Tess Gerritsen

International bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D. While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. She has since written 26 published novels. Gerritsen won the RITA Award, the prominent romance fiction award, for The Surgeon, and the Nero Award, which honors excellence in mystery novels, for Vanish.Gerritsen’s personal charity work revolves around Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicted her father. She is on her second fund drive to benefit the Scripps Research Institute’s biomedical research into Alzheimer’s treatment. Her first fund drive raised over $50,000, which went directly to Alzheimer’s reachers.