It's the year 1889, and a shrewd Yankee ice merchant, Nicolas Van Horne, has been carving out a profitable side-business. Deep in his ship's icy hold, dozens of human cadavers lie between the huge blocks of ice. On this delivery, his first to Galveston's new Medical School, Nicolas makes the ghastly discovery that he's been trafficking in murdered boys. Only with the help of Renée Keiller, Galveston's lovely lady scientist, will Nicolas eventually solve the puzzle his ice holds . . . but first he must overcome his personal demon of morphine addiction, and become inextricably entangled in Renée's experiments on the most dreaded killer of the time, Yellow Fever.

Paul Boor, M.D., is a scientist and professor at Galveston's medical school, the oldest west of the Mississippi. His first novel, BLOOD NOTES, was a modern biomedical thriller. In THE ICE MERCHANT, Dr. Boor explores the history of the body trade, while plumbing the depths of the human frailties of those devoted to scientific discovery.