The Plague Tales — Ann Benson

Fourteenth-century physician Alejandro Canches, caught performing an autopsy in Spain, flees across Europe at the time of the Black Death to escape execution for his heretical deed. When he arrives in the papal city of Avignon, he is conscripted against his will to serve as a plague doctor in the court of England's Edward III. Unfolding in a dramatic counterpoint is the story of American medical archaeologist Janie Crowe, in England at the turn of the twenty-first century to recover from the tragic loss of her family. She digs up a medieval artifact as part of her research and unwittingly releases a deadly plague bacteria on an unprepared world. In a future where antibiotics are useless and a past where death is an ever-present fear, these two unwilling heroes from two different centuries are linked by history and defined by circumstance. Here are their stories - the plague tales.