Scarpetta , an all-new Original Series, is coming soon to Prime Video! Enter the chilling and captivating world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta before Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis bring the mystery to life onscreen. “The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling… and a warning……there WILL be BLOOD.” – Jamie Lee Curtis #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Kay Scarpetta must solve a string of murders more baffling—and terrifying—than any that have come before. The Book of the Dead is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire a new meaning. Starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, seems like the ideal situation for Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues, Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy. But then come the deaths . . . A sixteen-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tournament win in Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. Meanwhile, in New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections among the deaths that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never has she seen anything like what she’s facing now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names—and the pen may be poised to write her own. . . . “Cornwell overhauls key elements of this successful series. . . . She has shaken things up a bit and produced one terrific new character.” — The New York Times Book Review   “Ms. Cornwell admits to being proud of Book of the Dead and she should be.” —Midwest Book Review “Compelling.” — Richmond Times Dispatch   “What a walloping, riveting mix of . . . adventure and psychology. Author Cornwell certainly is skilled at dissecting the not always attractive innards of human nature.” — Forbes Patricia Cornwell is one of the world’s major internationally bestselling authors, translated into thirty-six languages in more than 120 countries. She is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine; a founding member of the National Forensic Academy; a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City; and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital’s National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. In 2008, Cornwell won the Galaxy British Book Awards’ Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year—the first American to win this prestigious award. In 2011, she was awarded the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in Paris. Her earlier works include Postmortem —the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year—and Cruel & Unusual, which won Britain’s Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author. Rome. Water splashing. A gray mosaic tile tub sunk deep into a terracotta floor. Water pours slowly from an old brass spout, and darkness pours through a window. On the other side of old, wavy glass is the piazza, and the fountain, and the night. She sits quietly in water, and the water is very cold, with melting ice cubes in it, and there is little in her eyes—nothing much there anymore. At first, her eyes were like hands reaching out to him, begging him to save her. Now her eyes are the bruised blue of dusk. Whatever was in them has almost left. Soon she will sleep. “Here,” he says, handing her a tumbler that was handblown in Murano and now is filled with vodka. He is fascinated by parts of her that have never seen the sun. They are pale like limestone, and he turns the spigot almost off, and the water is a trickle now, and he watches her rapid breathing and hears the chattering of her teeth. Her white breasts float beneath the surface of the water, delicate like white flowers. Her nipples, hard from the cold, are tight pink buds. Then he thinks of pencils. Of chewing off nubby pink erasers when he was in school, and telling his father and sometimes his mother that he didn’t need erasers because he didn’t make mistakes. When in truth, he liked to chew. He couldn’t help it, and that also was the truth. “You’ll remember my name,” he says to her. “I won’t,” she says. “I can forget it.” Chattering. He knows why she says it: If she forgets his name, her destiny will be rethought like a bad battle plan. “What is it?” he asks. “Tell me my name.” “I don’t remember.” Crying, shaking. “Say it,” he says, looking at her tan arms, pebbly with goose bumps, the blond hair on them erect, her you