Gravity (Hardcover)

Emma is training for a mission to the ISS, the International Space Station, in the near future. Then because the wife of one of the astronauts up on the Station is in an accident, he has to come home, so Emma is tapped to replace him. All of a sudden she's going into space now.

Meanwhile the ne'er-do-well brother of the director of the Houston Space Center is working on his own space plane, one that's much cheaper than the shuttle, however his first attempt ended in disaster and he needs a pilot for his second attempt.

After Emma gets up on the station things start turning terrible. The lab mice start dying. Green blobs are floating around. Than the astronauts themselves start dying horrible deaths, worse than Ebola, and it appears to be highly contagious.

Jack frantically tries to track down a cure before the disease attacks Emma, but even after he believes he's solved the riddle of what's killing our spacemen, no one will let him go up. Better to let them all die, the authorities say, rather than to risk the disease getting back to earth.

So where was that cheapo space plane again?"

This is a futuristic thriller that is pretty straightforward. You just know what's going to happen before it does, but that doesn't take away form this story one bit. There are plenty of thrills here, lots of suspense and some plain old grisly horror. Also this story is very different from anything Tess Gerritsen has done to date, but don't let that put you off, because this is one very good book. I couldn't put it down.

Back on Earth, Jack, who still loves Emma too, works frantically to find a cure. But even if he does, he's afraid the Army will not let them take it up to his wife. He believes they're going to leave her to die. However, there's a struggling company that has designed a small shuttle like vehicle and they've bought a Russian rocket. So now all Jack has to do is find the cure, get himself aboard that tiny shuttle and ride that Russian rocket, but even if all that is possible, can he get to Emma in time?

Gravity is a thrilling story that had me burning the midnight oil and as a bonus, I learned an awful about our astronaut corps and what makes the men who go to space tick. This is a super read that I can't recommend highly enough.

Reviewed by Leeann Douglass