In fifth grade, Sister Eugene had once required us to choose from a collage of Life magazine front covers she pinned to the blackboard. The flaming red sunset shining behind a medieval castle became my fiction-writing assignment: the martyrdom of St. Joan of Arc. Not only did that exercise reveal my joy in writing, but also that my attention was focused on contriving plots based on the feminine strength that influences the course of men. Furthermore, throughout my medical career, I reacted to the complex and often confounding emotions of my patients and their loved ones. It is why I prefer medical thrillers that are heavily character driven.
It is from the power of human passions that we often find ourselves in conflict, yet it is because of passion we can ultimately find the wherewithal to escape that struggle. In The Martian, Andy Weir remarkably detailed the scientific fantasies that took his characters to Mars; but also beautifully narrated the spirited passion that invigorated the protagonist’s will to survive. It is because of the quality of his scientific descriptions and the emotions of his protagonist that I heartily enjoyed this book.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old human error are…
Anthropology is the science of culture, as much as that of religion. In The Gospel of Judas, Mr. Mawer contrived the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls that set the morals for this exceptionally intelligent fiction. In this story, the author challenged the protagonist’s need for intimacy with the societal limitations imposed through religion. Beyond the plot, the author’s description of the passions that drove his characters were insightful and beautiful.
Amongst the ancient papyri of the Dead Sea, a remarkable scroll is discovered. Written in the first century AD, it purports to be the true account of the life of Jesus, as told by Youdas the sicarios - Judas Iscariot: the missing Gospel of Judas. If authentic, it will be one of the most incendiary documents in the history of humankind. The task of proving - or disproving - its validity falls to Father Leo Newman, one of the world's leading experts in Koine, the demotic Greek of the Roman Empire, and a man the newspapers like to call a…
I have a prejudiced preference for physician writers and the insightful medical fantasies they (we) write about. In her novel Gravity, Tess Gerritsen inspired my own imagination for the writing of my book. Her extensive background research is evident in the out-of-this-world gory scenes that leaves no doubt of the plausibility of a deadly microbe.
Top Ten bestselling author Tess Gerritsen delivers 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…
‘Write of what you know best’ is a caveat often shared to aspiring writers, but in Andromeda Strain, Mr. Crichton stepped far beyond this by incorporating research and imagination to create an alien villain that challenged human sensibilities. The suspense in the novel is more to do with the emotional vulnerabilities of its characters than the transformation of the alien matter that threatened them.
From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.
Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and…
I began medical school a year after Coma’s publication, and soon it was the rave among my classmates. Through a unique and imaginative plotline, Mr. Cook explored the possibility of what we as medical students feared becoming vulnerable to: the thought a physician could invoke god-like powers by means of advance medical knowledge and an idolizing patient population.
The blockbuster bestseller that kickstarted a new genre--the medical thriller--is now available in trade paperback for the first time. They called it "minor surgery," but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others--all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures--were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up. Susan Wheeler is a third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Two patients during her residency mysteriously go into comas immediately after their operations due to complications from anesthesia. Susan begins to investigate the causes behind both of these alarming…
A 1972 secret mission to the dark side of the moon liberates an astronaut’s suppressed emotions, but a tragic earthly pandemic ensues. It is a conspiracy tale that is romantically told and follows two stories of love filled with loss, passion, pain, and desire, intertwined with one another even when occurring decades apart.
After the mysterious death of Xochi, her fiancé Robert begins to suspect that this tragedy is far more sinister than it first appears, and he wanders if Xochi’s genetic research could have led to her murder. Through a series of seamless flashbacks, the reality of Xochi’s discoveries comes to light as she had begun to question the possibility of a military cover-up of a catastrophic 1972 space mission to the moon.
Writer, reader, editor, reviewer, publisher… those are all parts of me. With a lifetime of experience in the “words” industry, I have a pretty good handle on what makes a book not just good, but hot. I say this with the understanding that each reader brings their own histories to the reading experience, and what one person may like, another may not. Nonetheless, I offer you my professional and personal favorites in the mystery/thriller/suspense categories. It is my sincere hope that you find these books as addictive as I’d found them. Superb and clever writing, engaging characters, unpredictable plots—yes, please! Though I occasionally step outside my comfort zone, I'm consistently drawn back to these categories.
Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own. A friend murdered. A business in trouble. A marriage struggling to survive. And that’s just the beginning.
When salon owner Carrie King discovers Liza dead in the back room of her shop, everyone becomes a suspect, even her. As tensions in the community rise, so does the death toll, and now the local cops believe there’s a serial killer on the loose. The question is … are the two investigations connected?…
Liza O’Connell was a horror buff in every sense of the word. But there was one deadly nightmare she would never be able to talk about … her own.
A friend murdered.
A business in trouble.
A marriage struggling to survive.
And that’s just the beginning.
When salon owner Carrie King discovers Liza dead in the back room of her shop, everyone becomes a suspect, even her. As tensions in the community rise, so does the death toll, and now the local cops believe there’s a serial killer on the loose. The question is … are the two investigations connected?…
