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MayaVerse #1
Anthracis: A Microbial Mystery
Anthracis is the debut novel in an alphabetical series featuring Maya Maguire, medical detective, in her journey as an Asian American veterinarian solving microbial mysteries.
The spectacular southwestern desert is alive with Bacillus anthracis spores, and the summer is the hottest on record. As a new veterinary epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Maya Maguire confronts the largest, most complex anthrax outbreak in U.S. history.
Infections in persons of color and immigration activists resonate with Maya’s search, as a Chinese American adoptee, for a place in her American home. Younger than her fellow trainees and battling panic disorder from a horrific childhood accident, she struggles to solve an epidemic mystery in a physician-dominated public health world. From her home base in New Mexico, CDC sends her to join a federal team in Arizona, including provocative physician Dr. Manolo Miranda and tightlipped veterinarian Dr. Dave Schwartz.
The epidemic is linked to climate change—that’s the party line. But Homeland Security agents and the FBI are suspicious. Dave’s an anthrax expert and spores match his home Texas Triangle of Death.
An invisible enemy, team secrets, and romantic missteps may derail Maya’s confidence. If she can’t find the source, thousands could perish from anthrax-laced heroin and tainted milk. Anthracis takes us to the front lines with scientists betting their lives and relationships on the investigation outcome.
The spectacular southwestern desert is alive with Bacillus anthracis spores, and the summer is the hottest on record. As a new veterinary epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Maya Maguire confronts the largest, most complex anthrax outbreak in U.S. history.
Infections in persons of color and immigration activists resonate with Maya’s search, as a Chinese American adoptee, for a place in her American home. Younger than her fellow trainees and battling panic disorder from a horrific childhood accident, she struggles to solve an epidemic mystery in a physician-dominated public health world. From her home base in New Mexico, CDC sends her to join a federal team in Arizona, including provocative physician Dr. Manolo Miranda and tightlipped veterinarian Dr. Dave Schwartz.
The epidemic is linked to climate change—that’s the party line. But Homeland Security agents and the FBI are suspicious. Dave’s an anthrax expert and spores match his home Texas Triangle of Death.
An invisible enemy, team secrets, and romantic missteps may derail Maya’s confidence. If she can’t find the source, thousands could perish from anthrax-laced heroin and tainted milk. Anthracis takes us to the front lines with scientists betting their lives and relationships on the investigation outcome.
342 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 6, 2021
4 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Millicent Eidson
13 books19 followersMILLICENT EIDSON is the author of the alphabetical Maya Maguire microbial mystery series, which currently has 5 novels in the MayaVerse: Anthracis (Book 1, 2021), Borrelia (Book 2, 2022), Corona (Book 3, 2023), Dengue (Book 4, 2024), and Ebola (Book 5, 2025), plus Microbial Mysteries: A Story Collection (Book 0, 2023).
Author awards include Best Play for "Monuments" in Synkroniciti and Honorable Mention from the Arizona Mystery Writers.
Dr. Eidson’s work as a public health veterinarian and epidemiologist began with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and continued at the New Mexico and New York state health departments. She is a public health faculty member at the University at Albany and the University of Vermont.
Author awards include Best Play for "Monuments" in Synkroniciti and Honorable Mention from the Arizona Mystery Writers.
Dr. Eidson’s work as a public health veterinarian and epidemiologist began with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and continued at the New Mexico and New York state health departments. She is a public health faculty member at the University at Albany and the University of Vermont.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 25, 2022
Dr. Eidson's medical thriller serves up unique and carefully drawn characters, fascinating and chillingly realistic threats, and enough Happily For Now resolutions to satisfy any women's fiction or romantic suspense fan. You won't want to miss this new entrant into the genre. I hope the author is busy writing the next book in this engaging series.
March 15, 2022
Millicent Eidson’s novel, Anthracis, held my attention and raised question marks in my mind over a topic I knew nothing about, Anhrax. At first, I was curious about the main character because of her name, Maya Maguire. As a young Chinese immigrant named "Maya," I had a “need to know” how her last name could be Scotch/Irish, "Maguire." It wasn’t the first question to pique my curiosity. What fun to follow a statistics nerd as she evolves into a medical detective. From the start, due to my own background in the animal industries, I was curious about anthrax, a nasty villain in the lives of folks who raise animals for food production. After reading Anthracis, I reflected with thankfulness upon my good fortune in never having run up against something so dangerous and horrible. Maya is a delight, the plot kept me turning pages, and the foreshadowing that surrounded the ending, left me wanting more. Dr. Eidson’s background in veterinary epidemiology along with her writing talent has allowed her to create a masterful story for all readers to enjoy. Don’t miss this one. Merle McCann
February 19, 2022
How timely is another pandemic - even a mini one caused by the Bacillus anthracis spore. I've read about this naturally occurring event over the years and its truly heartbreaking to those affected, and not treated.
This medical thriller takes the stakes to new heights because of the NUMBER of lives affected.
Race is a foundation of this novel. From a gringo boss, deaths investigated by the Hopi Indian Health Services, to her conflict of being of Chinese decent, raised by brilliant Irish Americans, this sets to tone from some of the protagonist's, Maya Maguire, personal challenges. Others include severe anxiety related to PTSD, described with a light but firm touch of reality. Other aspects hit me about my head - I could not avoid the impact!
Millicent knows her stuff and shares it in a compelling story! I was not disappointed.
This medical thriller takes the stakes to new heights because of the NUMBER of lives affected.
Race is a foundation of this novel. From a gringo boss, deaths investigated by the Hopi Indian Health Services, to her conflict of being of Chinese decent, raised by brilliant Irish Americans, this sets to tone from some of the protagonist's, Maya Maguire, personal challenges. Others include severe anxiety related to PTSD, described with a light but firm touch of reality. Other aspects hit me about my head - I could not avoid the impact!
Millicent knows her stuff and shares it in a compelling story! I was not disappointed.
January 26, 2022
Dr. Eidson's Anthracis is one of those rare books that come out of left field and grab your attention so fast you've read chapters before reality interrupts. Don't let the scientific title stop you, this is a top-rate thriller with endless twists and even more captivating surprises. Highly recommend.
December 21, 2021
Complex mystery with meaningful relationship stories
Excellent writing with depth of characters and medical mysteries. I couldn’t stop reading as mystery is revealed and political positions impact lives in unexpected ways. Informative stories about animals,disease,and government agencies that monitor them. Recommend to all who like twists that are surprising and believable.
Excellent writing with depth of characters and medical mysteries. I couldn’t stop reading as mystery is revealed and political positions impact lives in unexpected ways. Informative stories about animals,disease,and government agencies that monitor them. Recommend to all who like twists that are surprising and believable.
November 22, 2021
I am proud to be one of the members of the Green Mountain Writers Group and Burlington Writers Workshop who got to watch this novel develop. Our Friday Open Genre Workshop was privileged to review and discuss the entire book in successive chapters. It is an amazing experience to watch a writer evolve right alongside and because of their dedicated effort. This first book in the series has all sorts of exciting surprises including a connection to a religious cult and a deep knowledge of clinical procedures in epidemiology. I won't provide any further spoilers, just grab a copy and get to know the hero, Dr. Maya Maguire. You can watch her evolve as an anxious, young, brilliant, female, Asian-American, Sherlock Holmes in a lab coat. Millie's intimate knowledge of the American southwest shines in this novel.
September 20, 2023
This first book in the Mayaverse series starts at the beginning of the alphabet with Anthrax. State health departments, Centers for Disease Control, FBI, Homeland Security, USDA, epidemiologists, doctors, veterinarians, and all manner of other state and federal agencies and employees are tasked with finding out how a series of anthrax outbreaks are occurring in various hotspots around the American southwest. And Maya Maguire is in the middle of it all as a newly-hired veterinary epidemiologist with the CDC. As a medical detective chasing disease outbreaks and their sources, she's close to the action and an important cog in the machine that keeps the public safe from bioterrorism and the horrors of some of the world's worst diseases.
If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be "rich."
The characters are rich: each one is crafted as a complex and whole person, with likes and dislikes, good and bad traits, and features that make it easy to see the character in the mind's eye. The interactions between the characters are deep and meaningful, whether positive or negative, and there are plenty of both.
The plot is rich: this is the first book in a series that is supposed to be twenty-six books long, and there are threads of various subplots and character arcs explored in the novel. The plot, which even includes romance, is multi-pronged (a little bit of a pun there for those who've read the book), but easy to follow. Everything is laid out in a logical manner that makes the medical terminology and agency acronyms easy to understand and put into context. It's abundantly clear that the author knows of what she speaks. She describes the sick veterinary and medical patients in the novel in a clear and objective manner with detail that renders the reader speechless at times. People and animals die in this book, just as in real life, and none of it gets sugarcoated.
The setting is rich: this author has a way of describing the American Southwest that brings to mind brilliant colors and exhilarating scents: sunrises and sunsets drenched with oranges, reds, pinks, and yellows; a neverending blue sky; mountains and canyons with striations of color from millions of years of growth, ponderosa forests that provide shade and give the eye a break from all the warm hues in the book.
I was thoroughly impressed with this book and look forward to book 2 in the series. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone with an interest in medical thrillers, medical mysteries, southwest fiction, realistic novels about animals, and well-told tales of romance.
If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be "rich."
The characters are rich: each one is crafted as a complex and whole person, with likes and dislikes, good and bad traits, and features that make it easy to see the character in the mind's eye. The interactions between the characters are deep and meaningful, whether positive or negative, and there are plenty of both.
The plot is rich: this is the first book in a series that is supposed to be twenty-six books long, and there are threads of various subplots and character arcs explored in the novel. The plot, which even includes romance, is multi-pronged (a little bit of a pun there for those who've read the book), but easy to follow. Everything is laid out in a logical manner that makes the medical terminology and agency acronyms easy to understand and put into context. It's abundantly clear that the author knows of what she speaks. She describes the sick veterinary and medical patients in the novel in a clear and objective manner with detail that renders the reader speechless at times. People and animals die in this book, just as in real life, and none of it gets sugarcoated.
The setting is rich: this author has a way of describing the American Southwest that brings to mind brilliant colors and exhilarating scents: sunrises and sunsets drenched with oranges, reds, pinks, and yellows; a neverending blue sky; mountains and canyons with striations of color from millions of years of growth, ponderosa forests that provide shade and give the eye a break from all the warm hues in the book.
I was thoroughly impressed with this book and look forward to book 2 in the series. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone with an interest in medical thrillers, medical mysteries, southwest fiction, realistic novels about animals, and well-told tales of romance.
February 25, 2024
I came across this book, the first in an alphabet of microbial mysteries, at a local author/ book festival! I had not expected to ever see an epidemiology based mystery series nor did I expect to learn the author teaches at the school I got my MPH from.
In addition to being an amazing mystery, I enjoyed the intersections between major parts of Maya’s identity (adoptee, Chinese-Irish American, disabled, mental health struggles) and her relationships and career.
The author mentions in the author’s note how she ensured there was input and feedback from all of the diverse backgrounds represented in this book and I could totally see that dedication- especially with Maya being largely inspired by her daughter.
In the public health field, especially at the state or federal level, the ability to work with people from all different backgrounds in a respectful way is critical to ensuring the best decisions are made for everyone. So I strongly appreciated the characters having very different views on quite controversial and often inciting topics, in which things often got dicey but among those working together, they maintained mutual respect.
I did have some issues through out the book comprehending different sentences and I am unsure if it was grammatical or knowledge (references I did not understand) based , but there were quite a few instances where I could not understand what the sentences were getting at- it was frustrating but did not deter from my overall enjoyment or broader understanding of what was going on.
I look forward to reading the other books and stories within the MayaVerse! I love all of the educational material available too for people who want to learn more about different topics.
In addition to being an amazing mystery, I enjoyed the intersections between major parts of Maya’s identity (adoptee, Chinese-Irish American, disabled, mental health struggles) and her relationships and career.
The author mentions in the author’s note how she ensured there was input and feedback from all of the diverse backgrounds represented in this book and I could totally see that dedication- especially with Maya being largely inspired by her daughter.
In the public health field, especially at the state or federal level, the ability to work with people from all different backgrounds in a respectful way is critical to ensuring the best decisions are made for everyone. So I strongly appreciated the characters having very different views on quite controversial and often inciting topics, in which things often got dicey but among those working together, they maintained mutual respect.
I did have some issues through out the book comprehending different sentences and I am unsure if it was grammatical or knowledge (references I did not understand) based , but there were quite a few instances where I could not understand what the sentences were getting at- it was frustrating but did not deter from my overall enjoyment or broader understanding of what was going on.
I look forward to reading the other books and stories within the MayaVerse! I love all of the educational material available too for people who want to learn more about different topics.
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March 5, 2022As the author, I want to share with readers my YouTube movie review of "The Power of the Dog." It's thrilling to have the Golden Globe Best Picture aligned with my novel (by coincidence). The link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Q01...
January 11, 2026
I wasn't sure how to pronounce it, or if I wanted to be that deep into something so far from my usual, but it was great. Lots of plot twists, clues to uncover, and I actually understood what the author was talking about. Kudo's Millicent.
February 15, 2023
Better than I expected from self-published book. One of those books I wanted to finish, but didn’t mind frequent interruptions. Lots of ancillary characters that were not well developed and hard to keep track of. Also wonder how distracting some of the dialogue was for readers without a smattering of Spanish.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews