Fertile Ground Author: Ben Mezrich
	Book Information Publisher: Harpercollins Book Type: Hardcover Rating: 2 ISBN-13: 9780060187521 - ISBN-10: 0060187522 Publication Date: 10/1999 Pages: 283

Ben Mezrich captured the attention of readers everywhere with his critically acclaimed first novel, Threshold, a shocking scientific thriller that provoked People magazine to declare him a talent ready to "give Michael Crichton a run for his money." The promise of that debut was followed with Reaper, which combined cutting-edge tech-nological invention with classic suspense. Now Mezrich returns with his tour de force, Fertile Ground, a mesmerizing page-turner that will keep fans on the edge of their seats.

A nightmare is about to be unleashed. Jake Foster, a leading fertility specialist, has just made a terrifying discovery that may explain why Boston has recently suffered the highest infertility rate in the country. But before he can share his news with his wife, ER physician Brett Foster, she tells him an incredible story of her own. Just hours before, a healthy young man with no visible injuries bled to death moments after being rushed into her emergency room--the fifth sucb fatality in a week.

Even as Jake and Brett compare notes on their seemingly unrelated mysteries, a pair of brutal dramas unfold in disparate corners of the city. A respected R&D scientist is found murdered on the eve of a historic merger between his corporation and a leading con-sumer goods company. And in a nearby Beacon Hill laboratory, Jake's fertility clinic is destroyed in a suspicious fire that kills his young research assistant. Investigators will find a puzzling link between the two victims: both had logged into the database of the Centers for Disease Control just moments before their deaths.

But Brett has no way of knowing this when she, too, logs into the CDC database, oblivious to the danger about to befall her. Jake and Brett now find themselves the object of a killer with a deadly secret, expendable pawns in a treacherous corporate cover-up. Racing against the clock, Jake and Brett will put their lives on the line to stop an epidemiological crisis about to be unleashed across the entire nation-and, with it, a shocking conspiracy of Orwellian propor-tions that will claim countless lives--unless they can expose it first.

In Fertile Ground, master storyteller Ben Mezrich has crafted his most sinister, surprising, and satisfying thriller yet.