Shattered by his wife's death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he's come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.

This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man's desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.

A haunting and exquisitely-observed collection of medical vignettes that brilliantly captures the intense drama of the Emergency Room Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, The Blood of Strangers is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. In this collection of spare elegant stories, Dr Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine - the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter - interwoven with the lives of the sick and injured. The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors - a neurosurgeon who practices witchcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seaking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a deeply affecting first book from one of the most dramatic specialities of modern medicine.

When newly qualified doctor Michael Grant makes an error, and a young girl dies unexpectedly in his care, a mysterious chain of events leads him to believe that he may have discovered an entirely new disease. Unable to convince his colleagues, he sets out to gather evidence but is quite unprepared for the direction his quest will take him-into the wilderness of disease, religion and mystery-a journey that will lead him to question not only his belief in the order of the world, but his own place and purpose within it. With real suspense and subtlety, Frank Huyler's first novel is written with the spare precision and grace of his much praised collection about his medical experiences, "The Blood of Strangers."

Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, "The Blood of Strangers" is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. In this collection of spare and elegant stories, Dr. Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine where small moments - the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter - interweave with the lives and deaths of the desperately sick and injured. The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors - a neurosurgeon who practices witchcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seeking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, "The Blood of Strangers" is a literary work that emerges from one of the most dramatic specialties of modern medicine. This deeply affecting first book has been described by one early reader as 'the best doctor collection I have seen since William Carlos Williams' "The Doctor Stories".