Gravity

Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical parts of her latest thriller are very convincing, even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practised--outer space.

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Optrex wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to Earth. Only Emma's husband, a doctor/astronaut, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of their sockets, all that's missing is one of those bland NASA voices saying, "Houston, we have a problem--we're being attacked by tiny little creatures that are part human, part frog and part mouse."

Here are some other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors:Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler

View other editions of Gravity.
View books by Tess Gerritsen.

Brilliant! - Rated
I absolutley loved this book, it really was a page turner for me, much to my husbands annoyance!
The characters are brilliant, and the drama that unfolds is second to none! I felt myself stuck in space with Emma and the drama that followed! This is Tess at her best! A deffinate must read!

Stuck in Space with Nowhere to Go - Rated
Because of a tragic accident research physician Emma Watson suddenly gets a ride on the space shuttle up to the International Space Station. The ISS took five years to build and is twice as long as a football field and Emma is thrilled at the prospect of studying living creatures in space, however she's not thrilled about leaving without settling all of the issues concerning her impending divorce between her and physician husband Jack McCallum.

One of the astronauts aboard ISS takes sick and is returned to earth via the space shuttle, however the shuttle crashes, the astronauts are dead and now the military takes over and the cause is hushed up by.

Meanwhile back on the space station Emma suspects a problem that is soon confirmed by the sudden illness of first one astronaut, then another. Racing against time to find the cause, she soon discovers that they are stranded in space. The government won't risk their return to earth as long as there is a chance of world wide infection.

Back on Earth Jack is determined to bring Emma home and he works to identify the organism that infects and kills within a matter of days. But even if he locates the cause, his estranged wife is stranded on the space station, the last living member of the team.

From her romance novels to her medical thrillers, to this, sort of a scary medical-techno-thriller, Tess Gerritsen continues to grow as a writer, each book better than the last. She is one of my favorite living authors, she should be one of yours too. If you've missed Tess Gerritsen, you've missed a treat.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

im not sure - Rated
i was on holiday when i started to read this book and i read about the first chapter and for some reson could just not get into it. i mean ita a good book if you understand what all the space words mean, but it gets a bit confusing at times. so far the only tess gerritsen book im dissapointed with her others that i have read are superb keep writing tess

Back on Top Form - Rated

Tess Gerritsen left a successful medical practice to bring up her children and concentrate on her writing. She lives in Maine, with her family. There has been some confusion with one or two of her earlier books being re-issued and they seem to be more for the Mills and Boon market (nothing wrong with that), but they are not the type of books that reader's of her current offerings have come to expect from her.

This book brings us back to the more familiar suspense thriller novels that the author is famous for. This one has a background of the American space programme, with Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician who has been training for a mission to the International Space Station, where she will get the opportunity to study living being in space. Emma's estranged husband who has shared her dream of space travel has been grounded because of a medical condition and he is an embittered man. He can only watch as his wife prepares for her first mission.

But as soon as the mission reaches the space station, things start to go horribly wrong, an experiment has back-fired with lethal consequences, and if the problem cannot be contained the whole of the earth's population could be affected with catastrophic results . .

Out of this world! - Rated
I have read many novels by Tess Gerritsen and after my disappointment with 'Never Say Die' (Tess should steer clear of too much sloppy romance writing and stick to thrillers, which she does best) I had considered giving up and moving onto another author. I read plenty of good reviews for Gravity so I thought I'd give it a go and I'm so pleased I did - its absolutely brilliant! I literally couldn't put it down. Its one of her best in my opinion!