Next book

PATIENT ONE

Goldberg, a clinical professor at UCLA Medical Center, has the expertise to provide an exciting medical thriller. This...

An emergency-room doctor must use all his considerable skills to save the president and the nation from disaster.

Dr. David Ballineau is called back to the hospital when a large group of people, including the president and his family, are taken to the ER with what appears to be severe food poisoning after a dinner for the Russian president. When the Secret Service demands a secure private area for the dignitaries, they are taken to the ritzy Beaumont Pavilion, and almost all the other patients are moved to other areas. David, the president’s doctor, and experienced nurse Carolyn Ross quickly realize that the president’s excessive bleeding is due to something more than poison. As they struggle to contain the bleeding while waiting for the arrival of the president’s rare blood type and plasma, the Pavilion is suddenly seized by Chechen terrorists who murder all the security agents and announce they are holding the world leaders as hostages for the release of their fellow terrorists. David, who had been in the special forces, hides in the ceiling spaces and drops notes of medical advice to Carolyn, who is stretched to the limit trying to help the president and the other ill patients without new supplies. David uses his cell phone to keep the Secret Service up to date while the vice president and her team struggle to come up with a rescue plan. David and Carolyn play cat-and-mouse with the cold-blooded terrorists, who are willing to kill anyone but the president to achieve their ends. Even after David is wounded and captured, he continues his desperate attempts to thwart the terrorist plot.

Goldberg, a clinical professor at UCLA Medical Center, has the expertise to provide an exciting medical thriller. This fast-paced departure from his Joanna Blalock series (Lethal Measures, 2000, etc.) provides all the excitement, intrigue and danger you could ask for.

Pub Date: May 8, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-7387-3046-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Midnight Ink/Llewellyn

Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012

Categories:
Next book

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:
Next book

DISTANT SHORES

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:
Close Quickview