Off The Shelf

In this third medical thriller by award-winning author and practicing physician Darden North, human reproductive tissue becomes a murderous 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 has nearly cost the wife her life and pushed the couple to the brink of bankruptcy. This seemingly last chance for Wesley and Carrie 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 Sarbeck, international superstar Allyn Saxton, and socialite Cheryl Choice unknowingly collide 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 treatment of infertility. While an internet voyeur and thief looks on, each of the three women 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.