Straight out of today's hospitals and labs --- and tomorrow's
headlines --- comes a frightening, scalpel-sharp thriller from
medical insider Joshua Spanogle. In an astounding debut, Spanogle
takes us on an all-too-real race against time...as a young doctor
enters the dark side of scientific research, desperate to stop a
terrifying epidemic before it is too late....

In Baltimore's St. Raphael's Hospital, three newly admitted
patients are among society's most helpless citizens: female
residents of Baltimore's group homes for the mentally impaired,
their bodies racked by a virus the likes of which no one at St.
Raphael's has ever seen.

Dr. Nathaniel McCormick is one of the first on the scene. A young
investigator from the Centers for Disease Control, Nate is paid to
explore the bizarre, the exotic, and the baffling --- from
superviruses to bioterrorism. But as soon as Nate begins to
investigate the lives and habits of the victims, he knows something
is terribly wrong. Using all his skills as a medical detective,
Nate soon zeroes in on the "vector" --- the one person who had
sexual contact with the first victims. And when that suspect is
found murdered, Nate fears that the disease he's chasing may not be
an act of nature, but of man.

With his brash style angering his superiors and fellow
investigators alike, Nate turns to an old colleague and former
lover, Dr. Brooke Michaels, for help. Together the two
investigators follow a twisting trail of clues to a discovery that
is at once groundbreaking and unspeakable. And as a circle of
treachery tightens around him, Nate is about to confront the most
chilling revelation of all --- and a past Nate himself has been
trying to escape.

At once a taut medical thriller and a riveting psychological
portrait of a young doctor on the edge, Isolation Ward is a tale of
runaway tension --- with a brilliant "what-if" premise that is
harrowing...heartbreaking...and impossible to wrench from your
imagination.

© Copyright 2011 by Delacorte Press, a division of Random
House, Inc.