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#2 in the Zack Walker Series
Zack is back, and much to his family's relief, the work-at-home science-fiction writer has left the house to take a job as a features writer for the city paper. But now that Zack's incessant plotting can no longer be hatched from the comforts of his own home, he must be ever more vigilant to outwit the evil at large, whether in the suburbs, the city, or his own imagination. Zack is ready...or so he thinks. While researching his first feature article, Zack stumbles upon a real-life crime scene, but what seems like an ordinary hit-and-run may actually be a homicide linked to a gang that's been burglarizing Crandall's high-end shops. Suddenly Zack finds himself at the center of a violent crime wave and destined for a confrontation with Barbie Bullock, an unsettling figure infamous in the crime syndicate for his ruthless business tactics and peculiar proclivity for collecting dolls. And all is not quiet on the home front either. Zack's protective instincts launch into overdrive when he discovers that his daughter's rejected suitor has been tracing her every step and may harbor a much more ominous motivation than winning a Saturday night date. Nor does his son's strange behavior and recent friendship with a creepy computer recluse inspire joy in a father's heart. As worlds begin to collide and boundaries between family and foe blur, Zack goes on the attack, and heaven help the bad guys when this resourceful father comes to make good on a deal gone bad.
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#2 in the Bill Tasker Series
FDLE agent Bill Tasker, still smarting from a run-in with the FBI that almost got him killed, reluctantly teams up with the bureau again on a case involving a stolen Stinger missile. The op goes smoothly enough (though the feds take all the credit-what else is new?), but something about the whole setup just doesn't feel right to him. Tasker pokes around a bit-and stirs up more trouble than a nest of rattlesnakes: with his boss, with the FBI, with the ATF, and, worst of all, with a certain gentleman who loves to see things blow up . . . bigger and bigger things,as it turns out. The bomber hasn't killed anybody yet, but if this FDLE agent keeps interfering-well, there's always a first time, isn't there?
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#3 in the Lydia Strong Series
Acclaimed artist Julian Ross has just been found standing over her husband's bloody corpse in their New York City apartment. Julian claims that she slept peacefully beside him while he was violently stabbed in their bed. But police are skeptical, especially since Julian's first husband was killed and mutilated in exactly the same way. Julian turns to the tough-as-nails crime writer Lydia Strong, who plunges into the case with her signature grit and the help of her partner, P.I. Jeffrey Mark. Meanwhile, Lydia learns that Jed McIntyre, the serial killer who murdered her mother, is on the loose in New York. McIntyre is out for Lydia's blood, and his presence forces her to confront the evils of her past while solving her toughest murder case
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In a Byzantine world of big-city politics full of payback and promise, ambition and disgrace. Jon Soliday is legal counsel to a powerful politician-also his childhood best friend—who is running for governor. The two have shared political success and undying loyalty. They also share a dark secret from the summer of 1979: a party that resulted in the death of a teenage girl. Soliday was implicated but, through his friend's political connections, escaped legal trouble. Soliday remembers little from that night, but carries an uncertain guilt he can't shake. Now, as the players from 1979 fall prey to an unknown killer, Soliday is himself accused of murder. And as the puzzle unfolds, the people he most suspects are those he has entrusted with his defense—his ambitious defense attorney and his oldest friend. A man's past, both what he remembers and what he fears, has never felt so crushing—and may well leave him without a future.
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#3 in the Women's Murder Club Series
Detective Lindsay Boxer is jogging along a beautiful San Francisco street when a fiery explosion rips through the neighborhood. When Lindsay searches for survivors, she finds three people dead. A lost infant and a mysterious message at the scene leaves Lindsay and the San Francisco Police Department completely baffled. Then a prominent businessman is found murdered under bizarre circumstances, with another mysterious message left behind by the killer. Lindsay asks her friends Claire Washburn of the medical examiner's office, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt, and Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas to help her figure out who is committing these murders—and why they are intent on killing someone every three days. Even more terrifying, the killer has targeted a member of the Women's Murder Club. Which one will it be?
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Decorated NYPD Officer John Coglin always thought his picture on the front page of the newspaper would be one for the scrapbook. That was before he had the bad luck to be forced into a witness-free, kill-or-be-killed confrontation with a drug-dealing thug. It's of no help to him that the incident took place during the run-up to a bitter mayoral election campaign, and that his adversary was sixteen years old and black. Now, instead of another commendation, Coglin is staring down the barrel of a media- and politics-stoked murder rap. But on the eve of his sure conviction arrives a fateful telephone call. It's not the governor, but his long-lost uncle, Aidan O'Connell. A veteran of the IRA and a recently released guest of San Quentin Penitentiary for armed-to-the-teeth robbery, Aidan offers his nephew a pardon that has nothing to do with lawyers. Coglin is about to find out that the type of amnesty Uncle Aidan is proposing is the kind that involves a beautiful but dangerous Mafia widow, a car trunk full of M-16s, and thirty million dollars in jewels smack dab in the middle of Rockefeller Center.
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How does it feel being twenty-six and about to become a multimillionaire? New York City telephone repairman Sean Macklin has just tapped into a fortune in stock-market day trading -- by picking up secrets from private conversations over the line. But when he taps into a powerful CEO's plans for a clean merger at any cost, Sean hears more than he should...and his seamless get-rich-quick scheme quickly spirals into a cutthroat game of blackmail, corruption, and violence. Now Sean and his NYPD officer brother, Ray, are the bait in a ruthless corporate conspiracy. And Sean Macklin's dream of a better life has just become a fatal nightmare....
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#2 in the Women's Murder Club Series
A brutal madman sprays bullets into a crowd of children leaving a San Francisco church. Miraculously-or was it intentionally?-only one person dies. Then an elderly black woman is hung. Police homicide inspector Lindsay Boxer senses a connection and together with medical examiner Claire, assistant D. A. Jill, and Chronicle reporter Cindy, finds a link that sends a chill through the entire nation. This killer's motives are unspeakable.
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#7 in the Alex Cross Series
Alex Cross has investigated macabre crime scenes. But the gruesome murders of two joggers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park look like ritualistic killings that mimic the work of vampires, a solution local police and the FBI are quick to dismiss. Cross takes the case, sweeping him from Washington, DC, to Savannah, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Los Angeles as he plunges into a netherworld of secret clubs, role-players, and posers. Evidence points to someone demented enough to have crossed the line from playacting to real blood. Someone like the merciless criminal known as the Mastermind, who's been lurking on the fringes, stalking, taunting, and threatening Alex Cross and everything he holds dear.
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Poised to become his Manhattan law firm's youngest partner, up-and-coming attorney Philip Randall takes risks and a mistress—his best friend's wife. Then the game changes. The stakes get higher. Someone begins following Philip's every move, waiting for the chance to strike--with a vengeance. Soon, Philip is at the center of a murder investigation that can end his career, his marriage, and his fabulous life.
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After engineering the perfect crime, Tom Farrell evokes the anger of the Albanian mob, an associate--and IRA operative--is murdered, and his crew is attacked, forcing him to enter New York City's dark underworld, where he must confront his past in order to survive.
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#1 in the Women's Murder Club Series
Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant D.A., and Cindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle. But the usual procedures aren't bringing them any closer to stopping the killings. So these women form a Women's Murder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case by sidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whose crimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they track down the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have ever encountered—before a shocking conclusion in which everything they knew turns out to be devastatingly wrong.
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#2 in the Andy Brazil Series
In Southern Cross, Cornwell takes us even closer to the personal and professional lives of big-city police, in a story of corruption, scandal, and robberies that escalate to murder. This time, her setting is Richmond, Virginia, where Charlotte Police Chief Judy Hammer has been brought by an NIJ grant to clean up the police force. Reeling from the recent death of her husband, and resented by the police force, city manager, and mayor of Richmond, Hammer is joined by her deputy chief Virginia West and rookie Andy Brazil on the most difficult assignment of her career. In the face of overwhelming public scrutiny, the trio must bring truth, order, and sanity to a city in trouble.
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#1 in the Andy Brazil Series
Deputy Chief Virginia West likes and respects her boss, Hammer, but with an increasing number of visiting businessmen being murdered in her city by a maniac with a penchant for painting his victims bright orange, she finds it hard to accept Hammer's edict that a rookie reporter should ride on patrol with her to better relations with their citizens. Her worst fears are confirmed when the reporter, Brazil, presses the button to activate the boot-release rather than the siren on their first outing. He's not the only blight on her life right now: her cat's angsty, her hormones are misbehaving. her opposite member in the uniformed division is behaving like a jackass, the radio despatcher is determined to trip her up, the D.A. is in the middle of a hot battle with Hammer and the visiting judge's bladder problems are causing havoc with the trial schedule. And orange colored corpses keep turning up on her patch.
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#6 in the Kay Scarpetta Series
An unidentified nude female sits propped against a fountain in Central Park. There are no signs of struggle. When Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues Benton Wesley and Pete Marino arrive on the scene, they instantly recognize the signature of serial killer Temple Brooks Gault. Scarpetta, on assignment with the FBI, visits the New York City morgue on Christmas morning, where she must use her forensic expertise to give a name to the nameless—a difficult task. But as she sorts through conflicting forensic clues, Gault claims his next victim. He has infiltrated the FBI's top secret artificial-intelligence system developed by Scarpetta's niece, and sends taunting messages as his butchery continues, moving terrifyingly closer to Scarpetta herself.
