THE PERFECT PREDATOR

A bracing medical-mystery memoir, this is the story of one woman's race to save her husband from a lethal, antibiotic-resistant superbug.

When Tom came down with a stomach bug Steffanie dosed him with an antibiotic and expected the discomfort to pass. Instead, his condition turned critical. By the time Tom reached the world-class medical center at UC San Diego blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world. Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria.

Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist, and Professor and Harold Simon Chair at the University of California, San Diego.