Janette Turner Hospital

Due Preparations for the Plague

"In this bracing, visceral thriller...Hospital continually locates, in human events, the unyieldingly human experience."—San Francisco Chronicle

Janette Turner Hospital's electrifying novel chronicles the lives of two strangers connected by the tragic loss of parents in a hijacked Paris-New York flight. As an adult, Samantha, one of the children set free by the terrorists, has become obsessed with the hijacking. Under the guise of her senior thesis, she pulls Lowell, the son of a victim, into a web of terror, death, and betrayal that he has spent his adult life trying to forget. Hospital's electrifying novel is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, of sexual and political passions, and of individual and national complicities in the age of terrorism. She probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering, and the painful meaning of survival.

"Hospital is a writer of many gifts; her dark imagination, astute insights into societal interactions and the supple beauty of her prose provide an irresistible combination. This latest novel is an enthralling tale."—Publishers Weekly starred review

"Unputdownable...does for the post-September 11 era what John le Carré did for the Cold War."—Time Out New York

"One of the most powerful and innovative writers in English today."—Times Literary Supplement

"A writer of high tension and terrifying allure."—Los Angeles Times

"Janette Turner Hospital is a writer of consummate craft and visionary insight. She is always surprising, and seems always to be renewing herself as one of our major writers."—Joyce Carol Oates

"Strong stuff; and accomplished fusion of doomsday thriller and mordant morality play."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

"This is a rich and powerfully imagined novel of chilling timeliness."—Rosellen Brown