Invasive Procedures — Orson Scott Card; Aaron Johnston

THE HEALERS move in secrecy through the city streets, hidden in dark cloaks. They bring a deadly promise to the poor of Los Angeles. They can cure the incurable diseases -- Parkinson's, sickle cell -- and they ask for nothing in return. But the genetic therapy techniques they are using are so targeted that what will cure one can, and will, bring certain painful death to anyone else exposed.

Frank Hartman is a brilliant virologist working for the government's ultrasecret biohazard agency. It is to Hartman that the BHA turns to find a way to cure a deadly disease that keeps breaking loose in Los Angeles. But just curing the disease isn't going to stop the men who are spreading it.

This taut thriller takes the reader a few years into the future, to the promise and danger, of genetic medicine.