The Cobra Event: A Novel [Paperback]

“One of those books you literally can’t put down . . . makes The Hot Zone virus—far away in a rainforest—look like no big deal.”—Detroit Free Press

Five days ago, a homeless man on a subway platform died in agony as startled commuters looked on. Yesterday, a teenager started having violent, uncontrollable spasms in art class. Within minutes, she too was dead.

Dr. Alice Austen is a medical pathologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What she knows is that the two deaths are connected. What she fears is that they are only the beginning. . . .

“Manages to grab you with the authenticity of its scientific detective work and haunt you with its sheer plausibility.”—Entertainment Weekly“Enormously entertaining.”—The New York Times Book ReviewRichard Preston is the author of three nonfiction books, The Hot Zone (about the Ebola virus), American Steel (about a revolutionary steel mill), and First Light (about modern astronomy). He is a contributor to The New Yorker and has won numerous awards, including the McDermott Award in the Arts from MIT, the American Institute of Physics Award in science writing, and the Overseas Press Club of America Whitman Basso Award for best reporting in any medium on environmental issues.

The Cobra Event is Richard Preston's first novel.Part One

TRIAL

Arc of the Circle

NEW YORK CITY, LATE 1990S

KATE MORAN was an only child. She was seventeen years old and lived with her parents in a loft apartment on the top floor of a handsome old building to the west of Union Square, just on the edge of Greenwich Village. Onels*