The Plague Tales - Ann Benson

"Part historical novel, part futuristic adventure . . . chock full of curious lore and considerable suspense."-Entertainment Weekly

It is history's most feared disease.
It turned neighbor against neighbor, the civilized
into the savage, and the living into the dead.
Now, in a spellbinding novel of adventure
and science, romance and terror, two eras are joined by a single trace of microscopic
bacterium-the invisible seeds of a new bubonic plague.

In the year 1348, a disgraced
Spanish physician crosses a landscape of horrors to Avignon, France.
There, he will
be sent on an impossible mission to England, to save the royal family from the Black
Death. . . .

Nearly seven hundred years later, a woman scientist digs up a clod of
earth in London.
In a world where medicine is tightly controlled, she will unearth
a terror lying dormant for centuries.

From the primitive cures of the Middle Ages
to the biological police state of our near future, The Plague Tales is a thrilling
race against time and mass destruction.
For in 2005, humankind's last hope for survival
can come only from one place: out of a dark and tortured past.

Praise for The Plague Tales

"Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future bio-thriller."-Publishers Weekly(starred review)

"Harrowing . . . Will give readers both nightmares and thrills . . . A carefully woven page-turner from which . . . Robin Cook and Michael Crichton could learn."-Library Journal

"A hard-to-put-down thriller steeped in historical fiction and bio-tech sci-fi."-Middlesex News(Mass.)