A sadistic serial killer, the weapon a deadly virus Dublin, Ireland and Richmond, Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered, beheaded bodies were found in Ireland five years ago - now four have been discovered in the States. But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill.
Hammer has accepted the challenge of Richmond, Virginia's police department to try and reverse the escalating crime statistics in the city. She brings with her Deputy Chief Virginia West and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer. They find a lot of things they are all too familiar with - teenage gangs, a rash of robberies at cash dispensers, street corner drug-dealing, racial tensions, too many people with too many guns and a cardiac inducing lack of parking spaces.
Newly installed superintendent of the Virginia State Police, Judy Hammer, and her right hand and confidant, Andy Brazil, are at their wits' end trying to protect the public from the politicians - and vice versa. And amid the mayhem an island off the coast of Virginia declares UDI - claiming its independence lies in the history of America's first settlers, those who set sail from London's Isle of Dogs in 1607.
One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Virginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street, the terror of his kidnap by a Whitechapel gang, the excitement of Miss Barrett's relationship with Robert Browning, and a subsequent very different and much happier life in Italy.
In a desperately poor Andean village in Ecuador, 7-year-old Virginia is sold off by her indgena (Indian) parents as a servant to an academic, mestizo family. In her new home, the wife beats her, the husband gropes her, and she is insulted as a longa tonta (stupid Indian). Still, she teaches herself to read and write and begins to perform science experiments in secret. Then, when she is 12, she finally gets a chance to return to her parents: But does she want to? And do they want her? Virginia does travel back to her indgena family, but there is not the expected sweet reunion.
