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 facilityβalong 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 cargoβa 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.
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