Author

Coincidences: A Novel About Deception and Trust

Dr. Elsa Hermann has built a luminous career at the Texas Medical Center, far from the Stasi prison cell where her parents once refused to break. Elsa's parent's continued involvement with the CIA and nuclear research for the U.S. remained a mystery taken to their graves. She doesn't know the Brazilian billionaire she just cured of cancer is being watched. And, she certainly doesn't know that the urbane Chief Legal Officer at his side — Kurt von Reibnitz — was placed there by Langley, with orders that did not include falling for her.

From the gleaming research towers of Houston to a genetics laboratory in São Paulo large enough to rewrite the human genome, Coincidences follows a hunt for something the world has been quietly dreading: the next engineered pandemic, and a modern echo of the Lebensborn Project buried inside a biobank. What Elsa understands as a scientist, Kurt pieces together from contracts and whispered conversations — and what they uncover nearly gets them killed.

Extracted to Langley, separated by an order from the highest levels of the Agency, Elsa is steered toward a different life: marriage to Jim Hartfield, a fifth-generation Texan, Naval Academy and Harvard Law, soon to be the U.S. Ambassador to Spain. A good man. An arranged peace. And on the other side of the Atlantic, a decorated operative who has not forgiven anyone — not Dan Campbell, not Hartfield, and not the word coincidence.

Moving between Houston, São Paulo, London, Langley, and Madrid, Coincidences is a debut for readers who love the intelligence tradecraft of le Carré, the medical stakes of Robin Cook, and the emotional pull of a love story that refuses to stay buried.

Nora Janjan brings to her remarkable fiction a career spent inside the worlds of medicine and beyond. Coincidences portrays: academic medicine, federal health policy, and the quiet corridors where medicine meets national security.

A tenured Professor of Radiation Oncology and Symptom Research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, she also served for two decades as Vice-Chair of the MD Anderson Institutional Review Board, with clinical trial experience spanning Phase I through Phase IV — conducting studies, auditing them, and analyzing their outcomes.

That work led to appointments on the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) and the National Cancer Institute's Central IRB, which approves and annually reviews every national cooperative group trial in the country. 

Holding a security clearance, she consulted for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and was sent to Vienna to draft a technology document for the International Atomic Energy Agency — the kind of assignment that quietly informs every page of Coincidences.

Dr. Janjan has authored Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the National Quality Forum, the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), the American College of Radiology, and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review. She has held significant leadership roles in ASCO and ASTRO, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Radiology, ASTRO, and ASCO. Most recently, she served as Chief Medical Officer of a firm conducting Health Economics and Outcomes Research for major pharmaceutical companies.

Publishing is familiar ground. With nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles, editorial roles at multiple medical journals, and more than 60 medical textbook chapters to her name, Dr. Janjan knows that medical and literary publishing are different crafts — but share the same unforgiving standards for what succeeds. Coincidences is her debut novel. And, her second novel is nearly complete.

The story doesn't end in Madrid. Book two in the series is on the way — same characters, new continent, and a reckoning that's been waiting since Langley.

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