Night Harvest

A riveting debut thriller from one of New York’s most eminent surgeons, Night Harvest follows the bizarre disappearance of patients from a Manhattan hospital into the murky underground of the city.


Fourth-year medical student Demetri Makropolis has been assigned to cover orthopedics at Eastside Medical Center, one of New York City’s finest hospitals. Just as his surgery team begins to operate on New York’s leading drama critic, F. J. Pervis III, the patient suddenly goes into cardiac arrest. The team fails to resuscitate him, so the corpse is moved to the hospital’s morgue. But before the autopsy is even performed, the body vanishes from the morgue and mysteriously reappears a day later—with the brain surgically removed. Even more disturbing is the medical examiner’s discovery: Pervis was still alive when the ghostly craniotomy was performed.


With their reputation at stake, the hospital assigns NYPD’s Detective Patrick McManus to the case; meanwhile, Demetri learns of an eerily similar century-old unsolved mystery that leads him to an enigmatic figure lurking in the bowels of the medical center. With Pervis as his experiment, the perpetrator initiates a chain reaction of chaos and murder in Manhattan.


A gripping tale filled with ambition, romance, jealousies, and black humor, Night Harvest is a thrilling ride that culminates in the long-abandoned elaborate network of subterranean rooms and corridors that still lie beneath present-day Manhattan.


"All those who love thrillers will find in Michael Alexiades's first novel a source of great pleasure and satisfaction. It combines suspense and knowledge, experience and imagination. His grateful readers will now wait for the next." —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate and award-winning author of Night


"This book is a fun, scary ride. Written by a prominent New York surgeon, Night Harvest serves up a strong cocktail mixing the author's unique knowledge of those terrifying black holes, big-city hospitals, the godlike Caesars who run them, a satanic villain or three (one of them a critic, of course), and a platoon of smart, young, and gorgeous residents for us to root for, and worry about. It is great fun, smartly written, and hard to put down. Pick it up." —Brian Dennehy, award-winning actor


"First-time author Dr. Michael Alexiades has written a medical thriller that will set your pulse racing, your blood pressure rising, and your temperature shooting through the roof. What a debut!” —Michael Takiff, author of A Complicated Man: The Life of Bill Clinton as Told by Those Who Know Him


"Michael Alexiades may be a first-time author, but his writing is a match for the very best. Night Harvest is a powerful story of success and failure, of dreams realized and broken. The book is about choices . . . and the mystical way our choices become our life story. Read it carefully; it's worth your time."  —Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Director of the Department of Religion at Chautauqua Institution


“Raymond Chandler once observed that crime novels could be fine literature. Michael Alexiades proves Chandler to be correct. His debut novel is written with humor, insight, and a truly sardonic view of humanity. It is a superb thriller that delivers more than any reader could ask.” —George Minkoff, author of In the Land of Whispers Trilogy


Michael Alexiades is a New York City orthopedic surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery and a professor and past Overseer at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is Director of New York’s Finest Foundation, Chair of the NYPD Article II Medical Board, Chief Surgeon for the NY State Troopers Association, Fitness Chair at The New York Athletic Club, and an Examiner for the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery. Night Harvest is his first novel.