Patricia Cornwell's most recent bestsellers include The Scarpetta Factor, Scarpetta, The Front, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed. In 2008, she won the Galaxy British Book Awards’ Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year—the first American ever to win this prestigious award. Her earlier works include Postmortem—the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year—and Cruel and Unusual, which won Britain's Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author.