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Patricia Cornwell, author of Autopsy: A Scarpetta Novel

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has come almost full circle, returning to Virginia as the chief medical examiner, the state where she launched her storied career. Just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks where a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine. At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret laboratory in outer space, endangering at least two scientists aboard. Appointed to the highly classified Doomsday Commission that specializes in sensitive national security cases, Scarpetta is summoned to the White House and tasked with finding out exactly what happened. But even as she works the first potential crime scene in space remotely, an apparent serial killer strikes again very close to home.

Week of May 23, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of May 23rd include THE MADNESS OF CROWDS, the 17th installment in Louise Penny's bestselling mystery series starring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, which our reviewer calls "perhaps Penny’s most powerful novel as it explores the psychological and emotionally charged national and international conundrums of the post-pandemic world"; THE MAIDENS by Alex Michaelides, a spellbinding tale of psychological suspense, weaving together Greek mythology, murder and obsession; MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, Joshua Henkin's sweeping and compassionate novel about a young woman who falls in love and marries a hotshot young Shakespeare professor --- at which point her life takes a turn she never could have anticipated; and WAR ON THE BORDER by Jeff Guinn, a dramatic account of the “Punitive Expedition” of 1916 that brought Pancho Villa and Gen. John J. Pershing into conflict, and whose reverberations continue in the Southwestern US to this day.