Medical Saga

Anna is over the moon when her sweetheart returns from the front line. As he recovers from his injuries, they make plans to be married, but the horrors of the trenches cast a long shadow. Caring for shell-shocked soldiers brings untold challenges for Grace, and her parents have very different dreams for her future. Meanwhile Dulcie has her sights firmly set on her own happy ending. And yet sometimes we find love where we least expect to. Each of the nurses has her own battle to fight, but they must rally together if they’re to find true happiness.

An orphan leaves Dark Ages London, taking a dangerous journey and posing as a Jew to study medicine in Persia, in "an adventurous and inspiring tale" (Library Journal). A child holds the hand of his dying mother and is terrified, aware something is taking her. Orphaned and given to an itinerant barber-surgeon, Rob Cole becomes a fast-talking swindler, peddling a worthless medicine. But as he matures, his strange gift - an acute sensitivity to impending death - never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer.

When Rachel qualifies as nurse, she does so because she wants to help others and make a difference. But she is also running from a past life that must stay hidden forever. Completing her training, Rachel moves to London but misses home desperately, so when she hears about an opportunity to train as a district nurse in a village near Rochdale, she seizes the opportunity, even though it will take her closer to the trouble she left behind. She knows nothing about Eastby End and she is shocked to find it a little more than a slum.

Clara Casey has more than enough on her plate. Her daughters are a handful and Clara, a senior cardiac specialist, has a new job to cope with.... For Ania, meeting Clara Casey is a miracle: she had never intended to leave her beloved Poland, but after the love of her life has turned sour, her world seems rather empty. Perhaps a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart?

Dr. Robert Judson Cole travels from his ravaged Scotland homeland, through the operating rooms of Boston, to the cabins of frontier Illinois. In the wilderness he befriends the starving remnants of the Sauk tribe, who have fled their reservation. In the process, he absorbs their culture and learns native remedies that enrich the classical medical education he received at Edinburgh University. He marries a remarkable settler woman he had saved from illness.

In An Irish Country Christmas, the third book in Patrick Taylor's Irish Country Books, Barry Laverty, M.B., is looking forward to his first Christmas in the cozy village of Ballybucklebo, at least until he learns that his sweetheart, Patricia, might not be coming home for the holidays. That unhappy prospect dampens his spirits somewhat, but Barry has little time to dwell on his romantic disappointments. Christmas may be drawing nigh, but there is little peace to be found on earth, especially for a young doctor plying his trade in the emerald hills and glens of rural Ireland.

Roberta Jeanne d'Arc Cole is favored to be named associate chief of medicine at a Boston hospital. She is married to a surgeon. They own a trophy residence on historic Brattle Street in Cambridge and a summer house in the Berkshire Hills. Everything melts away. Her gender and her work at an abortion clinic cost her the hospital appointment. Her marriage fails. Crushed, she goes to the farmhouse in Western Massachusetts, thinking to sell it, and finds an unexpected life.

Christmas may be the season of goodwill and festive cheer, but not for the poor of 1950s Liverpool. And for St Angelus Hospital in Lovely Lane, it is frantically busy. There are the old, the dying, the children and the emergencies.

The nurses, known locally as the Angels of Lovely Lane, are run off their feet. Dana, Beth, Pammy and Victoria hardly have time to catch their breath, let alone have a Christmas of their own.

The nurses of St Angelus Hospital face the hardship of another winter in this heartbreaking story by million-copy best seller Nadine Dorries. In 1950s Liverpool, five very different girls begin their training at St Angelus Hospital, in Lovely Lane. The nurses are known locally as the Angels. They are Dana, Victoria, Beth, Celia and Pammy, and at St Angelus they learn quickly about life in all its richness and its sorrow. The Angels must battle through the snow to save Victoria's baby, and young doctor Teddy Davenport begins to make some serious mistakes....

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr. Barry Laverty. After Barry's first month as an assistant to crusty Dr. O'Reilly, he has been offered a permanent spot. But Laverty's excitement is dashed when one of his patients unexpectedly dies.

On an unnamed island, in a Gothic hospital sitting in the shadow of a volcano, a wordless orphan girl works on the wards housing the insane and the incapable. When a silent, unmoving and unnerving new patient - a foreigner - arrives at the hospital, strange phenomena occur, bizarre murders take place and the lives of the patients and the island's inhabitants are thrown into turmoil. What happens between them is an extraordinary exploration of consciousness, reality and madness.

With her husband, Nick, away fighting, Dora struggles to keep the home fires burning but finds herself in a difficult position when she is put in charge of a ward of injured German POWs. Can she find it in her heart to care for her enemies? Fellow nurse Kitty faces a similar struggle looking after the men who killed her beloved brother. But her life becomes even more complicated when she falls for one of the prisoners. And Helen Denton returns from nursing in Europe with a secret. She has her own reasons for hating the Germans.

Matron Kathleen Fox has the job of putting the hospital back together but wonders if she is up to the task. In an attempt to bring some festive cheer, she decides to put on a Christmas show. The idea is greeted with mixed feelings by the nurses, who all have their own problems, and also by the new Assistant Matron and ward sister, who find themselves rivals for the role of organiser. But as rehearsals begin, the performers begin to find the show is not just a tonic for the patients.

West Yorkshire, 1926. After completing her training in Steeple Street, Agnes is looking forward to making her mark as the village's first district nurse, confident she can make a difference in the locals' lives. But when she arrives, she's treated with suspicion, labelled just another servant of the wealthy mine owners. The locals would much rather place their trust in the resident healer, Nella Black.

As the war takes its toll, the Nightingale nurses must do their bit for king and country... Dora is the devoted mother of twin babies, but, determined to help the war effort, she goes back to work at the Nightingale Hospital. More used to nights out in the West End, Jennifer and Cissy volunteer in the hope of tending to handsome soldiers. They soon find out that nursing isn’t quite what they were expecting.

Una Kelly has grown up to be a rough-and-tumble grifter, able to filch a pocketbook in five seconds flat. But when another con-woman pins her for a murder she didn’t commit, Una is forced to flee. Running from the police, Una lies her way into an unlikely refuge: the nursing school at Bellevue Hospital. Based on Florence Nightingale’s nursing principles, Bellevue is the first school of its kind in the country. Where once nurses were assumed to be ignorant and unskilled, Bellevue prizes discipline, intellect, and moral character, and only young women of good breeding need apply.

Mark Vonnegut set out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals, but genetic predisposition and a whole lot of shit going down made him crazy in a culture that told him mental illness is a myth and schizophrenia is a sane response to an insane society. Describing his experiences during the late '60s and early '70s, Eden Express reveals how Mark went from being a recent college grad who was in love and living communally on a farm to having nervous breakdowns.

For the district nurses of Victory Walk, there's been little time to bask in the triumph of D-day as London is facing a new threat - the buzz bombs. Everyone is terrified, never knowing where the next one will strike. Into this tense atmosphere, new nurse Iris must make her mark. She’s had more experience of nursing than many, but since arriving in East London from the countryside, she has struggled to fit in with the other staff. Meanwhile, Alice is facing an agonising wait to hear if her boyfriend, Joe, has survived D-day.

Welcome to the district nurses' home on Steeple Street, where everyone has a secret.... Ambitious young nurse Agnes Sheridan had a promising future ahead of her until a tragic mistake cost her the love and respect of everyone around her. Now she has come to Leeds for a fresh start as a trainee district nurse. But Agnes finds herself facing unexpected challenges as she is assigned to Quarry Hill, one of the city's most notorious slums.

When her own first child is tragically still-born, the young Mette is pressed into service as a wet-nurse at the court of the mad king, Charles VI of France. Her young charge is the princess, Catherine de Valois, caught up in the turbulence and chaos of life at court. Mette and the child forge a bond, one that transcends Mette’s lowly position. But as Catherine approaches womanhood, her unique position seals her fate as a pawn between two powerful dynasties.