Harry Turtledove

Don't Breathe Harry Turtledove

A visceral political thriller and medical drama capturing the horror of a father watching his child run toward a global disaster he cannot stop. While the world is busy holding its breath, Ishmael Weinberg is just trying to fix his fountain pen. He has spent thirty years hiding in the thirteenth century, writing about obscure kings and falconry while the modern world goes to hell.

He thinks he can outrun history by writing it, but he is wrong. When a city he’d never heard of—Wuhan—becomes the only word that matters, the status quo doesn't just shift; it evaporates. While the President promises the virus will vanish like a miracle, Ishmael stares at the indicators on his phone.

His daughter, a CNN stringer at ground zero in Japan, watches refrigerated trucks roar past with taped zippers. The air itself is the enemy. Ishmael doesn’t trust the stable geniuses in Washington or the man on the news promising miracles.

He trusts his wife, the emergency N95 masks she hid in a steel shed, and the doctor who gave him the only advice that matters: don’t breathe. Realistic alternate history medical thriller and domestic suspenseEerie exploration of global collapseHauntingly familiar society in freefall