Patricia Cornwell's Complete Bookshelf
With Reviews and Reader Comments Here

 

Patricia Cornwell's life is so dense with events and idiosyncrasies that it is bound to thrill most of her fans. After all, anyone who can't get enough of her star character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, has a taste for the offbeat. Scarpetta is a reasonably attractive woman in her 40s who also happens to be the chief medical examiner for the State of Virginia. Under a shield of efficiency and within the confines of a scientific, analytical mind, there lurks Scarpetta's vulnerable heart. Scarpetta can dissect a corpse and come up with enough clues to solve a crime, but she is likely also to be found with her arms around her beloved niece, Lucy, or in the arms of a lover. She is just as competent with a shotgun as she is with a scalpel. Cornwell has written eight Scarpetta novels, the most recent being Unnatural Exposure.

Cornwell, a fan of firearms and fast cars, clearly recalls the day her father walked out on his family for his pregnant secretary. The future author, 7 years old, was hanging onto his leg at the time. She soon moved with her mother and brother to Montreat, North Carolina, just two miles down the road from the Rev. Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth. At one point, Cornwell's mother was so desperate that she tried to "give" her kids to the Grahams. Ruth Graham responded by befriending the young Patricia, encouraging her to write. (Later, in 1983, Cornwell wrote her first book, A Time For Remembering, Mrs. Graham's biography.)

While a student at Davidson College in North Carolina, Cornwell met her future husband, Charles Cornwell, 17 years her senior, who also happened to be her English professor. They wed when she was 24 and he was 41. (The 10-year marriage ended in divorce in 1989.) Among the experiences and challenges in her life, Cornwell has numbered anorexia and bulimia, manic depression, a rape by a law enforcement officer when she was a young crime reporter, and, in 1983, a car wreck when she was driving while intoxicated. Cornwell calls the accident "a necessary experience" that eventually led her to alcohol rehab. In 1979 Cornwell began her career as police reporter, winning an investigative reporting award, but soon moved on to the Virginia Chief Medical Examiner's Office in Richmond, where she was a computer analyst. Much of what she observed in her work was incorporated into her first bestseller, Postmortem. Following the success of that novel, Cornwell quit her job to become a full-time author. She lives with her dog Chopper and splits her time between Richmond, Virginia and Los Angeles.

 

Patricia Cornwell's BOOKSHELF Here

Southern Cross (1998)
Point of Origin (1998)
Ruth: A Portrait (1997)
Unnatural Exposure (1997)
Hornet's Nest (1997)
Cause of Death (1996)
From Potter's Field (1995)
The Body Farm (1994)
Cruel & Unusual (1993)
All That Remains (1992)
Body of Evidence (1991)
Postmortem (1991)
A Time For Remembering (1983)

Patricia Cornwell's BOOKSHELF Here

 

 

 

 

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