Don't Breathe - by Harry Turtledove (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

While the world is busy holding its breath, Ishmael Weinberg is just trying to fix his fountain pen.

Ishmael has spent thirty years hiding in the thirteenth century. He writes about obscure kings and falconry while the modern world goes to hell on Twitter. He thinks he can outrun history by writing it. He is wrong.

A city he'd never heard of has become the only word that now matters. Wuhan. The status quo hasn't just shifted. It has evaporated. While the President promises the virus will vanish like a miracle, Ishmael stares at the indicators on his phone. His daughter is a CNN stringer at ground zero in Japan. She stands on a pier in Yokohama. She watches the refrigerated trucks roar past with taped zippers. The air is the enemy.

Ishmael doesn't trust the stable geniuses in Washington. He doesn't trust the man on the news promising miracles. He trusts his wife, Deborah, and the emergency N95 masks she hid in a steel shed for an earthquake that never came. He trusts the doctor who gave him the only advice that matters. Don't breathe.

A visceral political thriller and medical drama.

Don't Breathe is an eerie and terrifying exploration of the moments when logic fails. It captures the horror of a father watching his child run toward a disaster he cannot stop. This is a story of domestic suspense and global collapse, anchored in the horrors of a society in freefall. The hiss of a radiator. The metallic reek of blood. The silence that precedes a coming storm.

For fans of realistic medical thrillers and political suspense. Discover why this story feels hauntingly familiar--and why, in the end, silence may be the only refuge.

About the Author

Harry Turtledove is the undisputed "Master of Alternate History." He does not merely write fiction. He
conducts forensic investigations into the "what ifs" of human survival. For four decades, he has dismantled our reality to see what happens when the wheels come off. Publishers Weekly didn't give him his title for his politeness; they gave it because no one else anchors speculative dread in such meticulous, granular research. His mantle holds the Hugo Award and multiple Sidewise Awards. He has also been honored with the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction. Turtledove lives in the San Fernando Valley. He is a historian who knows that the only thing we learn from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history.