Talk about a coast-to-coast tour. Tess Gerritsen's multicity tour for her latest medical thriller, The Apprentice, takes her from Down East (Maine towns such as Camden, Belfast and Damariscotta) to the Far West (San Diego and Seattle), with numerous stops in between. The author's follow-up to The Surgeon, which marks its third week on our mass market list, has also received considerable online promotion: an Author of the Week feature on Books@Random; an author essay, tour info, a sweepstakes and more on www.TessGerritsen.net; a feature on the Romance Bookshelf at Lycos.com; and a feature in Outline in Chalk e-newsletter. Gerritsen's latest was People's Beach Book of the Week (August 26 issue), while ads in People, the New York Times and Romantic Times are helping readers discover this chilling Apprentice. Ballantine reports 116,000 copies for The Apprentice and 800,000 for The Surgeon (both books are in their third printings).

With reporting by Dick Donahue