The Plague Tales - Softcover

Benson, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440225108 ISBN 13: 9780440225102

Publisher: Dell, 1998

Synopsis

“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.)

About this title

Review:

Before venturing back and forth in time with this historical and futuristic adventure novel, Ann Benson was best known for her beads. The idea for The Plague Tales came to her during a period of research in London for one of her craft books; passing by an open plot of ground, she learned that it was a mass grave for 14th-century victims of the bubonic plague, inspiring her own fantastic version of the disastrous disease's effects.

The Plague Tales consists of two parallel stories: one an account of a king's physician in 14th-century England, the other a tale of futuristic London--a time when antibiotics no longer cure and "Bio-Cops," empowered to exterminate those suspected of carrying disease, prowl the streets.

From the Publisher:

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

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

"A harrowing medical novel that will give readers both nightmares and thrills....It's a carefully woven page-turner from which veterans like 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.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0440225108
• ISBN 13: 9780440225102
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 688