touches to his masterpiece.
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Isaac Asimov's I, Robot - To Protect
_First in an all-new trilogy inspired by Isaac Asimov's legendary science fiction collection I, Robot._
2035: Susan Calvin is beginning her residency at a Manhattan teaching hospital, where a select group of patients is receiving the latest in diagnostic advancements: tiny nanobots, injected into the spinal fluid, that can unlock and map the human mind.
Soon, Susan begins to notice an ominous chain of events surrounding the patients. When she tries to alert her superiors, she is ignored by those who want to keep the project far from any scrutiny for the sake of their own agenda. But what no one knows is that the very technology to which they have given life is now under the control of those who seek to spread only death...
Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly
The world's number-one-bestselling crime writer is back with another scorching thriller featuring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida. There she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock of her life.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of deductive reasoning (somewhat mistakenly - see inductive reasoning) and astute observation to solve difficult cases. He is arguably the most famous fictional detective.
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Isaac Asimov's I, Robot - To Obey
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
_2036: Robotic technology has evolved into the realm of self-aware, sentient mechanical entities. But even as humanity contends with the consequences of its most brilliant creation, there are those who have their own designs for the robots: enslavement…or annihilation._
Susan Calvin is about to enter her second year as a psych resident at the Manhattan Hasbro teaching hospital when a violent crime strikes her very close to home.
When she was young, Susan lost her mother in a terrible car wreck that also badly injured her father. She now believes the accident was an attempted murder by government powers who wanted her parents dead. Susan has always known that there was a faction of the U.S. government that wanted to hijack her father’s work for military use. Now, it seems that faction is back.
As she struggles to overcome her pain and confusion as well as deal with her studies, Susan finds herself hunted by violent anti-tech vigilantes who would revert mankind to the dark ages—and at the same time watched very closely by extremists who want high-tech genocide. Somehow she must find a way to stop them both.
Michael Connelly - Echo Park
In 1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto. Bosch begins to crack when he realises that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1993 which could have prevented the nine murders that followed the killing of Marie Gesto...
Caleb Carr - The Angel of Darkness
In one of the most critically acclaimed novels of the year, Caleb Carr-- bestselling author of The Alienist--pits Dr. Laszlo Kreizler and his colleagues against a murderer as evil as the darkest night. . . .
Tami Hoag - A Thin Dark Line
When a sadistic act of violence leaves a woman dead...
When a tainted piece of evidence lets her killer walk...
How far would you go to see justice done?
From New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag comes a taut, terrifying thriller as chilling as Night Sins, as nerve-shattering as
Guilty as Sin. When murder erupts in a small Southern town, Tami Hoag leads readers on a frightening journey to the shadowy boundary between attraction and obsession, law and justice--and exposes the rage that lures people over...
Pamela Bichon's killer is free, the case against him dismissed on a technicality. In the eyes of the law it doesn't matter that the prosecutor's key piece of evidence proves Marcus Renard's guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. All that matters is that the evidence was never listed on a search warrant and it was seized by a detective with a questionable past and a nasty reputation.
But the investigation isn't over--not for Cajun cop Nick Fourcade, who stands accused of planting the evidence. He's stepped over the line before and this case could push him over the edge. His orders are to move on, but obsession fills his mind with the nightmare images of Pamela Bichon's agonizing death, of Marcus Renard's arrogant triumph, and of his own capacity for exacting vengeance.
Deputy Annie Broussard can't walk away from the homicide either. She found the body.
She still hears the phantom echoes of dying screams, still feels the shadow of a woman taken by violence and denied justice. But pursuing the investigation will mean forming an uneasy alliance with Fourcade, a man she doesn't trust. It will mean subjecting herself to growing harassment from her fellow cops. And it will mean letting herself be drawn into the confidence of a suspected killer.
As Fourcade challenges her again and again to reach deeper into the case and into her own soul, Annie will find herself at the center of a maze of treachery and deceit. And the closer she draws to the brutal truth, the deadlier the chase will become.
The search for the truth has begun--one that will lead down a twisted trail through the steamy bayous of Louisiana, and deep into the darkest reaches of the human heart.
Karin Slaughter - Fractured
Ansley Park is one of Atlanta’s most upscale neighborhoods—but in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager’s lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter’s attacker with her bare hands. Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is one of the first on the scene. Trent soon sees something that the Atlanta cops are missing, something in the trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in the eyes of the stunned mother. When another teenage girl goes missing, Trent knows that this case, which started in the best of homes, is about to cut quick and deep through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where human demons emerge with a vengeance.
Daniel Keyes - The Touch
Karen and Barney Stark were an ordinary young couple. More than anything they wanted a baby of their own. Finally, after months of waiting, Karen discovers she's pregnant. Suddenly a radiation accident turns their happiness into an endless nightmare.
Charlaine Harris - Dead Until Dark
In Dead Until Dark Sookie Stackhouse is a telepath who lives in a world where vampires have "come out of the coffins" (vampires have come out to the public and become legal citizens). Many vampires are "mainstreaming" (coexisting with humans) since the Japanese developed a synthetic blood that makes it possible for vampires to live in the open without the need to hunt humans for sustenance. Sookie lives with her grandmother, Adele and has an older brother, Jason.
Sookie falls in love with a vampire, a Civil War veteran named Bill Compton. Amazingly, vampires' minds are 'silent' to Sookie, which is heaven for her as human minds are difficult to shut out and bombard her constantly with their thoughts. In his first visit, Sookie saves him from the Rattrays (vampire drainers) and Bill returns her favor the next day when the Rattrays attack Sookie.
In the meantime, there are several murders in Bon Temps and people believe that Bill is behind these murders as many of the victims have fang marks in their bodies. But the local police suspect Jason Stackhouse and later arrest him, because he has been sexually linked to two of the victims. Sookie wants to help her brother and asks Bill to take her to a vampire bar in Shreveport, LA called Fangtasia. Fangtasia is owned by Eric Northman, a vampire sheriff who is much older and more powerful than Bill. Eric soon discovers that Sookie's ability is very useful and orders Bill to have Sookie use her mind reading ability to determine the identity of the person who has been stealing a large sum of money from his bar. Sookie finds out that Eric's partner, Long Shadow (vampire), has been stealing the money and she almost gets killed in the process. Eric saves Sookie's life by staking Long Shadow when he attacks her.
Back in Bon Temps, Sookie finds her own grandmother slaughtered in the kitchen. On the other hand, Bill, concerned with Eric's power over him and Sookie, decides to gain his own position within their vampire hierarchy. He asks Bubba, a dim witted vampire, to protect Sookie while he is gone. Later, Sookie discovers that her boss, Sam is a shape shifter when she lets a stray dog sleep beside her and finds a naked Sam in the morning. While Bill is gone, Sookie discovers that the murderer is Rene and he almost kills her, but Sookie is able to fight back. She wakes up in the hospital badly injured with Bill by her side. Bill tells Sookie that he has become his area's investigator, working under Eric.
Patricia Cornwell - Predator
Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues-Benton Wesley, Pete Marino, and her niece Lucy Farinelli-return to a series of forensic cases as haunting as any they have ever tackled. Working with the National Forensic Institute in Florida, Scarpetta and Marino examine the X-rays of a man who has died from a shotgun blast to the chest. But the pellets embedded show a strange 'pinball' pattern and the two can't help but wonder if this points to suicide-or to murder.
In an abandoned house in the rural South, a woman is held against her will. Her captor is unknown to her-and indeed unseen-but even in the dark, she knows that he is near. And on Cape Cod, Lucy awakens to a gray winter morning and the sure feeling that she has made a dreadful mistake.
Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling
Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit -- almost -- as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make ends meet, Bernie's forced, on occasion, to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which, he likes it.
Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.
The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume, however, is a different story. Drugged by the client's female go-between, Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone, the lady dead, a smoking gun in his hand, and the cops at the door. And suddenly he's got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer -- before he's booked for Murder One.