Forensic Mysteries

If you thought fiction couldn't get darker then think again. Nineteen Seventy Seven, the second instalment of the Red Riding Quartet, is one long nightmare.Its heroes - the half decent copper Bob Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - would be considered villains in most people's books.

She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Cat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Cat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are sceptical. The mayor won't listen. And Cat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens.

Modern technology has given rise to electronic medical records, remote monitoring systems, and satellite-enabled real-time examinations in which patient and physician might be separated by thousands of miles. Yet, when it comes to diagnosing difficult cases, the clinician's strongest asset might just be one of the oldest tools of the medical profession - careful listening.

To Senior Medical Examiner Dr. Beckett Campbell, the Hippocratic Oath has always been more of a suggestion than a guiding principle.... Beckett is no ordinary forensic pathologist, which is why he's not surprised when a container with expertly removed organs arrives on his desk. What is alarming, however, is the note that accompanies it...the note that suggests this is only the beginning, that more are on their way.

Senator Ashley Butler is a quintessential Southern demagogue whose support of traditional American values includes a knee-jerk reaction against virtually all biotechnologies. When he's called to chair a subcommittee introducing legislation to ban new cloning technology, the senator views his political future in bold relief; and Dr. Daniel Lowell, inventor of the technique that will take stem cell research to the next level, sees a roadblock positioned before his biotech startup.

"Dog days and the fresh bodies are arriving once again." So begins the fall term at South Carolina Medical College, where Dr. Jacob Thacker is on probation for Xanax abuse. His interim career - working public relations for the dean - takes an unnerving detour into the past when the bones of African American slaves, over a century old, are unearthed on the campus. Out of the college’s dark past, these bones threaten to rise and condemn the present.

Veterinarian Samantha Lewis and her team are dedicated to providing a sanctuary for unwanted, abused, and abandoned dogs in New York City. But every day it gets harder to operate her no-kill shelter. Sam is already at her breaking point when she learns of an unidentified, dangerous virus spreading through their neighborhood. The medical community can determine only that animals are the carriers.

Dr. Theo Cray has a legendary mathematical knack for catching serial killers. Until his exposure to a mind-altering pathogen knocks him off his game. It has upended an investigation, destroyed his reputation, and left him to question his own sanity. One person still trusts him to finish the job. His former professor Amanda Paulson is helping point Cray down a logical path to his prey: a nomadic health-care worker whose murder spree stretches back decades and whose victims number in the hundreds.

His wife is dying of lymphoma; a murder-suicide is upending his department; his best friend is in florid manic psychosis, as a virus from his laboratory wreaks havoc—and things are about to get complicated: Meet Dr. Noah Brugge, chief medical examiner of Vermont.

Dr. Hope Sze launches into her general surgery rotation with Dr. Vrac, the scourge of operating room three, also known as the death OR. Dr. Vrac screams at the resident doctors suffering under him, the nurses who don't move fast enough, the anesthesiologist, his auto mechanic, and even a garbage can.

July 22, 2011, was the darkest day in Norway's history since Nazi Germany's invasion. It was 189 minutes of terror - from the moment the bomb exploded outside a government building until Anders Behring Breivik was apprehended by the police at Utoya Island. Breivik murdered 77 people, most of them teenagers and young adults, and wounded hundreds more. Breivik is a "lone wolf killer", often overlooked until they commit their crime. Breivik is also unique as he is the only lone wolf killer in recent history to still be alive and in captivity.

Straight out of today's hospitals and labs, and tomorrow's headlines, comes a frightening, scalpel-sharp thriller from medical insider Joshua Spanogle. In an astounding debut, Spanogle takes us on an all-too-real race against time as a young doctor enters the dark side of scientific research, desperate to stop a terrifying epidemic before it is too late.

His name is ARTIE, a miracle of bio-engineering that is about to transform the field of neurosurgery. Dr. Jessie Copeland knows him better than anyone else at Eastern Mass Medical Center- and knows it's too soon to be using the tiny robot on a living patient's brain. But, Jessie's department chief is too busy to worry about such ethics. And neither of them has any idea that ARTIE will attract a patient from their worst nightmares.

A journalist with a history of bending the facts uncovers a story about a medical breakthrough so astonishing it needs no embellishment - but behind the game-changing science lies a gruesome secret.

Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world, hosts an F1 race, the largest sporting event in the city's history and a prime target for terrorism. With over a half million people descending on the Strip for the event, a bomb detonated in a parking garage days before the race. In the emergency room, Doc fights to save the lives of a pregnant doctor and her premature baby injured in the blast, spurring him to risk his own life to find justice for the victims.

Tanna Christensen spent countless hours planning for her first gross anatomy dissection, but nothing could have prepared her for what she’s found. Beneath her scalpel lies a cadaver riddled with disturbing genetic abnormalities—evidence pointing to an unthinkable crime.

There’s a body crushed under a load of pipes on a San Francisco construction site, and medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska is on call. So it’s her job to figure out who it is - and her headache when the autopsy reveals that the death is a homicide staged as an accident. Jessie is hot on the murderer’s trail, then an earthquake sends her and her whole city reeling. When the dust clears, her case has fallen apart and an innocent man is being framed. Jessie knows she’s the only one who can prove it, and she races to piece together the truth.

Forensic entomologist Vanessa Marwood has built her career on her love of insects and the vital information these tiny creatures can provide at the scene of a crime. Just as she is about to board a plane for her dream job at a lab in New York, Vanessa receives a call about a chilling set of murders in her hometown. Not only have four innocent victims lost their lives in a single night, but the killer has sewn spider silk into their wounds. Vanessa swore she would never return to Greensands. But this case, and the dark secrets of her childhood, are drawing her back.

Kelsey is a rookie forensic investigator trying to balance the demands of her job and the challenges of her obsessive compulsive disorder. Her new coworkers aren’t too welcoming - their idea of fun involves morbid pranks and gallows humor. Zara is a patrol officer with her eye on the narcotics department, determined to avenge her sister’s overdose death. But the chief won’t promote her - not until she overcomes her fear of death scenes. When a call comes in for an apparent suicide, meticulous Kelsey meets anxious Zara, and they’ve both got something to prove.

A legal and political thriller ripped from today’s headlines. Michael MacDougall volunteers for a medical aid charity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Traumatized by his experiences in Africa, he goes down a path that he never would have imagined possible, resulting in a global manhunt and a riveting trial.