The United States government is given a warning by the preeminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to "collect organisms and dust for study." One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona. Twelve miles from the landing...

Taking a year off from her medical studies and leaving New York City, Pia Grazdani accepts a job at Nanobots, a nanotechnology institute, where she is quickly warned not to investigate the other work done at the facility and not to ask questions about their source of funding.

"The Gerard family has lived a charmed life. Carl is a highly successful residential developer with millions in the bank who married his high school sweetheart, Becky, and they have a beautiful daughter, Meghan. But when Meghan is suddenly struck with a mysterious illness that starts out as chronic headaches and joint pain but progresses rapidly to affect her cognitive ability, the family begins to fracture as they search desperately for a diagnosis...

"Newly minted chief resident at Boston Memorial Hospital Noah Rothauser is swamped in his new position, from managing the surgical schedules to dealing with the fallouts from patient deaths. Known for its medical advances, the famed teaching hospital has fitted several ORs as "hybrid operating rooms of the future"--an improvement that seems positive until an anesthesia error during a routine procedure results in the death of an otherwise healthy man....

The President's teenaged son is threatened by a potentially fatal illness that is rooted in dark secrets from a long-buried past. President Geoffrey Hilliard and his family live in the ever-present glare of the political limelight, with relentless scrutiny of their daily lives. The White House is not an easy place to grow up, so when the President's son Cam, a sixteen-year-old chess champion, experiences extreme fatigue, moodiness, and an uncharacteristic...

Angela Dawson, M.D., appears to have it all: at the age of thirty-seven, she owns a fabulous New York City apartment, a stunning seaside house on Nantucket, and enjoys the perks of her prosperous lifestyle. But her climb to the top was rough, marked by a troubled childhood, a failed marriage, and the devastating blow of bankruptcy as a primary-care internist. Painfully aware of the role of economics in modern life, particularly in the health-care...