Forensic Mysteries

Before my world came crashing down, I had it all. The successful career I dreamed of. The beautiful red-brick home where I could relax in front of the fire. The handsome, devoted husband whose blue eyes and charming smile always made me feel safe. As I call time of death, my voice is steady. My colleagues stand hushed around me, their eyes on me, confused, concerned.

When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead. In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population - killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant - the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power - and the strong who possess it.

John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice, and how did an American soldier end up in Canada?

If the biblical plagues of Egypt truly happened—could they happen again—on a global scale? Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, Professor Harold McCabe comes stumbling out of the sands, but he dies before he can tell his story. Then an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone had begun to mummify the professor's body—while he was still alive. Subsequently, the medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease. Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force. The call is urgent, for Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses.

It's New Year's Eve, the final night of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, and another poor soul has turned up dead. Ted Eddings, a scuba diver and investigative reporter who was a favorite at the medical examiner's office, is found 30 feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia, can't help but wonder why she received a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified.

In Danielle Steel’s powerful new novel, four trauma doctors - the best and brightest in their field - confront exciting new challenges, both personally and professionally, when given an unusual opportunity. When an unspeakable act of mass violence galvanizes them into action, their temporary life in Paris becomes a stark turning point: a time to face harder choices than they have ever made before - with consequences that will last a lifetime.

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and she hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna suffers from a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.” Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods represent the last possible hope of solving the infamous “Anna O” case by waking Anna up so she can stand trial.

It’s the kind of case that chills Caitlyn to the bone. Missing person. College student. Beloved daughter of a world leader in biotechnology. She was last seen on a spring break cruise. No witnesses. No motives. Just one possible lead - reports of a stranger who may have lured the young archeology major off the ship and into the jungles of Guatemala. When Caitlyn follows her hunch into the jungle - with the FBI’s Jake Carver by her side - the trail takes a surprising turn into the very heart of darkness.

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come.

As a physician in the ER of a rural South Carolina hospital, Dr. Rhea Lynch is a dedicated healer, a woman of science, and to some degree, a skeptic. But her most fundamental beliefs are put to the test with the arrival of a traveling faith healer, whose "cures" produce some baffling mysteries: a young quadriplegic woman can suddenly move her arms; a chronic pain sufferer begins to dance again. Events go from bizarre to deadly with the arrival of a gravely injured but violent young woman determined to practice a dark, deadly magic.

En route to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 earlier.

After Dr. Jack Stapleton’s near-death confrontation with a medical serial killer, his wife, NYC Chief Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery, is carrying the load both at work and at home. When Laurie insists that Dr. Ryan Sullivan—an underperforming senior pathology resident who is spending his required month at the medical examiner's office but who truly detests doing forensic autopsies—assist her on a suicide autopsy in hopes of stimulating his interest in the field, the last thing she expects is to be unwittingly drawn into a major conspiracy that puts her own life in jeopardy.

A top nuclear scientist goes mad and takes an innocent family hostage at gunpoint, killing one and causing a massive standoff. A plume of radiation above New York City leads to a warehouse where, it seems, a powerful nuclear bomb was assembled just hours before. Sifting through the evidence, authorities determine that the unthinkable is about to happen: in ten days, a major American city will be vaporized by a terrorist attack.

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

Chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is the reluctant star witness in a sensational murder trial when she receives shocking news. The judge’s sister has been found dead. At first glance, it appears to be a home invasion, but then why was nothing stolen, and why is the garden strewn with dead plants and insects? Although there is no apparent cause of death, Scarpetta recognizes telltale signs of the unthinkable, and she knows the worst is yet to come. The forensic pathologist finds herself pitted against a powerful force that returns her to the past.

Powerful entertainment from the crime fiction superstar who combines riveting authenticity with witty, elegant prose. Best selling author Kathy Reichs "keeps the twists coming, and by the novel's climax, she has skillfully interwoven her many subplots and red herrings into a satisfying puddle of sex, sleaze, greed and gore," says Publishers Weekly.

Mon seul problème, c’est que j’aimerais gagner plus d’argent. J’en ai besoin pour finir mes travaux dans la pièce insonorisée. Si je veux l’utiliser, un jour.... Je devrais peut-être creuser du côté de ce laboratoire, celui qui cherche des candidats pour tester un nouveau médicament. Ça paie drôlement bien ! Avec tout ce fric, ma salle de jeux serait rapidement opérationnelle.

Convicted serial killer Carrie Grethen has escaped from a psychiatric hospital with plans for revenge. Wary and shaken, Scarpetta also has to investigate the death by fire of an unknown woman. The post mortem reveals that the woman was stabbed before the fire was started, and soon Scarpetta and her colleagues are called out to the scene of another fire and another murder.

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. So when his police colleagues dismiss the death of a man as a squabble among Bristol's homeless community, Detective Sergeant George Cross is not convinced.

It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life. Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.