Excerpt: 'Finding Chandra' By Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz

May 10, 2010— -- The national media was enraptured with the mysterious case of Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old Washington, D.C., intern who disappeared suddenly in 2001. After her body was discovered a year later and an affair with a Congressman came to light, the plot only grew thicker and the truth more elusive.

Washington Post reporters Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz covered the story in-depth in a 13-part series. Their book, "Finding Chandra," expands on their work on the tragedy that shocked the country.

Read an excerpt below, and then head to the "Good Morning America" Library to find more good reads.

On the slope of a steep ravine, deep in the woods of Washington'sRock Creek Park, Philip Palmer spotted an out-ofplaceobject resting on the forest floor. He saw a patch of white,bleached out and barely visible through a thin layer of leaves.Walking these woods was a ritual for Palmer, an attempt toflee the madness of the city. Each morning, the furniture makertried to lose himself in the nine-mile-long oasis of forests, fields,and streams twice the size of New York's Central Park that slicesthrough the center of the nation's capital. On this morning, May22, 2002, the sun filtered through the leaves of the poplar andoak trees shading the hillside off the Western Ridge Trail, a solitarylane that begins near a centuries-old stone mill and winds itsway north through the woods to the border of Maryland. Palmermoved closer to the object, his dog Paco by his side. The object,the size of a silver dollar, stood out against the leaves.Palmer's quest seemed unusual for a man of forty-two whowas raised in Chevy Chase, a neighborhood largely reserved forWashington's upper middle class on the northern edge of RockCreek Park. Thin and wiry, with a mustache, beard, and an earringin his left ear, he looked like someone who belonged in thewilderness of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He preferred thesolace of the park to the bustle and affluence that surroundedhim, and he prided himself on knowing every trail and path andglen. As a boy, he would head alone to the woods after school, siftthrough the dirt and leaves, and look for bits and pieces of animalbones. On good days, he'd find a complete skeleton, a mouseor a rat, a vole, maybe a raccoon, prizes he would keep and cherish.The finest examples of his collection from forgotten placesin the park would later be carefully displayed on the shelves thatlined the sitting parlor of his Victorian home in one of Washington'strendier neighborhoods, Dupont Circle.