Books with author Patricia Caldwell

It’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and she’s about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their Cambridge house. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there’s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. No one has heard or seen a thing.In this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. The shots seem impossible, yet they are so perfect they cause instant death. The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast of South Florida, where Scarpetta investigates a shipwreck, looking for answers that only she can discover and analyze. And it is there that she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta’s own flesh and blood.Includes an exclusive excerpt from the riveting next novel in the Kay Scarpetta series, DEPRAVED HEART.

From the author The Rockin Horse is a true story of a pet horse, Kenzie, that lived a remarkable life of love and hope. Kenzie was rescued from a life of despair and loneliness and was loved so much that his lifes journey changed in amazing ways. The family pet was full of fun and tricks, and this prompted the sharing of the story. Kenzies most amazing trick was when he galloped around the field and ran up to the edge of the fence and stood on his back legs. He made his front legs go up and down as he nodded and tossed his head The story relates the life of Kenzie to Jesus, who lifts our lives from loneliness and despair and gives us hope through His amazing grace.

The decision to abandon her forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Body of Evidence; Cause of Death; etc.) leaves Cornwell lacking more than a fail-safe series heroine. The only credible element in this novel is the urban New South setting. The story-about two women top cops and a young male newspaper reporter in Charlotte, N.C.-is routine fare at best. The three characters-42-year-old Deputy Chief Virginia West; her boss, unhappily married Chief Judy Hammer; and handsome wunderkind journalist and volunteer cop, Andy Brazil-are preternaturally competent automatons, obsessive and utterly devoid of self-awareness. A sequence of serial killings of out-of-towners, men who are pulled from their rental cars, sexually mutilated, marked with orange spray paint and shot, creates tension in Charlotte. While Hammer struggles with city politics and a depressed, obese husband, West contends with Brazil (a "handsome and fierce" 22-year-old with "total photographic recall"), who is on assignment to write about police activity, having impressed his editor by turning in "a hundred of hours' overtime five months in a row." Rather than reveal her characters through their words and actions, Cornwell forces them on us predigested ("West believed women were great"; "Brazil did not believe prostitution was right."). In that same descriptive mode, she takes them on roller coaster rides of extravagant emotion-rage, grief, resolve, despair-and offers set pieces in place of plot: mid-book, more than 150 pages pass without mention of the murders. We are made privy to the fantasies of West's cat, but not to the motivations behind the killings. There is nothing to believe in on these pages beyond Charlotte itself. 750,000 first printing; 00,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Looking at the apple from every possible angle, Patricia Ellyn Powell has created a book that masquerades as an analysis of the American education system, but in actuality, explores the living problems that all of us face in this new millennium. The cycle of educational injustice is in full spin and will not stop until the very lifestyles of U.S. families change drastically. Filled with humor and common sense, this new genre of faction stuns the reader with real-life accounts from down in the trenches of education. Powell sounds the alarm for the current crisis of the national teacher shortage, insisting that the public school system in this country is now defunct. Drawing from her own experience as a mother and teacher, the author elevates the duties of parenting and educating to philosophical responsibilities that must now be faced to avoid impending doom. Professor Powells apocalyptic account reaches into the ordinary to extract the phenomenal. Her ability to facilitate logos, pathos, and ethos in everything from race relations to Ronald McDonald is uncanny. If raw and refined can exist together, here in Rotten Apples, they do. Her love of education allows her to take no hostages and polish no apples!

Under the leafy cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster moves undetected, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta senses the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer— a "Mr.Nobody"—whose signatures offer precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she must call on the latest advances in forensic research to have a chance at unmasking the maniac. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it's being sabotaged from within—and someone wants her dead.