Fresh Frozen

In this third medical thriller by award-winning author and practicing physician Darden North, human reproductive tissue becomes an unexpected commodity. In Fresh Frozen, a young policeman and his tormented wife fail miserably to produce a family, finding themselves outcasts of the renewed baby boom sweeping the United States. However, there is one last hope for them: a catalogue of human embryo and egg donors peddled by a woman whose standards are easily dismissed for the right price. Pursuing their futile attempts to become parents have nearly cost the wife her life and pushed the couple to the brink of bankruptcy. This seemingly last chance for Wesley and Carey Sarbeck to satisfy their place as parents in Middle America unknowingly tosses them in the midst of a grisly murder, the world of Hollywood celebrities, and a heist of freshly frozen human embryos. The lives of Carey Sarbeck and two other women intersect at the Van Deman Institute, once a decaying brick building complex just north of Jackson, Mississippi, but now a state-of-the-art center for the resolution of human infertility. While an internet voyeur and thief looks on, each of the three women, one of whom an internationally-known entertainer, has her own reason for entering the Institute. However, as a result of subjecting herself to a concoction of hormones and surgical procedures, one of the three is gruesomely murdered in an intriguing twist of human greed, mental torment, and medical science.