THE CONTAGION IS IN YOUR MIND

In this science fiction thriller, brothers are pitted against each other as a pandemic threatens to destabilize world governments by exerting a subtle mind control over survivors.

Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker in the NSA when his brother, Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition. Meanwhile, something is happening in South America; others, like Paul, have also fallen ill and recovered with abilities they didn’t have before.

But that’s not the only pattern—the survivors, from entire remote Brazilian tribes to American tourists, all seem to be working toward a common, and deadly, goal. Neil soon uncovers a secret and unexplained alliance between governments that have traditionally been enemies. Meanwhile Paul becomes increasingly secretive and erratic.

Paul sees the fungus as the next stage of human evolution, while Neil is convinced that it is driving its human hosts to destruction. Brother must oppose brother on an increasingly fraught international stage, with the stakes: the free will of every human on earth. Can humanity use this force for good, or are we becoming the pawns of an utterly alien intelligence?

Saudi Arabia, 1991. Troops stationed at the Dhahran airbase are in a state of high alert. The chemical warfare detectors have sounded and the soldiers scramble to put on their protective suits. They sit in tense silence, reminding themselves of the vaccinations which will protect them from chemical weapons. Then the all-clear sounds, and the troops rejoice that they are unharmed — or so they think...England, 2002. Those same troops are getting ill. Their families are getting ill. Young ex-soldiers are dying from mysterious and varied diseases. And the survivors are angry. Steven Dunbar, a medical investigator with an elite Government agency, decides to probe further. But what he discovers shocks him to the core. For the deadliest threat of all lurks not in the Saudi oilfields or in Iraq, but in the plush boardrooms of Whitehall. And if something isn't done soon, then more innocent people will die.

WINNER OF THE 2015 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD FOR MEDICAL THRILLERSLA screen writer Steven Ramirez called The Laptev Virus “A worthy successor to the Andromeda Strain.” If you like Michael Crichton books, this award-winning hard sci-fi medical thriller is for you.The Laptev Virus begins as an oil company, drilling in the Arctic, accidentally discovers a megavirus, frozen in the permafrost. It is 30,000 years old. And it is a human pathogen. Just how would a team of scientists go about studying it? And what if the mice models they were using inadvertently became contaminated, leading the researchers to dubious conclusions? Now, imagine if the CEO of the oil company sponsoring the research put pressure on the lab to issue a certification that the coast was clear and they could return to drilling—but it turns out that he is dead wrong?More than 5,300 copies of The Laptev Virus have sold in the first year since its release. Here’s your chance to see why readers just can’t put it down!Attention book clubs—I am available to “attend” your discussion of The Laptev Virus to answer questions via Skype or phone!

Winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award in the Medical Thriller genre. This techno thriller, hard scifi novel, begins in the Arctic where an oil company is drilling and unwittingly discovers a megavirus which had been frozen in the permafrost for 30,000 years. It is a thousand times larger than any viruses known before and is a human pathogen. Now investigators in Houston must race against the ticking clock of the short Arctic summer to discover a way to protect workers from the virus before competitors drain the basin of its rich resources… and before anyone else dies from the hemorrhagic fever that the Laptev virus causes.

When an apparent animal rights stunt sends shockwaves from the quiet English countryside to the corridors of Whitehall, Sci-Med, an elite investigative agency, sends Dr Steven Dunbar to uncover the truth. However, as a series of brutal incidents lays siege to the unassuming villagers, it is clear that even those held responsible are unable to explain the events or predict what is yet to come. Encountering even more frightening security measures enforced by unknown authorities, Dunbar realises that those who might hold the keys to the mystery are not prepared to help him, and those who have unleashed it will stop at nothing to fulfil their apocalyptic ambitions.As our most sophisticated means of protection are shown to be useless, the ex-Special Forces medic is tested to the limit. Alone in a race against unspeakable tragedy, he must imagine the unthinkable — and all he knows is that, when the storm breaks, it’ll already be too late.

Political backstabbing, rank hypocrisy, and dastardly deception reign in this delightfully entertaining political satire, sure to lift one’s spirits far above the national stage.America is in trouble—at the mercy of a puzzling pathogen. That ordinarily wouldn’t lead to catastrophe, thanks to modern medicine, but there’s just one problem: the government supply of Dormigen, the silver bullet of pharmaceuticals, has been depleted just as demand begins to spike.Set in the near future, The Rationing centers around a White House struggling to quell the crisis—and control the narrative. Working together, just barely, are a savvy but preoccupied president; a Speaker more interested in jockeying for position—and a potential presidential bid—than attending to the minutiae of disease control; a patriotic majority leader unable to differentiate a virus from a bacterium; a strategist with brilliant analytical abilities but abominable people skills; and, improbably, our narrator, a low-level scientist with the National Institutes of Health who happens to be the world’s leading expert in lurking viruses.Little goes according to plan during the three weeks necessary to replenish the stocks of Dormigen. Some Americans will get the life-saving drug and others will not, and nations with their own supply soon offer aid—but for a price. China senses blood and a geopolitical victory, presenting a laundry list of demands that ranges from complete domination of the South China Sea to additional parking spaces at the UN, while India claims it can save the day for the U.S.

Once one of the country’s most respected forensics experts, Dr David Hunter is facing an uncertain professional — and personal — future. So when he gets a call from Essex police, he’s eager for the chance to assist them.A badly decomposed body has been found in a desolate area of tidal mudflats and saltmarsh called the Backwaters. Under pressure to close the case, the police want Hunter to help with the recovery and identification.It’s thought the remains are those of Leo Villiers, the son of a prominent businessman who vanished weeks ago. To complicate matters, it was rumoured that Villiers was having an affair with a local woman. And she too is missing.But Hunter has his doubts about the identity. He knows the condition of the unrecognizable body could hide a multitude of sins. Then more remains are discovered — and these remote wetlands begin to give up their secrets...

Andrew Jones was once one of the few surgeons in the world to have that rare, God-given ability called The Touch. But after failing to save his young fiancé, Faith, at the scene of a car accident, Jones abandons his gift and shuns the operating room.Lara Blair owns a Chicago-based biomedical engineering company developing a surgical tool that will duplicate precisely the movement of a surgeon’s hands, reducing or eliminating failed surgical procedures. Lara has pursued the best surgeons in the world to test this surgical tool, and all of them have failed.As Lara pursues Jones’s skill for her project, Jones’s stubborn resistance cracks, and he begins to open up to her about the wounds that still haunt him. But when Jones discovers the urgency behind Lara’s work, he must choose to move beyond his past. As each is forced to surrender secret fears, they are bonded together through the lives of the people Jones serves and by the healing secret that Faith left behind.

An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria—before it spreads to the rest of the world.

1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified.

During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city’s medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife—but she has secrets of her own.

Based on a true story that has been lost to history, set during the last days of imperial Russia, THE WINTER STATION is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love.

“Dr. Peters, the patient has stopped breathing and doesn’t have any pulse!”

The nurse’s voice on the phone is desperate, but young Dr. Peters, in his first weeks of internship, is only bone-tired and a little afraid. He has forgotten when he last slept. Yet he knows that in the coming hours he will have to make life-or-death decisions regarding patients, assist contemptuous surgeons in the operating room, deal with nurses who may know more than he does, cope with worried relatives and friends of the injured and ill, and pretend at all times to be what he has not yet become-a fully qualified doctor.

This book is about what happens to a young intern as he goes through the year that promises to make him into a doctor, and threatens to destroy him as a human being — The Year of the Intern.

When John McKirrop takes shelter in a deserted graveyard one night, he witnesses the disinterment of the body of a young boy. Yet no one takes much notice of his stories. After all, who would believe the rantings of a homeless drunk?Father Ryan Lafferty, the local priest, is trying to help the boy’s distraught father find his son’s body. Alarmed by implications of black magic, he becomes even more inquisitive when McKirrop dies under suspicious circumstances.At the same time, a young female doctor, Sarah Lasseter, begins to query procedures at the trauma unit where she treated both the missing boy and McKirrop. Sarah and Father Ryan join forces as it becomes clear that beneath the cover of the noble advancement of medicine there is, ironically, both a sinister and horrific invention and a brilliant discovery — for which someone is prepared to kill, at whatever cost.

The unthinkable becomes stark reality in this frightening novel by the bestselling master of medical suspense.Expects do not question whether a bioterrorism event will occur in the United States, only when...New York City cab driver Yuri Davydov is an angry, disillusioned Russian émigré bent on returning to his motherland after an unhappy seven-year sojourn in the United States. Before his departure, he wants to lash out at the adoptive nation that lured him with what he believes was the hoax of the American Dream, only to deny him contentment, opportunity, and personal prosperity.As a former technician for the vast Soviet biological weapons industry Biopreparat, Yuri possesses the technical knowledge to carry out his vengeance on a horrific scale, especially after teaming up with a pair of far-right survivalists who share his abhorrence of the United States government. The survivalists and their neofascist skinhead militia have no trouble stealing the raw materials Yuri needs. Working together they launch Operation Wolverine.Dr. Jack Stapleton and Dr. Laurie Montgomery (both last seen in Chromosome 6) are confronted with two seemingly disparate cases in their work as forensic pathologists in the city's medical examiner's office. Jack successfully diagnoses a rare case of anthrax, while Laurie examines the remains of a tortured skinhead. They hardly suspect that the cases could be related, but soon they begin to connect the dots, and the question then becomes whether or not they will solve the puzzle before Yuri and his comrades unleash the ultimate terror: a modern bioweapon.With his signature skill, Robin Cook has crafted a page-turning thriller rooted in up-to-the-minute biotechnology. Vector is all-too-plausible fiction at its eye-opening, terrifying best.

Trying to find some normalcy during the Covid-19 pandemic, Brian Murphy and his family are on a summer excursion in Cape Cod when his wife, Emma, comes down with concerning flu-like symptoms. But their leisurely return home to New York City quickly becomes a race to the local hospital as she suddenly begins seizing in the car. At the ICU, she is diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis, a rare and highly lethal mosquito-borne viral disease seemingly caught during one of their evening cookouts. Complicating the situation further, Brian and Emma’s young daughter then begins to exhibit alarming physical and behavioral symptoms, too.

Emma’s harrowing hospital stay becomes even more fraught when Brian receives a staggering hospital bill full of outrageous charges and murky language. To add insult to injury, his health insurance company refuses to cover any of the cost, citing dubious clauses in Brian’s policy. Forced to choose between the ongoing care of family and bills he can never pay, and furious at a shockingly indifferent healthcare system, Brian vows to seek justice. But to get to the bottom of the predatory practices targeting his loved ones and countless others, he must uncover the dark side of an industry that has strayed drastically from its altruistic roots — and bring down the callous executives preying on the sick and defenseless before the virus can claim even more people...

Where life begins, terror lurks... Only Robin Cook, acknowledged master of the techno-medical thriller, could have written this supremely chilling novel about the passion to create life — and the power to destroy it.

Millions of readers met crusading epidemiologist Marissa Blumenthal in the pages of the bestselling Outbreak. Now Robin Cook brings back his feisty heroine in a gripping new tale, Vital Signs — a roller-coaster ride into the unexpected and the utterly unconscionable.

In the eyes of her envious peers, Marissa has it all: a superb professional reputation, a flourishing pediatrics practice, even a fairytale marriage with the man of her dreams — Robert Buchanan, an entrepreneur involved in health-care administration and research.

But there is one thing Marissa does not have: the child she desperately desires. And when tests confirm that her sealed fallopian tubes have rendered her infertile, her perfect world begins to crumble. Obsessed with becoming pregnant, Marissa barely even notices the disastrous effect her idée fixe is having on her marriage and career.

When a little medical sleuthing points to suspicious origins of her infertility, Marissa boldly challenges the law. Along with Wendy, a new friend with a similar infertility problem, she breaks into a fertility clinic, travels to Australia, a center of in-vitro fertilization, then on to Hong Kong.

The two women’s exploration of the brave new world of reproductive technologies takes a shocking turn when Wendy is violently killed — and Marissa’s own life is mysteriously threatened. But personal danger does not deter her, and she allows herself to be drawn into the dark vortex of the baby-making business, where a woman’s dearest dream turns slowly, agonizingly to dread...

Timely, top-notch suspense that will grip the reader from the very first page, Vital Signs proves once again the unique and compelling genius of Robin Cook.