Invited to witness the X-ray scanning of a mummy, medical examiner Maura Isles is shocked to discover that the mummy is actually a recent murder victim, and joins forces with Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli in an investigation that uncovers other similar crimes.

"The new Kay Scarpetta novel . . . . After working one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history, Scarpetta returns home to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Exhausted and ill, she's recovering at home when she receives an unsettling call. The body of a young woman has been discovered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's rugby field. The victim, a graduate student named Gail Shipman, is oddly draped in ivory linen and posed in a way that is too...

Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles is summoned to the scene of a brutal killing and teams up with Detective Jane Rizzoli to investigate the victim's ties to Joyce O'Donnell, a cantankerous psychologist, and to a sinister cabal called the Mephisto Club.

Investigating two murders, the first of a nine-year-old Montreal girl and the second of a North Carolina teenager, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan delves into the world of motorcycle gangs.

Several years ago, several people witnessed a brutal rape and did nothing to stop it. Now those witnesses are being murdered one by one. Baltimore Homicide Detective J.D. Fitzpatrick believes the killer is closely linked to the rape victim and that forensic pathologist Dr. Lucy Trask is withholding information. Trask is impressed with J.D.'s passion, but she can't compromise herself by revealing her link to the killer.

"Reflecting on twenty years of investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, an NYC death investigator, the second woman ever hired for this role, shares how, in dealing with death every day, she learned surprising lessons about life--and how some of those lessons saved her from becoming a statistic herself"--

When Scarpetta examines a young man's body, she discovers stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler of her new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties, and she races against time to discover...

Young lovers are disappearing in Richmond, Virginia, only to be found later as mutilated corpses. Following a macabre trail of evidence that ties the present homicides to a grisly crime in the past, Dr. Kay Scarpetta must track down a murderer before another missing couple become the next victims.