Books like Cruel & unusual by Patricia Cornwell

Alicia Berenson, a celebrated painter, shoots her husband Gabriel and then falls silent, becoming a media sensation. In North London’s Grove secure unit, psychotherapist Theo Faber devotes himself to uncovering why she became the Silent Patient and his own true motives.

Reporter Camille Preaker returns to her hometown after a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital to cover the murders of two preteen girls, and must confront the trauma of her own past to uncover the truth.

Senior forensic analyst Kay Scarpetta lends pro‑bono services to NYC’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner during a week before Christmas, drawing her into a series of dangerous and high‑profile cases that test her skills and threaten her life.

Chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta investigates the mysterious scuba‑diving death of a reporter in Norfolk, Virginia, uncovering a conspiratorial plot by a fascist militia to seize an atomic power plant.

When a 26‑year‑old bicyclist dies under strange circumstances, forensic chief Kay Scarpetta suspects foul play and is stalked by a cyberbully sending cryptic poems. The case unfolds against a backdrop of forensic science, media scrutiny, and personal stakes.

During the holiday season, Virginia’s chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, her detective partner Pete Marino, and niece Lucy Farinelli gather for festive cooking and a touching encounter with a lonely boy.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, newly relocated to Charleston, opens a private forensic pathology practice and faces a series of baffling murders that threaten her career and life.

When a cargo ship arrives at Richmond with a sealed box of a stowaway’s remains, medical examiner Kay Scarpetta must unravel a mystery that takes her from the Deep Water Terminal to Lyon, France, and back to Virginia.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, working freelance in Florida, investigates a cold case that travels from sunny Southern shores to icy Boston, confronting a cunning killer whose psyche tests her limits.

Detective Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns from Dublin to find a serial killer back on the loose, this time targeting her with a dead‑on Internet threat and a deadly smallpox‑like virus.

Little Emily Steiner is dead. She left a North Carolina church meeting late one October afternoon and strolled along a lakeside path toward her house two miles away. Who met her on the path? Who followed her home, kidnapped her from her bedroom, and left her body by the lake days later? It's a puzzling and terrifying crime, reminiscent of the work of serial killer Temple Gault, who has long eluded Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the FBI's Investigative Support Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where Scarpetta consults as a forensic pathologist. At the request of the North Carolina authorities, Scarpetta and her colleagues, Benton Wesley and Pete Marino, fly to the mountains near Asheville to assist. They find a mother in mourning and an investigation in disarray. It's particularly frustrating to work a homicide after the fact. An inexperienced pathologist missed or misinterpreted some of the evidence, leaving Scarpetta with inconclusive medical and laboratory reports, and photographs that only raise questions. What, for instance, is the strange mark on the child's body that causes Scarpetta to plead with a reluctant judge for an exhumation? What is the meaning of trace evidence from a plant not indigenous to the Carolinas? And where did the killer obtain the unique blaze-orange duct tape, with which he bound Emily and her mother? Most puzzling of all is the question of when Emily died. She disappeared the night of October 1. Her nude body was found a week later. Scarpetta's obsession with time leads her to The Body Farm, a little-known research facility in Tennessee where, with the help of some grisly experiments, she might discover the answer. It is Scarpetta alone who can interpret the forensic hieroglyphics that eventually reveal a solution to the case as staggering as it is horrifying. Scarpetta not only must search for a killer, she must endeavor to help her niece Lucy, who is accused of espionage while interning at the FBI's highly classified Engineering and Research Facility in Quantico. And she must reach out to Marino, who retreats deeply into a strange relationship that may wreck his career and ruin his life. Scarpetta, too, is vulnerable, as she opens herself to the first physical and emotional bond she has felt in far too long a time. This is Scarpetta even more realized and poignant than we've seen her before, tenacious and brilliant, tender and gentle. The Body Farm is a stunning achievement from a bestselling author at the peak of her powers.

Kay Scarpetta, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, faces a cunning killer who uses fire to conceal crimes, while an old nemesis resurfaces, turning the hunt into a personal tragedy.

Patricia Cornwell’s standalone novel follows investigator Winston Garano as he unravels a twenty‑year‑old murder case that forces him to confront buried truths across Massachusetts and Tennessee.