In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. Curtis stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back.

Working with a former homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby races against time and reason to unravel an impossible mystery.

A field of corpses, laid out in a macabre display… A serial killer who confounds even the most seasoned profilers… A doctor whose life has been shattered by crime—plunged into the heart of a shocking investigation…

In this masterful new novel by Simon Beckett, #1 internationally bestselling author of Written in Bone and The Chemistry of Death, forensic anthropologist David Hunter is thrust into his first murder investigation on U.S. soil—and his most devastating case yet.

In the heat of a Tennessee summer, Dr. Hunter has come to Knoxville’s legendary “Body Farm”—the infamous field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses—to escape London and the violence that nearly destroyed his life. He’s also here to find out if he’s still up to the job of sorting through death in all its strange and terrible forms.…

Hunter will soon find his answer when he’s called to a crime scene in a remote Smoky Mountain cabin—a scene as grisly as it is bizarre. The body is taped to a table. Everything about the crime scene—the wounds, the decomposition, the microscopic evidence—quickly short-circuits the tools and methods of forensic experts.

Within days, Hunter knows he’s dealing with a serial killer, someone intimately familiar with the intricacies of forensics. All around him, egos and hierarchies clash—from the boasts of a renowned criminal profiler to the dogged work of a young female investigator—but fate keeps pushing Hunter further into the heart of the manhunt. And the killer keeps coming up with surprises: booby-trapping corpses, faking times of death, swapping bodies—finally turning his sights on Hunter himself.…

An electrifying race against time, a fascinating journey into the world of forensic science, and a terrifying portrait of a killer in love with death itself, Whispers of the Dead is a thriller of the highest order.

Dexter Morgan is a Miami crime scene investigator who is no stranger to evil deeds, particularly because he occasionally enjoys committing them himself. Guided by his dark Passenger - the voice inside him that helps him stalk his prey - Dexter lives an outwardly normal life adhering to one simple rule: he only kills very bad people.

Dexter slides through life undetected, working as a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, helping his fiancée raise her two adorable (if somewhat... unique) children, and always planning his next jaunt as Dexter the Dark Avenger under the light of the full moon.

But everything changes when Dexter is called to a gruesome double homicide. Dexter realizes he's dealing with someone far more sinister than he is, sending the Dark Passenger into hiding. And when something scares your friendly neighborhood serial killer, you know it's serious.

More used to inspiring fear than experiencing it, Dexter must investigate while simultaneously coping with his demanding family. If he's to save himself and those around him, Dexter must pose questions he's never dared to ask: Where does evil come from, and does it hide inside everyone?