At the Library:Captiva Memorial Library offers fascinating tales involving Doctors of Medicine
“Capone’s Diamond”
by John Raffensperger, M.D.
“Tom Davis wanted to be a surgeon more than anything else in the world. After losing a patient while he served in Korea, Davis knew his only chance was to regain confidence in his surgical abilities. Back in Chicago post-service, he picked up his career where he’d left off. But the demons visited him again and again and threatened to cut short his surgical career. Then things got worse. He operated on a fat guy with a bullet in his belly. Not unusual in 1950s Chicago. What made this case special was that the guy had just stolen a fortune in diamonds. Crooked cops and politicians on the take accused Davis of stealing them. Mobbed-up bad guys made his life hell. A beautiful Chicago Tribune reporter joined him to solve the mystery of the missing diamonds, but whose side was she on? He couldn’t trust the cops, he certainly couldn’t rely on promises that mobsters just wanted the diamonds and would let him live once he turned them over. Could he depend on the comely journalist, or did she want to off him too? Where were the diamonds, anyway? Aha! Still inside the fat guy, now iced down in the morgue. Things quickly became interesting…and deadly.” *
“The Doctor’s Apprentice”
by John Raffensperger, M.D.
“takes place during the 1870s when most doctors ridiculed the idea that germs caused disease. Sandy Ford, a small river town in southern Illinois, appeared tranquil, but the Ku Klux Klan terrorized ex-slaves and a local banker was stealing farms. A new doctor with a shady past operated on a girl who had been thrown from a pony. The doctor also shot a mad dog that belonged to the KKK leader. Tom, a boy who dreamed of fighting Indians, assisted the doctor and fell in love with the girl. She lived a long buggy ride out in the country; her Amish father wanted her to marry a rich farmer. The outlaw leader of the Klan swore vengeance on the doctor, and Tom was in danger as well. In the course of learning medicine, Tom assisted with operations, helped fight an epidemic, treated sick Indians and rescued injured coal miners. After many adventures and set-backs, it looked as if Tom could have a chance with the girl just as he set off to medical school.” *
“The Asylum”
by John Harwood
“Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a remote asylum in England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London: ‘Your patient must be an imposter.’ Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her uncle’s house? Georgina’s perilous quest to free herself takes us from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on which her survival depends.” *
“Summer House With a Swimming Pool”
by Herman Koch
“When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Personally, he’s not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high profile doctor to the stars, Marc can’t hide from the truth forever. It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meier’s extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean. Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, and film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach. But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted. As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralph’s later death begin to reveal the disturbing reality behind that summer’s tragedy.” *
“Always Watching”
by Chevy Stevens
“She helps people put their demons to rest. But she has a few of her ownIn the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire-healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years. When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her-and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island. What happened to Nadine? Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today? And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the mostand fight back.” *
“An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War: An Irish Country Novel”
by Patrick Taylor
“Doctor O’Reilly heeds the call to serve his country in ‘Irish Doctor in Peace and At War,’ the new novel in Patrick Taylor’s beloved Irish Country series. Long before Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly became a fixture in the colourful Irish village of Ballybucklebo, he was a young M.B. with plans to marry midwife Dierdre Mawhinney. Those plans were complicated by the outbreak of World War II and the call of duty. Assigned to the HMS Warspite, a formidable 30,000-ton battleship, Surgeon Lieutenant O’Reilly soon found himself face-to-face with the hardships of war, tending to the dreadnought’s crew of 1,200 as well as to the many casualties brought aboard. Life in Ballybuckebo is a far cry from the strife of war, but over two decades later O’Reilly and his younger colleagues still have plenty of challenges: an outbreak of German measles, the odd tropical disease, a hard-fought pie-baking contest, and a local man whose mule-headed adherence to tradition is standing in the way of his son’s future. Now older and wiser, O’Reilly has prescriptions for whatever ailsuntil a secret from the past threatens to unravel his own peace of mind. Shifting deftly between two very different eras, Patrick Taylor’s latest ‘Irish Country’ novel reveals more about O’Reilly’s tumultuous past, even as Ballybucklebo faces the future in its own singular fashion.” *
* Book jacket/publisher description