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Gargoyles

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Amoreena Daniels is a brilliant pre-med student needing a scholarship to attend med school so she works extraordinarily hard towards that goal. However, her idyllic world collapses when she learns her beloved mother Geneva suffers from cancer. Worse, Geneva used her small available cash to pay for Amoreena's education, leaving her without health insurance and little hope for the high cost treatment that might save her life.

However, to the rescue is Meechum Corporation's Women's Clinic who pays Amoreena fifty grand to serve as a surrogate mother. Soon her saviors come under suspicion GARGOYLES for illegal medical practices by the once naive Amoreena. Whatever is inside her womb is growing at a humanly impossible rate and feels like it is ripping her up. When she complains, the clinic staff insists nothing is wrong and this is normal. Amoreena rejects the explanations even as she begins to receive weird warnings from female strangers. She vows to learn the truth not yet knowing how dangerous that endeavor is.

GARGOYLES is a well-written medical research thriller that, though it adds nothing new to the genre, will excite readers. The story line is loaded with action as even a person with Amoreena's background is caught up in the questionable activities of Meechum, leaving the audience to wonder about the average individual who gives God-like trust to the profession. There will be no naysayers to Alan Nayes' strong look at the ethics of modern day genetics claiming the betterment of humanity justifies the means.

Alan Nayes's "Gargoyles" features spunky and beautiful Amoreena Daniels, a twenty-one year old premed student in California whose mother, Geneva, is dying of cancer. Unfortunately, Geneva's health insurance policy has lapsed. Amoreena cannot afford to pay for the expensive treatment that her mother desperately needs if she is to have any chance of survival. The young woman makes a fateful decision to sign herself up as a surrogate mother at a place called the Women's Clinic. The money that Amoreena stands to earn will help defray Geneva's astronomical medical costs.

Meechum Medical Corporation, which owns the Women's Clinic, is a pharmaceutical firm run by (you guessed it) unscrupulous and ruthless individuals who are willing to take ethical shortcuts in the name of big profits. Only after Amoreena becomes pregnant does she get wind of the fact that the clinic personnel are hiding some very unpleasant details from her. As her pregnancy progresses, Amoreena finds out that Meechum is involved in a much more nefarious business than mere surrogate motherhood.

Although the plot is familiar, Nayes diverges from the paint-by-numbers formula in enough ways to capture the reader's interest. Amoreena is not your typical Teflon heroine. She makes mistakes, acts impulsively, shows poor judgment, and has unbelievably bad luck. In addition, she has no love interest or any hint of one. The villains, alas, are stock characters, a few of whom rationalize their actions in the name of medical research. Some of the other bad guys are your standard sadists.

The writing is, for the most part, fairly literate and fast-paced, and most readers will find themselves anxiously turning pages late into the night to learn Amoreena's fate. The author provides enough medical details to lend the novel verisimilitude, and the obligatory chase scenes, some of which take place in the jungles of Guatemala, are suspenseful and exciting. Nayes wisely avoids tying up all of the loose ends, leaving the reader with the disturbing idea that there could be scientists who would engage in grotesque medical experimentation if they thought that they could get away with it.

Gargoyles, by Alan Nayes, his first book (two more on the way). I loved it! Good, short prologue, he grabs the reader's interest immediately. Sympathetic characters in desperate situations with real problems. Their stories grab you by the heart and you are on a runaway train. It's a fast, edge of the seat, heart in the mouth ride with a satisfying conclusion.
This is about surrogate mothers, bioengineering, cloning and a greedy pharmaceutical corporation. Plenty of ambiance, the setting is southern California, south, through Mexico to Guatemala.
You know what's so scary about all this? It is just too possible, it is no longer in the realm of science fiction! Think about it. Fish genes in tomatoes, human genes in both pigs and cattle. I clipped all that from the newspapers and saved it. Only God knows what else they are doing - with humans and cloning.
Fiction writers have always led the pack when it comes to informing the public of something they need to become aware of, and Nayes has done a good job.
Alan Nayes is a gifted new writer of medical thrillers. Like Robin Cook, he writes what he knows, and he, too, is in medicine.
With Nayes' expertise in the field in which he writes, and his writing ability, Gargoyles should be a best seller the first time out.

It's nearly impossible to put down author Alan Nayes' Gargoyles once begun: a too-realistic plot tells of a college woman seeking money to treat her terminally ill mother. The only way she can earn big bucks fast is by answering a clinic's ad to become a surrogate - but when she begins to suspect the nature of her unborn child, danger strikes. Intriguing ethical and moral questions continue in unexpected directions right up to the final, satisfyingly surprising, conclusion.

So far this is a good read. Very interesting. OMG this book was such a sci fi thriller.

Let me tell you I didn't want to put the book down.

Amoreena Daniels is a dedicated and smart pre-med student who has a 4.0 gpa in College and takes care of her mother Geneva who has Metastatic Cervical Cancer. Amoreena is an only child and her mother is a single parent.
Geneva is so bad she can't work anymore and she has let her medical insurance lapse because the company she worked for went under or was bought out. So it was up to the insuree to keep it up than.
Amoreena is in college on scholarships and her mom has some money in savings. But she wont use the money for the insurance premiumns because it's for Amoreena's college.

The story shows how much mother daughter love each other and what Amoreena will do to save her moms life with the treaments she needs for her cancer. Amoreena has a brilliant career ahead of her but she needs money to pay for her mothers treatments and hospital stays.

Amoreena is contacting by a lady who needs people to be surrogates for couples. Amoreena checks into this and finds out they will pay her $50,000.00 to carry a baby. She goes in and learns that this corporation is the ones who are paying her for they own the Womens Clinic that is handling the surrogate program.

Amoreena thinks her prayers have been answered to her mothers problem. She becomes a surragate and she notices early on in her pregnancy things are not adding up.

This is a great thriller that will have you on the edge wondering whats going to happen next. The only thing I was a little dissapointed in was, I wished her and Luis a doctor relationship would have budded into a relationship and I hope there will be another part to Amoreena's story. I just don't feel its the end of her and Luis. Theres still to much to the story that needs to be exposed.

All I can say is read it yourself and see what you think. It's a great read.

Story:

Life for Amoreena Daniels was looking good. She had just started medicl school and was considered to be in the top of her class. She might even have a chance to graduate in three years. Until all of the sudden she got the news that her mother's cancer had gotten worse and she was about to lose her health insurance due to non payment. The future seemed grim until one day out of the blue Amy got a call from the meechum's women clinic. It seems that they had been told that she might be in need of some money and they had a proposal for her. They would pay her 50,000 dollars if she would be a surrogate mother. Having no where else to turn and no other way to pay her mother's medical bills she agreed. Soon after she becomes pregant Amy begins to notice something odd about her pregancy. She seems to coming along faster than she should and the baby is moving way to much. As she begins to investigate she finds that the meechum corporation may be harboring a darker secret then she ever could have imagined.

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This is defenitly a good book for any one who like's thrillers. It's not really a medical thriller, more like a thriller set in a medical background. It does have a fast pace and it kept me turning the pages to find out what happened next. My only issue with the story was with the background of the bad guys. The author really didn't go into the details of why the did what they did other than for money. There was just a few paragraphs toward the end explaining their past. Other than that it was a great read. I would recommend this one to anyone who likes thrillers, medical thrillers,suspence books or books that deal with medical ethics.
m.a.c

Nayes has written a creepy account of "futuristic" human genetic manipulation with this novel. But it is not so futuristic since many scientists already do something similar with animals. We can, after all, purchase diabetic rats, and other such critters, why not humans? I liked the way that you stumbled into the awful truth along with the lead character as she discovered what had been done to her. You have your suspicions, just as she did. But you aren't prepared for the awful finality of the truth, just as she wasn't.

If you are interested in the potential disasters of human genetic manipulation, this is a must read.

Take a look at what could happen if we're not careful. Would a research company in the medical field stoop to this level? A lesson in being careful for world.

Premed student Amoreena Daniels needed money desperately. Her mother was ill and without hospitalization. So Amoreena accepted a timely offer.

Being a surrogate mother shouldn't interfere with her plans or studies, should it? Nine months to produce a healthy baby for adoption and money to pay for her mother's care--it seemed so simple.

It was--until Amoreena began to notice how some of the other patients of the clinic were acting. And why were there so many armed guards? She found she wasn't the only one asking questions.

An exciting read to hold your attention. A look into human nature and its dark side. Highly recommended as a fun read that will set you to thinking. Talented author Alan Nayes offers a well-researched, realistic look into the lives of people who live this story. You won't soon forget them. Enjoy. I sure did.

Science has pushed back the frontiers of life and death, delving into the very heart of the building blocks of life. It was such dabbling that toppled Atlantis -- or so the story goes.

Amoreena Daniels's mother is dying. The specter of breast cancer haunts the brilliant medical student. Her mother's health insurance has just run out. Juggling MCATs, her studies, a plum research assignment, and anxiety over how to pay for chemotherapy is almost more than Amoreena can manage. She has run out of options and prayers until Ramona Perez offers enough money to solve her financial problems. All Amoreena has to do is allow the ultra modern Women's Clinic to rent her body for a few months to carry an anonymous couple's child. Fitting a surrogate pregnancy into Amoreena's busy schedule is a small price to pay to keep her mother alive. Amoreena doesn't realize she will have to deal with more than she bargained for.

As the pregnancy progresses, Amoreena senses something is wrong. Dreams trouble her nights as the faces of other surrogates at the Women's Clinic prowl during the day. The dire warnings of a drug-addict who was once a brilliant medical student begin to take on the force of reality. Something is wrong with her pregnancy. Amoreena suspects she isn't carrying a human child and that her life is in danger.

From the pressure cooker arena of the university to the high wire tension of the chemotherapy ward, Alan Nayes gets it right in Gargoyles. His prose moves fluidly from the pristine, normal every day world to steaming jungles, where science has moved from the light and into the darkest subterranean depths, as though he is intimately acquainted with both. As fantastic as his uncoiling plot at first appears, what he proposes is all too possible and very likely real.

Readers may stumble over his clinical jargon, however, wondering if they are listening to a tale of madness told to a room full of doctors. Even characters not engaged in medicine speak familiarly of left lower quadrant pains and palpating abdomens. Nayes forgets to lower the bar for his readers and some of his characters. All in all, Gargoyles has the best elements of a good horror novel. Moreover, it has plausibility and the ring of truth. The reader will have to suspend very little disbelief.

Does the end ever justify the means?

Readers will ponder this question as they immerse themselves in this engrossing, hard-to-put-down, excellently researched medical thriller.

Brilliant, beautiful pre-med student Amoreena Daniels needs money desperately; her mother has cancer and her insurance has just run out. Then one day a strange woman approaches Amoreena with an unusual proposition: her mother may have all the medical care she needs, if Amoreena agrees to offer her services as a surrogate mother. Propelled by her mother's desperate situation, Amoreena agrees. After all, the Woman's Clinic looks like a first-class, professional, excellent medical center.
Soon, however, strange, disturbing things begin to occur, making her wonder if she's made the right decision after all.

As Amoreena begins to ask questions and look deeper into the Woman's Clinic, she's drawn into a vortex of danger, cruelty and greed that will take her as far as the jungles of Central America.

This is one of those novels which grabs the reader by the throat early on and doesn't let go until the very last page. The tension and suspense are relentless. Amoreena is incredibly sympathetic--intelligent, arrogant, yet kind and sensitive. Her relationship with her dying mother is one of the most compelling aspects of this story. Highly recommended for fans of thrillers "alla" Robin Cook.