Maneater is a personal account by a specialist who approaches her work like a forensic scientist or a case-hardened private eye. Dr. Pamela Nagami is a leading authority on infectious diseases and her stories will shock, amaze, and warn readers.

The patients in Maneater are ordinary Americans. When Danielle Jordan innocently ordered a salad for lunch in Puerta Vallarta she had no idea she had just become the "host" to an organism that six years later would grow into a worm and burrow into her brain.

Charlie Blair caught chicken pox, but he wasn't a kid, he was an adult, and that common childhood disease can attack a man and ravage his body until he looks like a third-degree-burn victim.

A small insect bite on Allan Roth's right foot made him a target for "flesh-eating strep." He shed his skin like a snake and a large area of tissue and skin was removed from his right thigh and lower abdomen.

Maneater will take readers on rounds with Dr. Nagami, where they will learn, from a safe distance, what the diseases are, what it's like to be a medical detective, and how it feels to make the medical and ethical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.