Gravity

Rating:
Summary: Be prepared to stay up all night!
Review: Tess Gerritsen has become my favorite medical suspense writer. I agree with Stephen King that she is better than Michael Palmer, Robin Cook, and Michael Crichton. A retired internist, she brings a medical authenticity to her novels that I appreciate as a surgeon.

After reading her first novel, Harvest, and then the more recent two, The Surgeon and The Apprentice, I backtracked to Gravity. It's placed a bit out of her usual setting in that it's set at NASA and in outer space on the International Space Station (ISS) and aboard the shuttle. Astronauts are getting infected with a novel organism and dying. Nefarious forces are at work to undermine NASA's control over the situation. Earth is at risk should the disease make it back down. There are heroes and villains (or at least people trying to do their jobs who make mistakes). Along the way, you learn a bit about what makes NASA, the astronauts, the ISS, and the shuttle tick. I cannot do justice to the suspense of the book. Suffice it to say that I bothered my wife a bit by my immersion in the book until I completed reading it.

If you liked Crichton's Andromeda Strain and Cook's Outbreak, you'll really like Gerritsen's Gravity. I'm running, not walking, to get another novel of hers.

Rating:
Summary: Fast, fantastic read
Review: Tess Gerritsen has been one of my favorite authors for some time, but this book has her sitting next to Koontz and Rice, vying for the #1 spot on my bookshelf. I usually take my time reading, but I blew through this book in a day and a half.

In Gravity, Emma Watson must overcome her fear of failure and her pride as she dukes it out with a mysterious infection that has killed one shuttle crew and is working its way through her space station crew. Watson is a strong character, paired beautifully with an equally strong husband who takes every chance on earth to make sure Emma comes home.

If you've never read Gerritsen before, start with other novels and work your way to this one, her best to date. If you've read Gerritsen and aren't sure whether this space station setting will appeal, put away your biases for one paragraph, and you won't be disappointed.

Intensity, excitement, horror, and love. Reading doesn't get any better than this.

Rating:
Summary: His Love is so Far Away, Can He Get to Her in Time?
Review: This is a story that takes place in the not far off future. NASA has a space station in orbit and a deadly virus, the result of a secret Army experiment, gets loose aboard. One of the crew dies and Dr. Emma Watson, who is going through a divorce from Doctor Jack McCallum, a man she still loves, goes up on the shuttle to replace him. The returning shuttle crew gets infected as they bring the body back and they all die. Then one by one the crew aboard the station dies too, till only Emma is left.

Back on Earth, Jack, who still loves Emma too, works frantically to find a cure. But even if he does, he's afraid the Army will not let them take it up to his wife. He believes they're going to leave her to die. However, there's a struggling company that has designed a small shuttle like vehicle and they've bought a Russian rocket. So now all Jack has to do is find the cure, get himself aboard that tiny shuttle and ride that Russian rocket, but even if all that is possible, can he get to Emma in time?

Gravity is a thrilling story that had me burning the midnight oil and as a bonus, I learned an awful about our astronaut corps and what makes the men who go to space tick. This is a super read that I can't recommend highly enough.

Reviewed by Leeann Douglass

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced, Creepy & Extremely Well-Written
Review: This is my second reading of my favorite Gerritsen book so far. Dr. Emma Watson is on the International Space Station doing scientific experiments when something goes terribly wrong. One of the crew is afflicted with stomach pains, vomiting and blood-red eyes. Soon, he's dead and his body seems to be liquifying before their very eyes. NASA is being told they have to abandon their astronauts; they have no clue what is happening to their crew members, so they can't allow it to come here and kill more people. But Jack McCallum, Emma's soon-to-be ex-husband, is back on earth trying to figure out what has gone wrong - and how to save Emma and the rest of the crew from dying from this strange disease that has somehow made it onto the space station. Where did it come from? How did it make it through all the security regulations for an ISS experiment?

I loved this book - it's fast paced, creepy, and extremely well-written!