William Morrow
December 2009
On Sale: January 1, 2010
Featuring: Jack Menard; Maura Kelly
448 pages ISBN: 0061231428 EAN: 9780061231421 Hardcover Add to Wish List
During the battle for Baghdad, Republican Guards and the
U.S. 3rd Infantry Division fight over the ruins of the
Baghdad Zoo, opening the floodgates for the smuggling of
hundreds of exotic birds, mammals, and reptiles to Western
nations. One night, a rare baby gibbon mysteriously
disappears from an Iraqi bio-weapons research facility—along
with the chief scientist.
Six years later, Texas state veterinarian Maura Kelly
uncovers a ring of black market smugglers at the U.S. border
carrying strange cargo—a double-headed snake, a lion cub
with saber teeth, a featherless Amazon parrot. While each
animal seems to have a completely different mutation from
the next, all share one uncanny trait: super-intelligence.
With U.S. Marshall Jack Menard and two neurobiologists on
her side, Maura begins to unravel the mystery of these
strange animals, a puzzle involving fractal intelligence,
stem cell research, and a secret history from the Book of
Genesis that sheds light on a horrifying secret tracing back
to Biblical times. As she digs deeper into the truth of
these bizarre creatures, Maura discovers she too has created
a new life.
Against a backdrop of global terror, Maura will risk
everything to expose this genetic nightmare . . . including
her precious unborn child.