After a long day at work, a young bear-like alien, the tery, returns home to find his cottage in flames, his parents dead, and an evil baron's minions celebrating their conquest. In a world of humans, only a hermit potter will help him, and together the tery and the potter set out to overthrow a world.

Heroes don't always look the part. He was a tery, a lean, bearish creature with no name. The human soldiers left dead. Just another dumb animal on their extermination list. But he didn't die. Animals weren't the only beings on the list. Certain humans were marked for extinction as well. A fugitive band found him and brought him back from the brink. He became their pet, their mascot. And still he had no name. He was simply the tery. He soon learned that these were no ordinary humans, and learned too that he was no ordinary tery. The humans had no idea that the creature they fed table scraps and patted on the head would soon turn their world upside down and change it forever. By then he had a name. THE TERY. A beauty-and-the-beast fable that only F. Paul Wilson could tell, full of wonder and horror, brimming with strange landscapes and hideous mutations from science run amok. An unforgettable tale of the extremes of the human spirit of bravery and depravity, of innocence and evil.

***

Repairman Jack isn't your average appliance repairman--he fixes situations for people, often risking his own life. Jack has no last name, no social security number, works only for cash, and has no qualms when it comes to seeing that the job gets done.

Dr. Alicia Clayton, a pediatrician who treats children with AIDS, is full of secrets, and she has just inherited a house that holds another. Haunted by painful memories, Alicia wants the house destroyed--but somehow everyone she enlists to help ends up violently killed. The house holds a powerful secret, and Alicia's charmless brother Thomas seems willing to do anything to get his hands on that secret himself.

But not if Repairman Jack can find it first!

***

Young doctor Gina Panzella has known her boss, plastic surgeon Dr. Duncan Lathram, almost her entire life, and respects him deeply. Charming and brilliant, Duncan has invented a dissolving implant that allows incisions to heal without scarring. Duncan's artistry in the operation room is the salvationof Washington's biggest power players whenever they need touch-ups for C-Span.

But there are a few things about Duncan that Gina can't quite figure out. Why did he trade vascular surgery for the more profitable but less vital plastic surgery, and why won't he accept his patients' medical insurance? What caused his daughter's death and the breakup of his marriage? Why do his tirades agains the new congressional medical ethics committee have such a bitter personal sting? And what is his connection to two committee members who died in accidents not long after Duncan operated on them?

Soon Gina's curiosity about Duncanis replaced by suspicion and fear. With the help of Gerry Canney, a high school classmate now working for the FBI, Gina determines to find out what ruined Duncan's personal life and aroused his wrath against the congressmen. She find a man much more complex and mysterious than the sharp-tongued but kindhearted physician she though she knew. Then two more congressmen fall ill after Duncan's surgery. And Gina discovers another kind of implant in Duncan's arsenal. . . .