NO DRUGS
NO MIRACLES
JUST FEAR
What if antibiotics stopped working?
And even a scratch from a pet could kill?
No Drugs. No Miracles. Just Fear.
Decades of spiralling drug resistance have unleashed a global antibiotic crisis.
Ordinary infections are untreatable, and a scratch from a pet can kill.
Society requires a sacrifice to keep the majority safe: no one over seventy is allowed new antibiotics.
The elderly are sent to hospitals nicknamed ‘The Waiting Rooms’.
Hospitals where no one ever gets well.
Twenty years after the crisis takes hold, Kate begins a search for her birth mother, armed only with her name and her age. As Kate unearths disturbing facts about her mother’s past, she puts her family in danger and risks losing everything.
Because Kate is not the only secret that her birth mother is hiding.
Someone else is looking for her, too.
Sweeping from an all-too-real modern Britain to a pre-crisis South Africa, The Waiting Rooms is epic in scope, richly populated with unforgettable characters, and a tense, haunting vision of our future that is only a few mutations away.
What reviews are saying…
“Spookily prescient and chillingly credible, Smith's vision of a global antibiotic crisis grips from the very first page... Smith's dark and nuanced debut announces the arrival of an exciting new voice in crime fiction.”
— Waterstones
“If ever a book hit the zeitgeist it’s this one. This is a novel set in an extraordinary landscape, dystopian and frightening but it deals with age old issues of grief and loss, even euthanasia and most of all what makes us human. ”
“When Eve Smith was writing her dystopian thriller, she surely can’t have imagined that the bleak world of The Waiting Rooms would soon be so prescient...
This is ultimately a story about how people treat one another, the decisions they make in the name of love, and the importance of fairness above all.”
“As the coronavirus pandemic has shown, there’s an altogether too real worry about future planning in the world’s health providers. Eve Smith’s new work taps into that fear with frightening accuracy...
A thriller that punches on two fronts - heart AND mind.”
“Chillingly close to reality, this gripping thriller brims with authenticity.
A captivating, accomplished and timely debut from an author to watch.”
“Smith combines the excitement of a medical thriller à la Michael Crichton with sensitive characterisation and social insight in a timely debut novel all the more remarkable for being conceived and written before the current pandemic.”
— Eric Brown, The Guardian
Explore the World of
THE WAITING ROOMS
THE IDEA BEHIND THE WAITING ROOMS
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE
THE HIDDEN KILLER: TB
South Africa: THE WAR ON POACHING