April 2012 Debut Authors

Happy April and Happy Thrilling Thursday. The first of every month we will feature members of our Debut Authors Program. We are excited to announce that three members have books being released in April 2012. Please take a look and let’s celebrate their success!

Brian Andrews
THE CALYPSO DIRECTIVE (Arcade)
April 2012

For 115 days, Will Foster has been locked in medical quarantine without his consent. The doctors claim he is infected with a deadly virus, but this is a devious lie. Encoded in Foster's DNA is an unprecedented mutation, the source code for immunity against a disease that Vyrogen Pharmaceuticals will stop at nothing to commercialize.

Against all odds, Foster pulls off a heart-stopping escape from his laboratory prison carrying a vial of bubonic plague along with him. But Vyrogen will never stop hunting him and Foster is chased across Prague and Vienna by Vyrogen’s mercenaries, hell-bent on capturing him before he can spill his secrets to the world. In desperation, Foster contacts the only person in the world he can trust—an ex-girlfriend who works for Vyrogen.

Linda Rodriguez
EVERY LAST SECRET (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne)
April 2012

Half-Cherokee Marquitta “Skeet” Bannion thought she was leaving her troubles behind when she fled the stress of being the highest-ranking woman in the Kansas City Police Department, a jealous cop ex-husband, and a disgraced alcoholic ex-cop father. Moving to a small town to be chief of a college’s campus police force, she builds a life outside of her work. She might even begin a new relationship with the amiable Brewster police chief.

All of this is threatened when the student editor of the school newspaper is found murdered on campus. Skeet must track down the killer, following trails that lead to some of the most powerful people in the university. In the midst of her investigation, Skeet assumes responsibility for a vulnerable teenager when her ex-husband and seriously ailing father wind up back on her hands. Time is running out and college administrators demand she conceal all college involvement in the murder, but Skeet will not stop until she’s unraveled every last secret.

James M. Tabor
THE DEEP ZONE (Ballantine Books)
April 2012

In this gripping debut thriller from James M. Tabor, a brilliant and beautiful scientist and a mysterious special ops soldier must lead a team deep into the Earth on a desperate hunt for the cure to a deadly epidemic.
When she was unjustly fired from a clandestine government laboratory, microbiologist Hallie Leland swore she would never look back. But she can’t ignore an urgent summons from the White House to reenter the realm of cutting-edge science and dangerous secrets.

“Potentially the worst threat since Pearl Harbor” is how the president describes a mysterious epidemic killing American soldiers  in Afghanistan—and now poised for outbreak in the States and beyond. Millions will die unless Hallie and a hastily mobilized team can recover the ultrarare organism needed to create a new antibiotic. The good news is that Hallie knows more about the organism than anyone else on the planet. The bad news is that it can be found only at the bottom of Earth’s deepest cave.
Hallie’s team is capable—especially the mysterious Wil Bowman, who knows as much about high-tech weaponry as he does about microbiology—but the challenge appears insurmountable. Before even reaching the supercave, they must traverse a forbidding Mexican jungle populated by warring cartels, Federales, and murderous locals. Only then can they confront the cave’s flooded tunnels, lakes of acid, bottomless chasms, and mind-warping blackness. But the deadliest enemies are hiding in plain sight: a powerful traitor high in the Washington ranks and a cunning assassin deep underground, determined to turn Hallie’s mission into a journey of no return.