BEYOND THESE WOODS — Mark Roger Bailey

The author of SAINT returns with a new novel about Lotte Keene, a biological detective who has had enough of government bureaucracy at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and resigns, but can never escape. After surviving the outbreak of a mysterious pathogen in the Amazonian jungle, Keene returns home and is pulled into the seemingly infinite mystery of a new, more malignant killer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There for the first time in her forensic biology career she confronts a pathogen so potent and lethal that it seems unnatural. She also discovers secrets in the forested mountains that no one wants to know. To the CDC, Lotte's actions are insubordination. To the environmental activist, Gabriel Fox, she is a complication. To America's elite intelligence apparatus, she's a threat to national security. To Longwood's Doctor Ben McCandle, she is a challenge to everything he thinks he knows about medical science. Suspicions of her motives mount. Calculating corporate powers grow more sinister. Dark operatives from Washington move against her work … and time is running out. Lotte Keene is about to rewrite the rules of biogenetic science and cross the thin red, white and blue line between American principle and power. Yosemite to government secret labs to powerful CEOs. Bravo! -Suzanne Evans