The spate of recent headlines is also the plotline of The Line Between, a medical thriller released January, 2019—a year before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. The book’s sequel, A Single Light (September, 2019, Simon & Schuster) comes to paperback August 17.
Watching the news one year after the release of The Line Between—a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for best mystery/thriller of 2019—author Tosca Lee calls life “eerie and surreal.”
“Every now and then my husband and I just look at one another as we listen to the news—including today, as the Canadian border shut down,” Lee says, of yet one more event she wrote about two years ago before the books went into print. Lee brushes off “prophecy” jokes from readers. “This series of events is a logical progression,” the novelist says, citing that it definitely isn’t the first time an author’s “what if” has shown up in the headlines.
The real-life version of that progression includes a March 15th opportunistic cyberattack against the U.S. Health and Human Services Department in an apparent effort to slow down the agency’s computer response systems. Luckily, it isn’t the cyberattack on the electrical grid Lee imagined in an effort to raise the stakes of the story. “As novelists creating dire straits for our characters to overcome, we always have to ask ‘How could this get worse before it gets better?’”
It’s a question relevant today to millions of Americans practicing social distancing and self-quarantine in an effort to blunt the spread of the COVID-19.
The Line Between has been optioned by Radar Pictures (Jumanji) and Ed Burns’ Marlboro Road Gang Productions (Public Morals) and is in development for television as first reported by Deadline Hollywood: https://deadline.com/2019/01/edward-burns-radar-developing-the-line-between-thriller-novel-for-television-1202538907/
Goodreads Choice Awards Best Mystery/Thriller 2019 Semifinalist
· Debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Medical Thrillers
· Barnes & Noble and iTunes bestseller
· PopSugar’s “Best Medical Thriller Books”
· CrimeReads’ “9 Great Medical Thrillers Chosen by a Physician”
· BookRiot’s “15 of Your Favorite Medical Thrillers”
· Woman’s World’s “Best New Books”
· Library Journal Starred Review
When Wynter Roth escapes New Earth, a self-contained doomsday cult on the American prairie, she emerges into a world poised on the brink of madness as a mysterious outbreak of rapid early onset dementia spreads across the nation.
Struggling to start over in a world she’s been taught to regard as evil, Wynter finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse she’s feared all her life—until the night her sister shows up at her doorstep with a set of medical samples and she realizes there’s something far more sinister at play. As the power grid fails and the nation descends into chaos, Wynter must find a way to get the samples to a lab in Colorado. She is aided by former military man Chase Miller, who has his own reasons for wanting to get close to the samples in her possession, and to Wynter, herself. Filled with action, conspiracy, romance, and questions of whom—and what—to believe, The Line Between is a high-octane story of survival and love in a world on the brink of madness.
About the Author:
Lee is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels including The Progeny, Firstborn, Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, and The Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker. Her books have been translated into 17 languages and been optioned for TV and film.
Tosca received her B.A. in English from Smith College. A lifelong world adventure traveller, she lives in Nebraska with her husband and three of four children still at home. To learn more about Tosca, please visit ToscaLee.com.
