Tess Gerritsen

The Bone Garden(2007)

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil - human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder.

Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, medical student Norris Marshall has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists” - those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. But when a distinguished doctor is found murdered and mutilated on university grounds, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, THE BONE GARDEN deftly traces the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking.



In Their Footsteps(1994)

The quiet scandal surrounding her parents' deaths 20 years ago sends Beryl Tavistock on a search for the truth from Paris to Greece. As she enters a world of international espionage, Beryl discovers she needs help and turns to a suave ex-CIA agent. But in a world where trust is a double-edged sword, friends become enemies and enemies become killers.



Thief of Hearts
(Stolen)(1995)

He was a gentleman bandit, she was a cat burglar. And they caught each other in more ways than one. But their desire was as strong as their distrust, and Jordan Tavistock began to fear that Diana Lamb was more than just a thief of hearts.
Tess Gerritsen

The Surgeon
(The first book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series)(2001)

In her most masterful novel of medical suspense, New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen creates a villain of unforgettable evil--and the one woman who can catch him before he kills again.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon."

The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon.

Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands--and savors--the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters--from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue--here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect, The Surgeon is Tess Gerritsen's most exciting accomplishment yet.

The Sinner
(The third book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series)(2003)

Not even the icy temperatures of a typical New England winter can match the bone-chilling scene of carnage discovered in the early morning hours at the chapel of Our Lady of Divine Light. Within the sanctuary walls of the cloistered convent, now stained with blood, lie two nuns - one dead, one critically injured; victims of an unspeakably savage attacker. The brutal crime appears to be without motive, and the elderly nuns in residence can offer little help in the police investigation. But medical examiner Maura Isles' autopsy of the dead woman yields a shocking surprise: twenty-year-old Sister Camille, the order's sole novice, had given birth before she was murdered. The disturbing case takes a stunning new turn when another woman is found murdered in an abandoned building, her features obliterated. Together, Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror that connects these terrible slaughters. As long-buried secrets come to light, Maura Isles finds herself drawn inexorably toward the heart of an investigation that strikes closer and closer to home, and toward the dawning revelation - too shattering to consider - of the killer's identity. As spine-tingling as it is mind-jolting, The Sinner finds Tess Gerritsen in peak form. Beneath its layers of startling insight into the souls of its characters, and the richly wrought depiction of the everyday war between good and evil, beats the unstoppable heart of an irresistible thriller.


Body Double
(The fourth book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series)(2004)

From Publishers Weekly
Pregnant women play key roles in this bone-chilling fourth novel in Gerritsen's edgy, suspenseful series of thrillers featuring Boston Medical Examiner Maura Isles and Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli. Both of the usually gritty crime fighters are uncharacteristically vulnerable. Rizzoli is carrying her first child, and Isles—divorced and alone at age 40 and suddenly, unsettlingly aware of her biological clock—is experiencing decidedly unspiritual feelings for her priest. As the novel begins, Isles—an adopted child who never knew the identity of her birth parents—is confronted by the corpse of a murdered woman who is apparently her identical twin. Another detective, Rick Ballard, comes forward to say that he knew the victim and is certain her killer is a powerful pharmaceutical baron known to have stalked her. Isles falls for the handsome Ballard, but she isn't convinced by his theory, and she launches an investigation into her sister's past, following the trail to a state correctional facility and a schizophrenic inmate who may be her mother. This opens the cobwebbed pages of a nightmarish family album and leads Isles to a remote cabin in Maine where the long-dead body of a pregnant woman is discovered buried in the woods. The killer, Isles discovers, has been murdering pregnant women for decades, making periodic sweeps of the country. Meanwhile, brief scenes chronicle the diabolical kidnapping of an affluent pregnant housewife who is kept buried in a crude coffin. An electric series of startling twists, the revelation of ghoulishly practical motives and a nail-biting finale make this Gerritsen's best to date.



Vanish
(The fifth book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series)(2005)

A blessed event becomes a nightmare for pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli when she finds herself on the wrong side of a hostage crisis in this timely and relentless new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Body Double.

A nameless, beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. An apparent suicide, she lies on a gurney, awaiting the dissecting scalpel of medical examiner Maura Isles. But when Maura unzips the body bag and looks down at the body, she gets the fright of her life. The corpse opens its eyes.

Very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where with shockingly cool precision, she murders a security guard and seizes hostages . . . one of them a pregnant patient, Jane Rizzoli.

Who is this violent, desperate soul, and what does she want? As the tense hours tick by, Maura joins forces with Jane's husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, to track down the mysterious killer's identity. When federal agents suddenly appear on the scene, Maura and Gabriel realize that they are dealing with a case that goes far deeper than just an ordinary hostage crisis.

Only Jane, trapped with the armed madwoman, holds the key to the mystery. And only she can solve it-if she survives the night.



The Apprentice
(The second book in the Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series)(2002)

He may be behind bars, but Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, bequeathing his evil legacy to a student all too diligent - and all too deadly.

A year has passed since the capture of the Surgeon, serial killer Warren Hoyt, yet the memory of his brutal crimes continues to haunt Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli. Now she faces a new killer, a hunter who preys on well-to-do couples. For Rizzoli the death scenes have a horrifying air of familiarity, especially when she realizes that this new killer is copying one obscure element from Warren Hoyt's crimes.

A new complication arises as a federal investigator from Washington joins the case. Again and again, Rizzoli clashes with Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who shows up at every crime scene. He knows something about this killer, something so politically explosive that he cannot reveal it to her.

Then Warren Hoyt makes a brilliant and bloody escape from custody. Suddenly there is not one hunter on the loose, but two. And they are united, a pair of blood brothers who share grotesque appetites and a combined genius. They have joined forces to stalk the most challenging prey of all, the very woman who now hunts them . . .

Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, The Apprentice is both a terrifyingly sustained psychological thriller and an adrenalin fuelled-trip to hell that we urge you to sign up for.

First you had THE SURGEON . . .

Now you've got THE APPRENTICE . .

Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr Claire Elliot to shelter her son from the temptations of the big city and the memory of his father's death. But with the onset of winter, teenage violence, far more deadly than anything she'd encountered in the city, erupts in the local school.