Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta Series, In Order
By Emily Martin
Patricia Cornwell has been bringing thriller fans Kay Scarpetta novels for over thirty years. And each book is more exciting than the last. Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia at Richmond. In part, Cornwell based the character on a real person, the former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Marcella Farinelli Fierro. Scarpetta is known as one of the top forensic pathologists in the country, and the Scarpetta thrillers are notable for their use of forensic technologies in each investigation.
Over the course of nearly thirty novels in the past thirty years, Kay Scarpetta has solved many cases and made many friends and enemies along the way. Here are all the Kay Scarpetta books in order, so you don’t miss a single heart-pounding moment.
Four women have been murdered. The four victims have nothing in common aside from how violent their deaths were, and the fact that they were killed by the same “Mr. Nobdoy,” a killer who leaves no clues behind. But medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is determined to use the latest in forensic research to uncover the culprit.
Format
US-Tall Rack Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 29, 2009. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When successful writer Beryl Madison can’t escape the feeling of being followed and watched wherever she goes, she escapes Key West in the hopes of eluding her stalker. But upon arriving in Richmond, she is decapitated. Who did it? And why is Beryl’s latest manuscript now missing? That’s what Kay Scarpetta intends to find out.
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 1, 2020. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Virgina might be for lovers, but in Richmond, Virginia, those young lovers are getting killed off. Kay Scarpetta discovers a trail of evidence that connects these new deaths from a horrifying crime in the past, but this killer knows how to get rid of clues, even when someone is hot on his trail. Will Kay be able to find him before he disappears?
Format
US-Tall Rack Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 30, 2009. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
After the execution of convicted murderer Ronnie Waddell, Kay Scarpetta is called in to autopsy the body. But days after Waddell’s death, another young boy is murdered in the same fashion of the executed serial killer. And Waddell’s fingerprints are found at the scene of the crime. How is it possible for a deceased murderer to commit a crime?
Format
US-Tall Rack Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around November 1, 2005. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Black Mountain, North Carolina, is a sleepy town where crime isn’t something most residents worry about. But then an 11-year-old girl is found murdered, and Dr. Kay Scarpetta is brought in to apply her forensic skills to the case.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 12, 1994. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Most people love Christmas, but the holidays have never been Kay Scarpetta’s favorite time of year. The holidays mean more crime, and more work. This Christmas, she is called to examine the body of a woman found naked and propped against a fountain in Central Park. All signs point to Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta’s arch nemesis.
Format
Hardcover
(Large Type / large print edition)
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 2, 1995. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
On New Year’s Eve, Dr. Kay Scarpetta explores a ship graveyard to recover the human remains of investigative reporter Ted Eddings. What kind of story was Eddings chasing when he got killed? Soon, Scarpetta will discover that the reporter’s death is only the tip of the iceberg.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around January 2, 2007. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When a farmhouse is destroyed in a fire, Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds a body in the aftermath of the fire. Meanwhile, Carrie Gretchen, a killer who nearly destroyed Scarpetta’s life, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. And she’s on a mission for revenge.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 6, 1998. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In Ireland, five bodies have been found completely mutilated, missing their heads and their limbs. Four more victims are found back in Virginia, similarly mutilated. The public panics, worrying that a serial butcher is on the loose. But the killer’s intentions are far darker than anything the public could ever imagine.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 14, 1997. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In this special Christmas novella, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Pete Marino, and Lucy Farinelli celebrate the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s. This story includes recipes and photographs.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 26, 1998. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
This thrilling story begins with the discovery of the remains of a stowaway in a cargo ship arriving in Virginia from Belgium. While Kay Scarpetta cannot immediately discern a cause of death, a strange tattoo on the victim’s body to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon. There she is sent on a mission that could completely destroy her career.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 2, 1999. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Kay Scarpetta is being framed for a murder, and she knows there’s no one she can trust. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is on trail, but Scarpetta is unsure he is responsible for any of the crimes he’s been accused of. Who is really behind the killing spree and the plot to frame Scarpetta?
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 1, 2001. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In Blow Fly, Kay Scarpetta has left her job and left Richmond, looking for a fresh start in Florida. As a private forensic consultant, she takes on the case of a woman who is found dead in a seedy hotel. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne has requested to see Scarpetta from his cell on death row.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 13, 2003. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Kay Scarpetta returns to Richmond when the city’s newly appointed chief medical examiner asks for her help. But when Scarpetta arrives at her former place of work, everything is in disarray. It turns out the chief medical examiner is not who summoned her after all, and Scarpetta is forced to work on the case of a murdered 14-year-old girl with very little help and an FBI agent meddling with the very little evidence there is.
Format
Compact Disc
(Abridged edition)
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 8, 2016. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Working freelance for the National Forensic Academy in Florida, Kay Scarpetta gets involved in the strangest case she has faced to date. As Scarpetta and her team look into a string of horrific crimes, they wonder if these events are related or completely random. And what kind of mind would do just horrific things?
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 26, 2006. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In Book of the Dead, Kay Scarpetta relocates to Charleston, South Carolina, to start a private forensics lab. When tennis star Drew Martin’s body is found mutilated in Rome, Scarpetta is on the case. But the murder investigation becomes all the more complicated when Scarpetta discovers connections to the death of an unidentified South Carolina boy and her old nemesis, Dr. Marilyn Self.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 2, 2008. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Kay Scarpetta takes on an assignment in New York City to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward who specifically requested her. Oscar Bane says his injuries were sustained during a murder that he himself did not commit. But can his strange story be trusted?
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 25, 2009. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Christmas time has come again, and this year Kay Scarpetta is working pro bono to help New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. She’s also been asked to join a live broadcast discussing the disappearance of Hannah Starr. But when Scarpetta returns home after the show, she finds a suspicious package waiting for her.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 20, 2009. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Over twenty years ago, Kay Scarpetta accepted a scholarship from the Air Force to help pay off her student debt. Now, Scarpetta’s ties to the military take her to Dover Air Force Base, joining a new training fellowship. And once again she’s confronted with a case that could mean the end of her career.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around August 30, 2011. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Kay Scarpetta’s former deputy chief Jack Fielding was brutally murdered six months ago, and Scarpetta is determined to find out what happened to him. Her investigation take her to the Georgia Prison for Women to investigate the murder of an Atlanta family and the mysterious deaths of unhoused people across the country.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 6, 2011. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When a woman disappears while digging a dinosaur bone bed in Canada, very little evidence is left behind. The only evidence there is is in Kay Scarpetta’s inbox, and she has no idea why. Could it be that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a string of murders happening much closer to home?
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 16, 2012. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Fresh off of working on the case of one of the worst mass murderers in US history, Kay Scarpetta gets a call in the early hours of the morning from Detective Pete Marino. The body of computer engineer Gail Shipton has been discovered on MIT campus. And Scarpetta fears the murder is connected to her computer genius niece Lucy.
Format
Hardcover
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around November 12, 2013. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
It’s Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and she’s getting ready to fly to Miami for a vacation with her husband, FBI-profiler Benton Wesley. But before they leave, Scarpetta notices seven pennies on the wall behind their house. All of the coins are dated 1981. Five minutes away, a high school teacher has been shot as he was unloading groceries from his car. And no one saw anything. So much for a few days off!
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 9, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Kay Scarpetta is working on a murder in Cambridge when she receives a strange alert on her phone. Immediately, a video starts playing that reveals surveillance footage of her niece Lucy that was taken nearly 20 years ago. The images reveal shocking secrets about the girl Scarpetta loves like a daughter. And she’s unsure who she can tell.
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 28, 2016. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
When 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River, it appears at first glance that the young woman was struck by lightning. But Kay Scarpetta suspects murder. Just as Scarpetta dives into the investigation, she starts receiving strange poems from a cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie, and she suspects he is somehow involved.
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 27, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
In the first post-pandemic Kay Scarpetta novel, Scarpetta has relocated to Old Town Alexandia with her husband Benton Wesley. The two live just five miles from the Pentagon during a time of political unrest. When Scarpetta is called to a murder scene where a woman’s body has been cut down the middle and left on railroad tracks, the forensic pathologist soon discovers this crime will hit unsettlingly close to home.
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 24, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Two years ago, the body of a former beauty queen was found washed up on the shores in Wallops Island, Virginia. Now, Kay Scarpetta has become the star witness in a highly televised murder trial. The investigation into the death of the beauty queen was previously botched by another forensic pathologist, and Scarpetta has been brought in to set the record straight. The victim was last seen alive on a boat with her fiancé, but did he commit the crime?
Format
Mass Market
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 12, 2023. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Unnatural Death is the latest Kay Scarpetta novel, and in it, we find our heroine in the Northern Virgina wilderness, examining the remains of two campers, who have been savagely mauled to the point where they are barely recognizable. The victims are thought to be a married couple who were being investigated for cybercrimes. But who would have murdered them in such a brutal way?
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 16, 2024. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Emily Martin has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. She’s a contributing editor at Book Riot and blogs/podcasts at Book Squad Goals.
