Nervous System
At six months old, Thomas speaks in sentences.
At one year old, he figures out how to stop his runny nose by shutting down his secretion glands.
At two, he can tell when a cold is coming and head it off with the exact dose necessary of vitamin C.
At three, he startles his parents with the memory of his birth.
At four, Thomas discovers Crichton and Cornwell, and asks for medical texts for his birthday.
At five, Thomas regulates his autonomic nervous system when he is anxious or frightened. He puts himself into a stupor several times before he figures out the proper balance for his body.
At six, he discovers he can heal wounds by producing platelets and deliberately growing new skin cells. He calls up adrenaline and floods his body with it to win a race. He grows his hair back when his mom insists on a dreaded buzz cut that makes his ears stand out like flags waving in a breeze.
But being able to control his entire body can’t help Thomas with everything. It can’t help his mom, who dies in a car crash two days before his dad is redeployed in the Navy. It can’t help him connect with his grandma, who he’s met twice in his life and comes to stay with him after the accident. It can’t help him make friends.
Though he has the intellect of a man, Thomas has the yearnings of a six-year-old boy to bring his mother back to life. He has the power, but it’s trapped inside his own body. NERVOUS SYSTEM is a novel about how far we will go to get what we want, and just because we can, doesn’t always mean we should.
More info →Systematic
Thomas Van Zandt is 16, bored, and impatient. Born with the ability to control his autonomic nervous system, Thomas has one goal in life: to bring his abilities outside his own body to help others. He has no less than 86 experiments brewing in his head, but short of drugging someone and tying them to his bed, he has no way to conduct those experiments…
…until his dad finally agrees to bring him to the Attic, the top-secret military facility where others like Thomas, the Attic Dwellers, conduct medical research.
There, Thomas meets Dacey, a Dweller who managed to grow a second head. Desperate to save this “man,” Dacey appeals to Thomas for help. Thomas believes he can grow the man his own body, but there’s one big obstacle: will the new body have a soul?
The physical stuff is easy; Thomas had developed his abilities well. The moral decisions are more complicated. Thomas must fight his wavering faith, his growing arrogance, his father’s secrets, his girlfriend Tessa’s libido, and the wishes of those he heals to reach his goal. And even then, all his choices come down to one thing:
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Operating System
Seventeen-year-old Thomas Van Zandt has finally figured out how to safely bring his extraordinary inner abilities outside his own body to help others. He can hook up his nervous system to someone else and help them heal. It’s heady stuff, this healing business, and sometimes, Thomas feels like he’s playing God.
But God doesn’t make mistakes. And Thomas is not God.
Tessa, Thomas’s girlfriend, has Huntington’s Disease, a rare genetic disorder that will soon turn her brain to mush. Thomas can heal her symptoms, but to cure her, he must figure out how to alter her genetics. So he starts experimenting on himself…
And in a moment of crisis, Thomas makes a huge mistake:
He accidentally replaces his genes with Tessa’s and loses his ability to control his autonomic nervous system.
When Thomas discovers that his friend Tyrion has been growing human babies in the lab as specimens, and that the resulting research could bring back his abilities and also save Tessa, he’s faced with a decision:
Is Tessa’s life and his abilities worth sacrificing his principles?
AND, is it right to sacrifice a few for the good of the many?
More info →Honor System
The Dwellers continue their journey in Book 4 of The System Series…
Seventeen-year-old Dweller and genius Thomas Van Zandt races against the clock to save his father from a heart attack. Thomas literally hooks into Michael’s brain, keeping it functioning until he can figure out how to heal the damage.
But healing takes its toll. Nothing is free.
After the healing, Thomas wakes three months later to find his life has gone on without him.
Michael is still in a coma, and his soul is barely tethered to his body.
The two babies Thomas and his wife Tessa adopted have grown and display amazing Dweller abilities—they can mindread and even heal others from afar. But Tessa is not a Dweller, and without the ability to control her own mind, she can’t control the kids.
Becoming a Dweller goes against everything Tessa believes—she doesn’t want to invade the privacy of others by mindreading, and she doesn’t want to mess with the way God made her. But in a family where the extraordinary is common, Tessa feels like an outsider.
Thomas needs to figure out why Michael won’t wake up, control his children’s burgeoning powers, and somehow convince Tessa that becoming a Dweller is a good thing.
Even when it has horrible consequences.
More info →Systems Go
The final stunning chapter in The System Series is here!
It's been 23 years since we left the Dwellers. For the last 15, the world has been fighting the Pan virus, a deadly disease that deforms fetuses and aborts most pregnancies. The world's population has dwindled, but Dwellers are immune to the virus, and the Planarian Institute and its scientists - Thomas, Tyrion, Kate, Kenneth, and Chris - have organized the dispensing of the Dweller protocol to anyone in the world who will take it.
Targeted for their research, their wealth, you name it, the Dweller families have suffered tragedy. Both Thomas and Tessa's daughter and Kate and Kenneth's daughter - best friends - were kidnapped five years ago. The families expected a ransom request, but such a request never came.
Emmaleth, Thomas and Tessa's older adopted daughter, is a strong psychic. She's been traveling the world, healing people where she can and searching for the missing girls. When she stumbles across a man who is making women Dwellers and giving them healthy babies, she raids his memories to find images of two "witches," one light, one dark, chained in a dirty room in the Philippines, their DNA harvested for enhancements. A lead.
A SEAL team rescues the girls, and though they are safe, they have a long way to go to be healed.
And just as one crisis has passed, another arises – the Pan virus mutates. Dwellers are no longer immune.
The Dwellers have amazing abilities – some can mindread, some can see souls, some can heal. But those abilities aren’t enough to overcome the deadliest virus the world has ever seen.
Ultimately, there’s only one force with the power to heal.
And anyone who doesn’t find it will die.
More info →