Medical Historical Fiction Mystery

1348. The Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe; the people of the county start to die in the thousands. In the demesne of Develish, Lady Anne takes control of her people's future, chooses a bastard slave, Thaddeus Thurkell, to act as her steward, and together they decide to quarantine Develish by bringing the serfs inside the walls. With this sudden overturning of the accepted social order, where serfs exist only to serve their lords, conflicts soon arise....

Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon Stephen Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy - and a dangerous disease which decimates the crew.

In this two-volume collection of traditional Sherlock Holmes adventures, the good doctor himself is given a chance to shine. These two volumes contain 26 mysteries involving such maladies as plagues, poisonings, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, somnambulism, and many more! The stories are traditional Holmes pastiches and are written by some of today’s top Sherlockian writers!

November 1866: The grisly murder site in London's East End is thronged with onlookers. None of them expect the calmly efficient young woman among them to be a medical doctor, arrived to examine the corpse. Inspector Richard Tennant, overseeing the investigation, at first makes no effort to disguise his skepticism. But Dr. Julia Lewis is accustomed to such condescension . . . To study medicine, Julia had to leave Britain, where universities still bar their doors to women, and travel to America. She returned home to work in her grandfather's practice.

The women of Hope River trust midwife Patience Hester, whose skill in delivering babies is known for miles around. But though the Great Depression is behind them, troubles are not, for Europe is at war...and it can only be a matter of time before the US enters the fray. And while some are eager to join the fight, Patience’s husband, Daniel, is not. Daniel is a patriot - but he saw too much bloodshed during the First World War and has vowed never to take up arms again. His stance leaves Patience and their four children vulnerable as the government imprisons Daniel for his beliefs.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

Liverpool, 1855. Ada Houston is alone. Her grandfather has recently passed away, and her brother is missing, last seen working on the Liverpool docks. Everyone assumes him to be dead. But she will not give up hope. Ada's determined search takes her to the Crimea, where she joins the team of Florence Nightingale's nurses. She may have set off looking for her brother, but along the way Ada finds friends, romance and a new purpose in her own life in the most troubling and difficult of places.

A Daphne du Maurier-esque chiller set on the mysterious Cornish coast from the author of The Silent Companions and The Corset. Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.

The discovery of a deadly virus being smuggled across the border pits FBI Special Agent James Mason and his strike force against an unknown adversary hell-bent on humanity’s destruction. In a desperate effort to contain the pathogen, they launch a predawn raid, only to find that their enemy knows they’re coming...and it’s not about to be taken alive. An explosion rips through the building, killing the majority of Mason’s team, including his partner and mentor.

Gefährliche Experimente. Hamburg 1907. Im Hafenkrankhaus begegnet der Bakteriologe Carl-Jakob Melcher einem Schulfreund. Ludolf Harberg ist sehr angeschlagen durch die Schlafkrankheit. In seinen wachen Momenten erzählt er von seinen Erlebnissen in Ostafrika - von den Experimenten, die er mit dem Mediziner Robert Koch an Einheimischen unternommen hat. Bevor er Genaueres erzählen kann, stirbt Harberg. Für die Ärzte eine Folge seiner Krankheit, doch Carl-Jacob glaubt an Mord und beginnt zu ermitteln, ohne zu ahnen, dass es nicht der einzige Todesfall in seiner Nähe bleiben wird.

Wien, 1908: Die Stadt erlebt eine sagenhafte Blütezeit von Kunst und Wissenschaft. Doch davon bekommt die schüchterne Jungärztin Fanny Goldmann nur wenig mit, verbringt sie doch am liebsten ihre Zeit mit den Leichen in der gerichtlichen Medizin. Meist spielt sie dort nur die Handlangerin für ihre männlichen Kollegen. Als aber ein toter Obdachloser eingeliefert wird, führt Fanny nachts heimlich eine Obduktion durch und stellt fest, dass es sich um einen gesuchten Meisterdieb, den Sküs, handelt. Fanny beschließt, mehr über den Mord herauszufinden.

Grausam zugerichtete Leichen und ein Mörder wie aus dem dunkelsten Albtraum. Frankfurt im Jahr 1800: Drei auf ungewöhnliche Weise entstellte Leichen versetzen die Stadt in Angst. Gerüchte über religiöse Ritualmorde machen die Runde. Nur zwei erliegen dem alten Aberglauben nicht: Zeitungsredakteur Johann und Manon, deren Vater als Rechtsmediziner die Überreste der Ermordeten obduziert. Die beiden erkennen, dass die Verbrechen die blutige Handschrift eines berüchtigten Mörders tragen – einer Gestalt wie aus dem dunkelsten Albtraum.

March 4, 1918. An army cook at Fort Riley, Kansas reported to the infirmary with a temperature of 103.1 degrees fahrenheit. Within two days, another 521 men became sick. It is one of the first recorded outbreaks of what came to be known as the Spanish flu. Living in the country, we fared better than those who lived in crowded conditions in the big cities. We were like one big, happy family, living in different houses. We held barn raisings, outdoor festivals, and church picnics. But at last, the plague of 1918 found us too, and that silent killer was about to drag us into hell.

Set in the early 1960s, this is the story of a family-oriented community, surrounding a winterbourne stream, in Northern California. It is full of average law-abiding citizens who live in picturesque equestrian properties with white three-rail fences. A violent motor vehicle accident and the attempted resuscitation of the victim, a homeless drug addict, by surgeon Doctor Franklin Carson and his Labrador, Winston, begins a fast-paced story of deception and lies. The event calls attention to a problem in the small community.

In the shadows of New York City lies forbidden North Brother Island, where the remains of a shuttered sanatorium hide the haunting memories of century-old quarantines and human experiments. The ruins conceal the scarred and beautiful Cora, imprisoned by contagions and the doctors who torment her.

In Brooklyn in 1899, Dr. Noah Whitestone is called urgently to his wealthy neighbor's house to treat a five-year-old boy with a shocking set of symptoms. When the child dies suddenly later that night, Noah is accused by the boy's regular physician - the powerful and politically connected Dr. Arnold Frias - of prescribing a lethal dose of laudanum. To prove his innocence, Noah must investigate the murder - for it must be murder - and confront the man he is convinced is the real killer.

Once an ethical young man who clawed his way out of poverty during the Great Depression, Danny reaches his goal to be a world-renowned surgeon dedicated to healing the sick and dying. Death of loved ones, an illicit affair, deception and covert lies throw him into a murderous rage. First Do Harm, an historical suspense audiobook, exposes the vulnerable side of the human spirit. It leaves listeners questioning the meaning of what counts as justified revenge and whether they could commit heinous acts that go against their basic natures, if they walked in Danny’s shoes....

Deciding on her 39th birthday that a baby is the best present she could give herself, single Manhattan public relations executive Nina Kitchener makes an appointment to undergo artificial insemination at the Human Fertility Institute. Nine months later the nightmare begins. Just hours after she gives birth, someone kidnaps her infant son from the nursery. The police aren't helping, the fertility institute has shut down, and Nina believes that the only way to find her baby is to learn the identity of the sperm donor.

It's 1976. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan to create the first in vitro baby. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist/embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in the history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep....

The Sherlockian Canon, as prolific as it is, contains few accounts in which Mr. Holmes and his medical colleagues Doctors Watson and Verner solve cases involving frightening medical conditions. It strikes me that many more such cases were successfully solved by Mr. Holmes and his associates. It is unlikely that Doctors Watson and Verner would allow such mysteries remain unsolved.