Acclaimed author of the Kay Scarpetta series of crime novels. For her 2007 Kay Scarpetta novel, Book of the Dead, she received the British Book Awards' Crime Thriller of the Year honor.
She overcame the hardships of living in foster care and was able to graduate from Davidson College in North Carolina with a degree in English. In 1979, she accepted a position as a crime reporter for The Charlotte Observer.
She published several non-fiction crime books, including the 2002 work, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed.
She had a tough childhood: her father left the family when she was five, and her mother was subsequently hospitalized for depression, an event which led to Cornwell and her brother being placed in foster care. In her adulthood, Cornwell had long-term relationships with both men and women and was married twice: first, to Charles Cornwell, and later, to Staci Gruber.
She was a close friend of George H. W. Bush, and spent a lot of time in his summer home in Maine.
