The novel also follows Ni-Fu's granddaughter, Dr. Lili Quan, an American-born Chinese medical resident in Los Angeles who on impulse accepts a chance to study medicine in China. Deborah says, "She thinks this is to meet her mother's dying wish, but in fact she's been lured there and she becomes a pawn in an international scheme, where greedy and ambitious men are vying to gain control of her grandfather's discovery."

And finally, Rabbit In The Moon follows the story of Chi-Wen Zhou, who is a Taoist and peace activist involved in the Student Democracy movement that came to a head at Tiananmen Square.'

In addition to extensive travel throughout Asia-China, Korea and Hong Kong-the Shlians acted as host families for over ten years for native-born Chinese students at UCLA.

Rabbit In The Moon is the Shlian's third novel. The first two are Double Illusion and Wednesday's Child. Their work has been nominated for Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award and been optioned for film.

Deborah says, "We've always worked together and finish each other's sentences (they do). What we generally do is talk the story out over time. Once we get a story idea, we generally write an outline. As you know, characters tend to take off anyway, but we try to follow the outline as much as we can. Usually I try to write the first draft of the first few chapters and Joel is a great editor and we'll sit down and go over those again."

Joel agrees, saying, "We go back and forth. We used to do it on floppy disks back and forth, each iteration, now we'll do it with e-mail even though we're typically twenty feet apart."

Joel and Deborah are beginning to work on a sequel to Rabbit In The Moon. In addition, Deborah has contracted for a series of medical thrillers with another writing partner. The first novel in the series, Virus, will be released in 2009. When not penning medical thrillers, they practice medicine in Boca Raton, Florida, run a medical consultancy and volunteer for a medical charity, Remote Area Medical. The royalties for Rabbit In The Moon are being donated to the charity.

Contributing editor Mark Terry is the author of the Derek Stillwater thriller series. His newest thriller, THE SERPENT'S KISS, is available in stores and online.