Cat Zero

Artie Marshall is a scientist. She is perpetually underfunded, relegated to a damp basement, and besieged on all sides by sexist colleagues. She spends her days studying an obscure cat virus that nobody else in the world seems to have heard of –or cares about. But her arcane little research problem suddenly becomes worryingly relevant as local cats start dropping dead overnight. Matters get worse when people start getting infected, too. She races to get to the bottom of the ballooning epidemic, with unexpected assistance from two basement-dwelling mathematicians – a sociopathic recluse and his scary, otherworldly savant mentor.

Jennifer Rohn

Jennifer Rohn leads a cell biology research lab at University College London in the United Kingdom, studying how bacteria outwit human cells during infection. In her spare time, she moonlights as a science writer, journalist, broadcaster and pundit. She blogs about the scientific life at Mind The Gap and on the Guardian, and has written for a number of outlets including The Times, The Guardian, Nature, The Telegraph, and the BBC. She also created and continues to run the science culture online magazine LabLit.com, which has been highlighted in the New York Times, US National Public Radio, the Guardian and the Boston Globe. 'Lab lit', a term she coined, is a tiny but growing genre of mainstream fiction about scientists and science as a profession (as opposed to science fiction). She speaks frequently to live audiences, and appears on TV, radio, on podcasts and as an expert in science documentaries. She is the author of two other lab lit novels: Experimental Heart and The Honest Look, and has also published short fiction. She is also no stranger to rebellion, having founded Science is Vital, a well-known grassroots organization campaigning for UK research funding. Born and raised in the United States, Jennifer became a naturalized British citizen and now lives in Gravesend, Kent (not far from the action in this novel) with her husband and son.