Flashback - Softcover

Braver, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765348535 ISBN 13: 9780765348531

Publisher: Tor Books, 2007

Synopsis

If you could relive your childhood, would you? What if you had no choice?

On the thirty-fifth anniversary of his parents' mysterious drowning, Jack Koryan returns to his family beach cottage. During a swim, Jack is attacked by a school of rare jellyfish whose toxic stings put him in a coma for three years.

When he awakens, he finds that the jellyfish toxin has left him with an extraordinary memory that impresses his doctors. This discovery is complicated by flashbacks: some, pleasant childhood vignettes, others, confusing flashes of violence that leave him quaking in horror.

Jack wonders if he's losing his mind, but that fear is dispelled by Rene Ballard, a pharmacologist working on the world's first cure for Alzheimer's Disease. She wants to test Jack because the basis of the drug is the very jellyfish toxin that sent Jack into a coma. And, while several test patients have miraculously regained functionality, others are also experiencing dangerous flashback seizures.

Ballard's revelation sets Jack on a quest to discover what is happening to him. He and Rene uncover a sinister pattern of lies and deceit that has left behind a trail of bodies, and several elderly patients stuck in a past that they cannot emerge from--or don't want to.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Braver is the award-winning author of six critically acclaimed thrillers including Elixir, Gray Matter, and Flashback, which was recipient of the 2006 Massachusetts Honor Book Award for Fiction--a first for a thriller--and which in a starred review Publishers Weekly called “an exceptional medical thriller.” His novels have been translated into five languages, and three have been optioned for movies.

Under his own name, Gary Goshgarian, he is an award-winning professor of English at Northeastern University where he teaches courses in Modern Bestsellers, Science Fiction, Horror Fiction, and Fiction Writing. He has taught fiction-writing workshops through out the United States and Europe for over twenty years. He is the author of five college writing textbooks.

Review

"Flashback is one of the best medical science thrillers I have ever read. With an amazing attention to detail Gary Braver has woven together a story that is as timely as it is gripping and as telling as it is touching. This one's a page turner with a point."--Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author of The Narrows

"Flashback grabs you by the throat, and the heart, from the first page to the last. The superb writing carries you away into a world of inexplicable acts perpetrated by our common man. Chilling!"--Ridley Pearson, New York Times bestselling author of The Body of David Hayes

"A knockout. Braver has written a brilliant cautionary tale. At once chilling and heartening, Flashback is thriller fiction at its best."--Robert B. Parker on Flashback

"Flashback combines an irresistible premise with the medical intrigue of Robin Cook and the scientific plausibility of Michael Crichton--a powerful, gripping, and moving tale with a beating heart."--Joseph Finder, author of Paranoia

"Flashback's compelling, fact-based medical thriller resonates with the clear pure notes of reality and positively blurs the line between reality and imagination. Braver has created a fictional world you are dying to believe in."--Lewis Perdue, New York Times bestselling author of Perfect Killer
"Gary Braver does it again. Another taut, suspenseful medical thriller from the new master of the genre. Strong characters, a powerful plot . . . you won't want to put the book down until you're done."--William Martin, author of Back Bay and Harvard Yard

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0765348535
• ISBN 13: 9780765348531
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480