Patricia Cornwell

Author Information
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  • Bibliography:
    39 Books (5 Series)
  • First Book:
    September 1990
  • Latest Book:
    October 2024
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About the Author

Patricia Cornwell is a Senior Fellow at the International Crime Scene Academy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a founder of the Virginia Institiute of Forensic Science and Medicine and a member of the Harvard affiliated McLean Hospital's national Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research.
She is the 2008 winner of the Galaxy British Books Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year - the first American ever to win this prestigious award. Her most recent number one bestsellers include: Scarpetta; Book of the Dead; The Front and Portrait of a Killer; Jack the Ripper - Cased Closed. Her earlier works include Postmortem - the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year - and Cruel and Unusual, which won the coveted Gold Dagger Award in 1993.
Visit the author's website at www.patriciacornwell.com

Full Series List in Order

Andy Brazil

1 - Hornet's Nest (Jan-1997)
2 - Southern Cross (Jan-1999)
3 - Isle of Dogs (Oct-2001)

Captain Chase

1 - Quantum (Oct-2019)
2 - Spin (Jan-2021)

Kay Scarpetta

1 - Postmortem (Sep-1990)
2 - Body of Evidence (Apr-1992)
3 - All That Remains (Aug-1992)
4 - Cruel and Unusual (Jun-1993)
5 - The Body Farm (Sep-1994)
6 - From Potter's Field (Aug-1995)
7 - Cause of Death (Jul-1996)
8 - Unnatural Exposure (Jul-1997)
9 - Point of Origin (Jul-1998)
10 - Black Notice (Aug-1999)
11 - The Last Precinct (Oct-2000)
12 - Blow Fly (Oct-2003)
13 - Trace (Sep-2004)
14 - Predator (Oct-2005)
15 - Book of the Dead (Nov-2006)
16 - Scarpetta (Dec-2008)
17 - The Scarpetta Factor (Oct-2009)
18 - Port Mortuary (Dec-2010)
19 - Red Mist (Dec-2011)
20 - The Bone Bed (Oct-2012)
21 - Dust (Nov-2013)
22 - Flesh and Blood (Nov-2014)
23 - Depraved Heart (Nov-2015)
24 - Chaos (Nov-2016)
25 - Autopsy (Nov-2021)
26 - Livid (Nov-2022)
27 - Unnatural Death (Nov-2023)

Kay Scarpetta Cookbooks

1 - Scarpetta's Winter Table (Oct-1998)
2 - Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen (Oct-2001)

Win Garano and Monique Lamont

1 - At Risk (Jun-2006)
2 - The Front (May-2008)

Book List in Order: 39 titles

  • Postmortem

    Kay Scarpetta - 1

    Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, digs into a case more bizarre than any she has ever faced, one that has produced not only unusual physical evidence, but also tantalizing clues about the inner workings of ...

  • Body of Evidence

    Kay Scarpetta - 2

    Another thrilling novel from the bestselling author of Postmortem and Black Notice After months of menacing phone calls and feeling that her every move is being watched, successful writer Beryl Madison flees Key West when a terrifying message is scra...

  • All That Remains

    Kay Scarpetta - 3

    A killer is stalking young lovers. Taking their lives ... and leaving just one tantalising clue When the bodies of young courting couples start turning up in remote woodlands areas, Dr Kay Scarpetta's task as Chief Medical Examiner is made more dif...

  • Cruel and Unusual

    Kay Scarpetta - 4

    11:05 p.m. Convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the Commonwealth of Virginia's electric chair. In the morgue, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been waiting for Waddell's body. It's a strange feeling, preparing for an autopsy before the su...

  • The Body Farm

    Kay Scarpetta - 5

    Kay Scarpetta is back, consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, in her grittiest and most compelling case yet. In rural North Carolina, the brutal murder of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner has shaken a small town. But more...

  • From Potter's Field

    Kay Scarpetta - 6

    Upon examining a dead woman found in snowbound Central Park, Scarpetta immediately recognizes the grisly work of Temple Brooks Gault, a bold, brilliant killer from her past. Soon she realizes that Gault's murders are but a violent chain leading up to...

  • Cause of Death

    Kay Scarpetta - 7

    It is New Year's Eve, the last day of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War. Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of a ship graveyard to recover the very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter. What kind of story w...

  • Hornet's Nest

    Andy Brazil - 1

    Meet the police department of Charlotte North Carolina. And find out why they call it the 'Hornets Nest of America.' Andy Brazil, an ambitious young reporter for The Charlotte Observer and an eager - sometimes too eager- volunteer cop; Police Chief J...

  • Unnatural Exposure

    Kay Scarpetta - 8

    A body is discovered in a Virginia landfill. The details--expert removal of head and limbs--mirror that of a case Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been investigating in Ireland. But for Scarpeita, the game has only just begun. The killer boldly contacts her via...



  • Point of Origin

    Kay Scarpetta - 9

    The devastating fire tore through the horse farm, destroying everything it touched. Picking through the wreckage, Dr. Kay Scarpetta uncovers human remains--the work of an audacious and wily killer who uses fire to mask his brutal murders. And when Sc...

  • Scarpetta's Winter Table

    Kay Scarpetta Cookbooks - 1

    Virginia's chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her friends and family come together for the holidays to cook and celebrate in a special novella for the author's many fans that includes Christmas recipes and photographs. 50,000 first printing...

  • Southern Cross

    Andy Brazil - 2

    Richmond, Virginia, is a city rich in Southern history, yet overrun by such modern-day problems as drug trafficking and escalating juvenile crime. Former Charlotte police chief Judy Hammer is brought in to clean up the police force--the most difficul...

  • Life's Little Fable

    Jarrod has a carefree, innocent existence in a far-off land, but faces temptation when he is offered anything he wants in return for venturing into a forbidden pond, in this Eden-like fable. 50,000 first printing....

  • Black Notice

    Kay Scarpetta - 10

    While Lucy Fairnelli goes undercover in Miami to bring down a notorious criminal cartel, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and Pete Marino discover a body in a cargo ship recently arrived from Belgium at Virginia’s Deep Water Terminal in Richmond. Initially it see...

  • The Last Precinct

    Kay Scarpetta - 11

    Thwarting an attack by a suspected serial killer puts Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta in the harsh-glare of the spotlight. As her personal and professional lives come under suspicion, she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders ...

  • Isle of Dogs

    Andy Brazil - 3

    Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, and warns that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric island of Tangier, fourteen miles off th...

  • Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen

    Kay Scarpetta Cookbooks - 2

  • Blow Fly

    Kay Scarpetta - 12

    Settling into her new life as a private forensic consultant, Kay Scarpetta agrees to investigate a cold-case in Louisiana--the baffling eight-year-old murder of a woman with a history of blackouts and violent outbursts. Then she receives news that ch...

  • Portrait Of A Killer: Jack The Ripper-- Case Closed

    Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus.

    In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror.  An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally...



  • Trace

    Kay Scarpetta - 13

    Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing from South Florida, returns to the city that turned its back on her five years ago. Richmond, Virginia's recently appointed chief medical examiner claims that he needs Scarpetta's help to solve a perplexing crime. W...

  • Predator

    Kay Scarpetta - 14

    Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, digs into a case more bizarre than any she has ever faced, one that has produced not only unusual physical evidence, but also tantalizing clues about the inner workings of an e...

  • At Risk

    Win Garano and Monique Lamont - 1

    A Massachusetts state investigator is called home from Knoxville, Tennessee, where he is completing a course at the National Forensic Academy. His boss, the district attorney, attractive but hard-charging, is planning to run for governor, and as a sh...

  • Book of the Dead

    Kay Scarpetta - 15

    The Book of the Dead is the morgue kg, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire a new meaning. Starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in the historic city of Cha...

  • The Front

    Win Garano and Monique Lamont - 2

    At Risk featured Massachusetts state investigator Win Garano, a shrewd man of mixed-race background and a not inconsiderable chip on his shoulder; District Attorney Monique Lamont, a hard-charging woman with powerful ambitions and a troubling willing...

  • Scarpetta

    Kay Scarpetta - 16

    Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital?s psychiatric prison ward. The han...

  • The Scarpetta Factor

    Kay Scarpetta - 17

    It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta -- despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN -- to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Med...

  • Port Mortuary

    Kay Scarpetta - 18

    Two baffling cases of carefully conceived murder, one in the distant past and one all too recent, dominate this new Kay Scarpetta novel. A South African hate crime at the very beginning of Kay's career merges with an insidious "post-mortem" slaying t...

  • Red Mist

    Kay Scarpetta - 19

    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 k...

  • The Bone Bed

    Kay Scarpetta - 20

    A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. ...



  • Dust

    Kay Scarpetta - 21

    From the world’s number-one bestselling crime writer comes the extraordinary new Kay Scarpetta novel. Massachusetts Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has just returned from working one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history when she’s a...

  • Flesh and Blood

    Kay Scarpetta - 22

    It’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and she’s about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their Cambridge house. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all o...

  • Depraved Heart

    Kay Scarpetta - 23

    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 clea...

  • Chaos

    Kay Scarpetta - 24

    On a hot late summer evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her investigative partner Pete Marino respond to a call about a dead bicyclist  near the Kennedy School of Government. It appears that a young woman has been attacked wi...

  • Quantum

    Captain Chase - 1

    International bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers pulse-pounding thrills in the first book in a series featuring a brilliant and unusual new heroine, cutting-edge cybertechnology, and stakes that are astronomically high. On the eve of a ...

  • Spin

    Captain Chase - 2

    Captain Calli Chase races against time to thwart a plot that leaves the fate of humanity hanging in the balance in this new thriller from international bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wr...

  • Autopsy

    Kay Scarpetta - 25

    In this relaunch of the electrifying, landmark #1 bestselling thriller series, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta hunts those responsible for two wildly divergent and chilling murders. Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has come almost full...

  • Livid

    Kay Scarpetta - 26

    The new Kay Scarpetta Thriller from the legendary Patricia Cornwell. 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 ...

  • Unnatural Death

    Kay Scarpetta - 27

    Two mauled bodies in the woods. Top secret autopsies. The most chilling cases of Scarpetta’s career. In this thrilling new installment of Patricia Cornwell’s #1 bestselling Scarpetta series, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta find...

  • Identity Unknown

    The next installment in the popular Kay Scarpetta series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a...



Award-Winning Books by Patricia Cornwell

Postmortem
1991 Anthony Award -- First Novel
1991 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- First Novel
1991 Macavity Award -- First Mystery


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Patricia Cornwell has published 39 books.

The next book by Patricia Cornwell, Identity Unknown, will be published in October 2024.

The first book by Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem, was published in September 1990.

Yes. Patricia Cornwell has 5 series.
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