Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical aspects of her latest thriller are absolutely convincing--even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practiced--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 Murine 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 himself, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of our heads, 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."

Other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors: Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler


From Publishers Weekly
Gerritsen (Bloodstream) meshes medical suspenseAher specialtyAand the world of space travel in another nail-biting tale of genetic misadventure. Much of this scary thriller is set aboard the International Space Station, where a team of six astronauts suddenly find themselves threatened by a virulent biohazard. Victims first register a headache, followed by stomach pains; then their eyes turn blood red. Finally, they convulse so violently they literally bash themselves apart. Most frightening is what spills out of their bodies: green, egg-filled globules. As astronaut Emma Watson, the station's onboard doctor, struggles to fight the outbreak, her colleagues are dying one by one. A Japanese astronaut, the first to get sick, is sent down to earth via the space shuttle, but he's dead on arrival. Panic spreads when military physicians discover a deadly mutantAa creature that's part human, part frog and part mouseAin the eggs that spill from his body. The military, fearing bioterrorism or even an extraterrestrial invasion, quickly traces the contaminant to an experiment on the space station that was funded by a company researching tiny organisms in the ocean off South America, where an asteroid hit thousands of years ago. Meanwhile, back on the station, Watson is the only one left alive. The military says she's already infected and must be left to die in space, but Watson's husband, fellow astronaut/physician Jack McCallum, won't tolerate that decision, and scrambles to find a way to get her home. It's a tribute to Gerritsen, herself a medical doctor, that such an outlandish tale can be told so compellingly and convincingly. Thanks to her impressive research, the novel's detailed descriptions of life in space consistently ring true, and the progress of the breakout is satisfyingly horrific. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Mystery Guild main selections, Doubleday Book Club Super Release; Simon & Schuster audio; author tour. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Dr. Emma Watson is supposed to be studying living beings in space, but after boarding the International Space Station she's got a much more important task: halting the plague that is striking down crew members before it spreads to Earth. Film rights have been sold to New Line Cinema. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
This thriller introduces a formidable adversary: a mutant life form, easily passed from person to person, that always kills unless a weapon to defeat it can be found. Emma Watson, research scientist and physician, newly transferred to the space station, struggles to find the means to combat this baffling threat--knowing that unless she does, the space station and its crew will not be allowed to return to Earth. Fully involved in the terror of the story, Campbell Scott provides a flawless and compelling performance. His strong warm voice and subtle vocal changes bring a distinct personality to each character, and, as the terror increases, he increases the suspense with skill. M.A.M. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Gerritsen's latest thriller begins with a geologist in the underwater exploring vehicle Deep Flight IV descending into the Galapagos Rift and becoming stuck at 19,000 feet. Why does a geologist need to be that far down in the ocean? you ask. This is the first of many questions readers will ask throughout an intriguing book. The next scene shows a crew of astronauts blasting off and encountering problems that lead to an attempt to return to Earth. That effort fails completely, and the only thing that saves the intrepid crew is the fact that they are in a flight simulator. When the real crew finally gets started on its way to the international space station (ISS), they are carrying out many experiments. Unfortunately, their cargo includes an aggressive organism that can do some clever tricks with DNA. Gerritsen creates believable characters and ably captures astronautical and scientific work in fashioning another fascinating story replete with cleverly intertwined subplots. This gripping novel is a main selection of the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, and the Doubleday Book Club. Few choices could have been easier. William Beatty


From Kirkus Reviews
A strongly plotted thriller about a plague-like epidemic on a space station. Superb research lifts Gerritsen to the top of the ladder as Michael Crichton and Robin Cook wave from below. Gerritsens tale doesnt have the mystical touch that Stanislaw Lem would have added, though the essential mystery here is a fairly mystical monster, a multicellular microscopic organism called the Chimera. A geologist, trapped in a submersible 19,000 feet deep in the Gal pagos Rift, ties in with an outbreak on mankind's first internationally built space station (ISS), orbiting earth. The ISS, five years in the assembling and twice as long as a football field, is manned by an international team of scientists whose work, in part, focuses on testing the effects of weightlessness on microbes and viruses. When tested on earth, such cultures can grow only on flat slides. In space, without gravity, they grow three-dimensionally and assume unbounded shapes. Someone has hoodwinked the space doctors by having them test an absolutely unknown organism that has been lifted from bubbling thermals on the ocean floor. This creature has hideous properties that allow it to take on the DNA of any host it enters, be such lab mouse, frog, or human. Thus, any vaccine that might kill the amazing Chimera, whose DNA is part frog, part mouse, and part human, would kill the host as well. The story builds to a Liebestodt of dancing horror as fatal globules of infected blood erupt weightlessly from the dying, float about the ship, and clog the air filters. Meanwhile, the main romantic interest turns on a couple in the process of divorce, astronauts Emma Watson and Dr. Jack McCallum. Doc Gerritsen (Bloodstream, 1998, etc.), a former internist who creates chilling viral disasters, knows all the natural gates and alleys of the human bio-novel as well as she does the musculature of suspense. (Literary Guild Main Selection; Mystery Guild Main Selection; Doubleday Book Club Super Release) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Stephen King Tess Gerritsen is an automatic must-read in my house; what Anne Rice is to vampires, Gerritsen is to the tale of medical suspense. She is better than Palmer, better than cook...yes, even better than Crichton. 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.


Book Description
A young NASA doctor must combat a lethal microbe that is multiplying in the deadliest of environments -- space -- in this acclaimed blockbuster of medical suspense from Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Harvest, Life Support, and Bloodstream. Gravity Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. But her mission aboard the International Space Station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control -- and infects the space station crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the outbreak while back on Earth her estranged husband, Jack McCallum, works frantically with NASA to bring her home. But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population, and the astronauts are stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station -- where they are dying one by one...

FROM OUR EDITORS

Novelist Tess Gerritsen carved out a solid niche in the thriller market and made the New York Times bestseller list with the release of her first medical suspense novel, Harvest. Two more followed and now, with the release of her fourth, Gravity, Gerritsen has rocketed to the top of her field, charting new territory in the genre by framing a story of high medical suspense with the unique terrors inherent in space exploration.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

She's a New York Times bestseller and she's a must-read even for Stephen King. She's Tess Gerritsen, with phenomenal titles like Harvest and Bloodstream to her credit and the brand-new, eagerly-awaited Gravity set to hit the shelves. Gerritsen brings the suspense to new heights as Dr. Emma Watson, a crew member on the International Space Station, does battle to contain a mysterious and deadly contagion -- before it claims the crew and moves on to the surface of Earth! The film rights are sold, the press is abuzz, and -- most important -- the readers are waiting for this thrilling new sure-to-be smash.

FROM THE CRITICS

USA Today

As riveting as The Hot Zone, this page turner proves that Gerritsen is tops in her genre.

Providence Sunday Journal

For the past 30 years, Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain served as the benchmark.... Not anymore. Tess Gerritsen sets the new standard with Gravity.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A powerful new thriller.... A tuat high-wire act on two fronts—crisis aboard the International Space Station meets killer virus on the loose, and all based on the latest technology.

Romantic Times

Gravity is Tess Gerritsen￯﾿ﾽs most electrifying thriller to date. The tension and terror is nonstop in this utterly transfixing tale.

Publishers Weekly