American surgeon Dr. Nicholas Turner is operating on a boy adopted from a Russian orphanage when he finds a small plastic object in the child's chest cavity. How could this be? Children are not born with plastic inside them.

What Nick learns about the object terrifies him, because he discovers that many other Russian adoptees-including his own daughter, Anna-are at grave risk of a horrifying death. Nick must act fast to save Anna. His quest propels him to Russia where he begins tracking Dr. Nikolai Yatovsky, an immoral surgeon backed by an evil oligarch in a chilling bioterrorism scheme. Nick must rely on his guide and translator, Dina, as they face unexpected dangers in a Moscow club, a luxury hunting lodge, and a frozen lake inside the Arctic Circle. When the oligarch's brutal bodyguards chase them into an ornate Russian church, the shy, bookish Nick must summon a hero's courage to save himself, Dina, and his daughter Anna.

Thorax is a medical thriller that takes readers from Pennsylvania to Russia to San Diego-and opens a curtain to an insider's view of the operating room-as a grieving, widowed doctor learns how far a father will go to save his child. And how far his own chest will open to hold new love.

Mark Katlic, M.D. retired from the operating room after 40 years as a Thoracic Surgeon. He lives on a farm north of Baltimore with his wife, Diane, Tux the dog, four cats, two horses, and the photogenic fauna of field and forest.