Bloodstream - Tess Gerritsen

Tranquility, Maine is a small, quiet town with a sparse population and friendly folk. They do not trust strangers much, but they are good to their own and welcome the plethora of rich vacationers that come every summer. In the summer, business is plentiful, the local economy is good, and the town is bustling. In the fall, the population has dwindled to the local few, life settling down again.

However, this fall comes with tragedy.

Dr. Claire Elliot only just moved to Tranquility to shelter her teenage son, Noah, from the distractions of the city and the memory of his father's death. He had begun to steal cars and make all the wrong friends when she made the last, desperate decision to uproot him in hopes of planting him again in safer soil But with the locals unwilling to become attached to her, as they suspect she will leave soon like all the other city dwellers that had come before her, a single mishap puts her practice on the line: a boy under her care, one of Noah's friends even, shoots one of his classmates and kills his biology teacher. As Claire and all of Tranquility soon discover, it is just the start of a chain of nearly unprovoked violence among their youth.

Racing against time as her son soon develops the telltale signs of this epidemic, Claire uncovers a horrifying secret: this is not the first time it has happened. Once every fifty years or so, the children of Tranquility lash out with deadly violence. She begins to pick out coincidences, and is soon uncovering much more than she intended to. In fact, she finds out enough for several parties of a deep conspiracy to decide she is a security hazard, and needs to be taken care of.

All the while, the children of Tranquility are killing their parents and one another, leaving behind broken fragments that can never be put together again.

Weishan Chin

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