Product Description

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!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6765 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical parts of her latest thriller are very convincing, even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practised--outer space.

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Optrex wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to Earth. Only Emma's husband, a doctor/astronaut, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of their sockets, all that's missing is one of those bland NASA voices saying, "Houston, we have a problem--we're being attacked by tiny little creatures that are part human, part frog and part mouse."

Here are some other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors:Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler

Review
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

About the Author
Tess Gerritsen left a successful medical practice to bring up her children and concentrate on her writing. Her two previous highly acclaimed novels, Harvest and Life Support, were both New York Times bestsellers. She lives in Maine, with her family, and in her free time plays fiddle with the Tattered Tartans.

Customer Reviews

Astonishing!!
It just so happened I had a lazy afternoon so I picked up this book...and I couldn't put it down! I was up at 3am when I finished it and my word what a book. Extremely well researched and captivating from the first page, with believable characters. It's now amoung my favourite books.

This is a MUST read for anyone interested in books that contain medical stuff, blood and guts spewing out everywhere, and anything to do with NASA and space flight.

This is my first taste of Tess Gerritsen, but definatly not my last - looking up her other books as I type! :o)

Pack plenty of eye drops when you visit the ISS
"All at once his body went rigid. The wetness had slid beneath the edge of the cap. It was now squirming towards his ear. Not a droplet of water, not a stray trickle, but something that moved with purpose. Something alive... He thrashed left, then right, trying to dislodge it. He banged hard on his (space) helmet. And still he felt it moving, sliding under his comm assembly... He caught dizzying glimpses of earth, then black space, then earth again, as he flailed and twisted around in a frantic dance ... The wetness slithered into his ear."

Bummer. Makes you want to swear off space walks.

According to the jacket of Tess Gerritsen's GRAVITY, Dr. Emma Watson finds herself aboard the International Space Station (ISS) facing a zero-gravity experiment gone bad, a culture of single-celled organisms run amok. The crew is infected one by one, with fatal results. The world's population is put at risk. The ISS is quarantined. O dear, how does our heroine survive and get home?

After the first third or so of this thriller, I was tempted to put it down, and write it off as a two-star effort. Too many of the elements seemed tired, potentially leading to a predictable plot. Beautiful, hotshot young doctor rockets into orbit before being able to sign divorce papers. Her estranged husband, also a hotshot physician, is an astronaut permanently grounded because of kidney stones. (He still loves her, of course.) A maverick U.S. company has developed a quick-turnaround alternative to the space shuttle. And, while the first prototype blew up on launch, the second is untested, but, hey, ready to fly. A mysterious, Southern California (where else?) research outfit that owns the haywire experiment knows more than it's telling. I admit that I'm probably jaded, but puhleeze!

Then the monster, so to speak, gets loose, and people starting dying in the most horrific manner. I mean, if you wake up some morning after an all night bender, look into the mirror and notice a severe case of bloodshot eyes, then you may as well run screaming into the street because you're not going to have a good week. Trust me.So, Tess pulls out of her nosedive in the knick of time, and I'm happy to award 4 stars. Nice job!

UTTERLY BRILLIANT
i thought this book was completely and utterly BRILLIANT.grabs you by the throat from the begining and holds you until the very end.i've recommended this book to everyone that i know - it's just fantastic!!!!
GO BUY THIS BOOK - YOU WILL NOT BE DISSAPOINTED.