Gillian Anderson is celebrating her birthday by giving her fans a present. It was announced on Friday that she will soon be publishing the first in a series of new supernatural thriller novels with Simon & Schuster. The first book, A Vision of Fire, will hit the shelves this October.

We all remember the moment Anderson stepped into our collective hearts as Dana Scully on X-Files. After the show wrapped, she went on to play a library’s worth of classic characters from literary and theatrical works you probably had to read in high school including Miss Havisham (Great Expectations by Charles Dickens), Lily Bart (House Mirth by Edith Wharton), and Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams). Most recently, she has been seen in Hannibal, the wildly popular adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon novels, as Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, Lecter’s psychiatrist. We already know that Anderson is a skilled storyteller as an actor, and this reader has high hopes for her first book.

Simon & Schuster teases the book on their site with this brief summary:

Renowned child psychologist Caitlin O’Hara is a single mom trying to juggle her job, her son, and a lackluster dating life. Her world is suddenly upturned when Maanik, the daughter of India’s ambassador to the United Nations, starts speaking in tongues and having violent visions. Caitlin is sure that her fits have something to do with the recent assassination attempt on her father—a shooting that has escalated nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan to dangerous levels—but when teenagers around the world start having similar outbursts, Caitlin begins to think that there’s a more sinister force at work.

In Haiti, a student claws at her throat, drowning on dry land. In Iran, a boy suddenly and inexplicably sets himself on fire. Animals, too, are acting irrationally, from rats in New York City to birds in South America to ordinary house pets. With Asia on the cusp of nuclear war, Caitlin must race across the globe to uncover the mystical links among these seemingly unrelated incidents in order to save her patient—and perhaps the world.

The new book series is being cowritten by New York Times best selling author Jeff Rovin. It will be available October 7th.

HT LA Times