From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Coma comes a chilling novel that asks: What happens when innocent hospital patients are used as medial “incubators” against their will?   “Brutally intense . . . a medical thriller cannot get any better than Host .”—Associated Press   Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at South Carolina’s Mason-Dixon University, thinks she has her life figured out. But when her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, her neatly ordered life is thrown into total chaos. Carl fails to return to consciousness after the procedure, and an MRI confirms brain death.             Devastated by Carl’s condition, Lynn searches for answers. Convinced there’s more to the story than what the authorities are willing to reveal, Lynn uses all her resources at Mason-Dixon—including her initially reluctant lab partner, Michael Pender—to hunt down evidence of medical error or malpractice. What she uncovers, however, is far more disturbing. Hospitals associated with Middleton Healthcare, including the Mason-Dixon Medical Center, have unnervingly high rates of unexplained anesthetic complications and patients contracting serious and terminal illness in the wake of routine hospital admissions. When Lynn and Michael begin to receive death threats, they know they’re onto something bigger than either of them anticipated. They soon enter a desperate race against time for answers before shadowy forces behind Middleton Healthcare can put a stop to their efforts once and for all. “Brutally intense . . . A medical thriller cannot get any better than Host .” —Associated Press “Spellbinding . . . Host is Robin Cook at his very best.” — Suspense Magazine “A witch’s brew of weird science and unbridled greed, [ Host ] will boost the blood pressure of anyone facing hospitalization.” — Kirkus Reviews “Engrossing . . . Cook does a good job of making the medicine intelligible.” — Publishers Weekly Robin Cook, M.D. , is the author of over forty books and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his groundbreaking and wildly successful 1977 novel,  Coma . His other bestsellers include  Night Shift ,  Viral ,  Genesis ,  Pandemic , and  Charlatans . Cook divides his time between Florida, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Spring in Charleston, South Carolina, is a resplendent affair, and by the beginning of April, it is always well underway. As if competing for attention, the azaleas, the camellias, the hyacinths, the early blooming magnolias, and the forsythias all contribute their riot of color and fragrance. And on this particular day, as the sun prepared to rise there was the promise that it would be glorious day for most everyone in this scenic, historic town. Everyone, that is, except Carl Vandermeer, a successful, young lawyer who had grown up in nearby West Ashley.           Most mornings, regardless of the time of the year but particularly in the springtime, Carl would be part of a sizable group of joggers who ran along the Battery that was located at the southern tip of Charleston’s peninsula. The Battery fronted that portion of the expansive Charleston Harbor formed by the confluence of the Cooper and the Ashley River. Lined with period mansions and boasting a public garden, the Battery was one of the most attractive and popular locales of the city. Like most of the other runners, Carl lived in the surrounding and charming residential neighborhood called SOB to the locals as the acronym for ‘South of Broad Street.’ Broad Street was a thoroughfare that ran east-west across the Charlestown peninsula between the two rivers.           The reason Carl was not jogging this beautiful, spring morning was the same reason he had not been jogging for the previous month. He had torn his anterior-cruciate ligament in his right knee during the final basketball game of the past season. He and a half dozen other athletically inclined lawyers had formed a team to play in a city league. Carl had always been into sports through high school and Duke University where he played Division 1 lacrosse with considerable renown. Having made it a point to keep himself in shape even during law school, he thought of himself as generally immune to injury, especially since he was only twenty-nine years old. Throughout his athletic career he had never suffered more than a couple of sprained ankles.           So the knee injury had come as an unwelcome surprise. One minute he was perfectly fine having played the entire first half of the game and scored eighteen points in the process. With the ball in his possession, he had faked the fellow guarding him to the left and then went to the right to drive to the basket. He never made it. The next thing he knew he was sprawled on the floor unsure of how he had gotten there. Embarrassed, he got right to his feet. There was some discomfort in his right knee, but it wasn’t bad. He took a few steps to walk it out