Journalist Zoe Meadows is on a break from hard-hitting investigative reporting to spend more time with her family, which is how she finds herself doing celebrity Q&As at an outdoor music festival. She and her friends, who run a food truck, head north, along with 150,000 festival-goers for a weekend of music and camping. When some of the revelers fall ill, many point to food poisoning. But after the festival ends and attendees scatter across England, more people begin to get sick, and then some die. The mysterious illness is spreading fast and baffles doctors, resisting all efforts to contain or cure it, and desperation leads to scapegoating which shades into violence. With time running out and her own world upended, Zoe must face dismissive medical professionals, misinformation, and one of the most threatening public health crises of our time, antibiotic resistance. Conceived before COVID-19, Resistance is a powerful, alarming cautionary tale about an equally deadly threat from the minds and pens of Val McDermid and Kathryn Briggs.