Forensic Mystery Fiction

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.

After usurping control of the world’s most powerful military technology, General Chip Walden knows the endgame is near and tasks scientist Eric Hill with one final assignment. Helped by the love of his life, Jane Hunter, Hill is haunted by premonitions of a coming catastrophe as the technology he created takes on a life of its own. As Hill attempts to avert disaster, FBI Special Agent Bud Brown seeks revenge for the murder of his fellow agents by eco-terrorist Riona Finley. But what no one realizes is that forces are at work that have already decided humanity’s fate.

This collection contains books four to six in the gripping, fast-paced crime fiction series featuring DCI Whitney Walker and forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish: Lethal Secret, Last Breath, and Final Verdict.

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Andrea Kane brings fans a brand new series with her romantic thriller The Girl Who Disappeared Twice. Forensic Instincts—a team of independent maverick investigators comprised of a techie-genius, a former Navy SEAL/FBI agent, a psychic, and a retired FBI dog—must rescue a kidnapped five-year-old girl. But with so many people who could have benefited from the girl’s abduction, tracking down the culprit will push the team to the limit.

Le rêve brisé que je traîne derrière moi: le ballet. Je m’appelle Sarah et, autrefois, j’en faisais. Oh, je danse toujours...mais nue. Dans un bar. Ça reste de la danse. Voilà ce que je me répète sans cesse pour ne pas m’écrouler, pour tenter d’oublier à quel point ma vie est misérable.... En plus, je dois de l’argent à Carl, mon patron. Cinq mille dollars! Où vais-je bien pouvoir trouver une telle somme?

Together with his gorgeous sidekick, psychologist Kit Franklyn, the two make a powerful, although improbable, mystery-solving duo. Among the dead collected in The Big Easy floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina are three nude female bodies, all caught in the same brush tangle, none with water in their lungs. Broussard knows in his ample gut that this was not an act of God, and not the work of Katrina. But Broussard has perhaps the biggest challenge of his colorful career.

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.

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.

A mysterious electrical storm plunges Manhattan into darkness. As a strange, smothering fog rolls in, all communication crashes. In the blink of an eye, the island seems to vanish into a void. FBI special agent Jessica Blackwood and brilliant scientist Dr. Theo Cray know this isn’t a freak accident. It’s a sinister sleight of hand. Their greatest adversary, a serial killer and cultist known as the Warlock, has escaped during a prison transfer in New York. A depraved master of manipulation, he promised the end of days. He’s making good on it.

Dolphins are magical creatures: They comfort the heartbroken, rescue the lost, even heal the sick. At the Hope Key Dolphin Assisted Therapy center in Florida dolphins use their healing powers to help autistic children communicate and to soothe other troubled people. But what if you don't want help? What if you've gone so far down the wrong path that you can't go back? Katy Grant can't see any way back from the path her life has taken. And she doesn't really care. Working at Hope Key keeps her out of jail. And it just might give her the chance at revenge she wants on the man who ruined her life.

Physically and psychologically bruised by her encounter with the killer Chandonne, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has to leave her home in the hands of the police team investigating the attack. She finds shelter with an old friend, Anna Zenner, but it is not the haven of security she needs when she discovers that Anna has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury that is investigating Scarpetta for murder. Kay knows she is being framed, and she knows she can trust no one.

When a top secret program of implanting harrowing memories into innocent people comes to light, neurosurgeon Tom McCarthy is literally caught in the crossfire. While McCarthy looks forward to a three day weekend, his office is suddenly raided by two Department of Defense investigators bent on arresting him for a crime he didn’t commit.

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.

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever, and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.

While speaking at a Hong Kong medical conference, neurosurgeon Dr. Lucas McCrae slips the cloth off a cadaver's head during a routine medical demonstration, and is overwhelmed with the shock by what's staring back at him: His best friend, Andy Baer. Stunned, McCrae races back to Seattle to discover that Andy is in fact missing and may have been murdered by a gang of body snatchers who operate a legit funeral business and make a fortune by selling recovered body parts to medical researchers.

It’s never easy working fire scenes, Tempe thinks. Called to Washington, DC to analyze the victims of a building set ablaze amid mysterious circumstances, she sees all her misgivings justified. The building site is in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood with a colorful past and present, and the property’s ownership becomes even more suspicious when Tempe delves into its past. The pieces start falling into place strangely and quickly, and, sensing a good story, Tempe teams with a new ally, telejournalist Ivy Doyle.

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.

Saturday night dates at the skating rink have been a tradition in the small southern town of Heartsdale for as long as anyone can remember, but when a teenage quarrel explodes into a deadly shoot-out, Sara Linton - the town's pediatrician and medical examiner - finds herself entangled in a terrible tragedy.

When human bones are found beneath an old chapel in the woods, evidence suggests the remains could be linked to the decades-old case of missing teen Annalise Jansen. Homicide detective Jane Munro—pregnant and acutely attuned to the preciousness of life—hopes the grim discovery will finally bring closure to the girl’s family. But for a group of Annalise’s old friends, once dubbed the Shoreview Six by the media, it threatens to expose a terrible pledge made on an autumn night forty-seven years ago.