The Scarpetta Collection: All That Remains / Cruel & Unusual

International publishing sensation Patricia Cornwell’s legion of readers will welcome this omnibus edition of her third and fourth mega-best-selling Kay Scarpetta novels, All That Remains and Cruel & Unusual. These two novels, presented here complete and unabridged, helped to confirm Patricia Cornwell’s status as queen of the forensic thriller and one of the world’s top bestselling authors.

All That Remains: A killer is stalking young lovers. Taking their lives and leaving just a tantalizing clue.

When the bodies of young couples start turning up in remote woodland areas, Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s task as Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner is made more difficult by the effects of the elements. Eight times she must write that the cause of death is undetermined.

But when the latest young woman to go missing is the daughter of one of America’s most powerful women, Kay also finds herself prey to political pressure and press harassment. The killings must stop. Now.

Scarpetta soon discovers that someone is withholding vital evidence, or even faking it. Meanwhile, a cunning sadistic killer is still at large.

Cruel & Unusual At 11:05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been waiting for Waddell’s body. Preparing to perform a postmortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling for Scarpetta, but she has been here before. And Waddell’s death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a garbage Dumpster. To Scarpetta, the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell’s victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position.

Was Waddell innocent? Is someone else out there, who may attack again?