Promotional Information

Top Ten bestselling author Tess Gerritsen expands the scope of her landscape of terror in a thoroughly menacing new thriller. A brilliantly compulsive page-turner from the author of The Surgeon. Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma's estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines! The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control -- and infects the crew with agonising and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the deadly virus, while back home Jack and NASA work against the clock to bring her home. But there will be no rescue, as the astronauts are left stranded in orbit where they are dying one by one! / Riveting thriller from the UK and American bestselling author of The Surgeon and The Apprentice. / Tess Gerritsen is now one of the hottest names in crime fiction and there will be lots of renewed interest in Gravity. / Film rights sold to New Line Cinema / Competition: Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Val McDermid

About the Author

Bestselling author Tess Gerritsen is also a physician, and applies her expert knowledge of emergency procedures and autopsies to her novels. She studied anthropology at Stanford University, where she catalogued human remains that were hundreds of years old. She continues to travel the world, pursuing her interests in ancient cultures and mysterious natural phenomenon. She lives with her husband in Maine.

Reviews

Praise for The Surgeon:
‘If you like your crime medicine strong, this will keep you gripped' Mail on Sunday 'Authentic, convincing' Sunday Times Praise for The Apprentice:
'Goes head-to-head with Nicci French and Karin Slaughter to scare the pants off you… A classic page-turner, full of melodrama’ Daily Mirror ‘Compulsive’ Irish Times Praise for Gerritsen:
‘Tess Gerritsen is an automatic must-read in my house. If you’ve never read Gerritsen, figure in the price of electricity when you buy your first novel by her ‘cause baby, you are going to be up all night. She is better than Palmer, better than Cook… Yes, even better than Crichton’ Stephen King

Praise for The Surgeon: 'If you like your crime medicine strong, this will keep you gripped' Mail on Sunday 'Authentic, convincing' Sunday Times Praise for The Apprentice: 'Goes head-to-head with Nicci French and Karin Slaughter to scare the pants off you! A classic page-turner, full of melodrama' Daily Mirror 'Compulsive' Irish Times Praise for Gerritsen: 'Tess Gerritsen is an automatic must-read in my house. If you've never read Gerritsen, figure in the price of electricity when you buy your first novel by her 'cause baby, you are going to be up all night. She is better than Palmer, better than Cook! Yes, even better than Crichton' Stephen King 'This page turner proves that Gerritsen is tops in her genre' USA Today 'Superb research lifts Gerritsen to the top of the ladder as Michael Crichton and Robin Cook wave from below' Kirkus

Gerritsen (Bloodstream) meshes medical suspenseÄher specialtyÄand the world of space travel in another nail-biting tale of genetic misadventure. Much of this scary thriller is set aboard the International Space Station, where a team of six astronauts suddenly find themselves threatened by a virulent biohazard. Victims first register a headache, followed by stomach pains; then their eyes turn blood red. Finally, they convulse so violently they literally bash themselves apart. Most frightening is what spills out of their bodies: green, egg-filled globules. As astronaut Emma Watson, the station's onboard doctor, struggles to fight the outbreak, her colleagues are dying one by one. A Japanese astronaut, the first to get sick, is sent down to earth via the space shuttle, but he's dead on arrival. Panic spreads when military physicians discover a deadly mutantÄa creature that's part human, part frog and part mouseÄin the eggs that spill from his body. The military, fearing bioterrorism or even an extraterrestrial invasion, quickly traces the contaminant to an experiment on the space station that was funded by a company researching tiny organisms in the ocean off South America, where an asteroid hit thousands of years ago. Meanwhile, back on the station, Watson is the only one left alive. The military says she's already infected and must be left to die in space, but Watson's husband, fellow astronaut/physician Jack McCallum, won't tolerate that decision, and scrambles to find a way to get her home. It's a tribute to Gerritsen, herself a medical doctor, that such an outlandish tale can be told so compellingly and convincingly. Thanks to her impressive research, the novel's detailed descriptions of life in space consistently ring true, and the progress of the breakout is satisfyingly horrific. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Mystery Guild main selections, Doubleday Book Club Super Release; Simon & Schuster audio; author tour. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.