Jason Richards is a gifted research chemist seeking a cure for Alzheimer's disease. His first mistake is isolating himself from his wife and brother in his quest. His second, injecting himself with his experimental drug that almost kills him. Almost. When he wakes up on an operating table with an unknown substance pumping into his arm he has to ask himself if he really is alive. Welcome to the Phoenix Society, a crematorium with a difference. Their plans for Jason don't include incinerating him, but transforming him into a mindless creature from whom they can harvest organs.The Society's head, Dr. Curt Wagner, is a gifted but unscrupulous doctor who may have a cure for organ rejection, the bane of all organ transplant operations, but is the cost too high? The Society is unaware that their drug cocktail, mixed with Jason's own experimental drug results in an entirely new kind of human being; one that will prove hard to kill. To make matters worse, one of the doctor's transplant patients goes berserk and kills several people. The doctor soon finds Lieutenant Brinkley, a tenacious detective from San Francisco, on his trail, even as Jason escapes the crematorium.Jason must come to grips with what he has become, and elude the Society's security forces, as well as a phantom presence that shadows his every move. As the bodies stack up, Jason becomes a suspect and must elude the police. The odds become higher when Dr. Wagner kidnaps his wife. Jason must return to the crematorium to confront the evil doctor, save his wife, and restore his sanity.JIM HAMMOND, has written numerous courses on computer networks and the Internet, and divides his time between delivering technology classes and writing novels and screenplays. The Phoenix Society is his second novel. He is currently working on his third novel, set in the Middle East and dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls. He resides in Corrales, New Mexico with his wife Barbara, who is also an author.