The struggle for power between a head nurse and a male patient in a mental institution leads to a climax of hate, violence and death.

Pepper is a rambunctious big man, and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn't seem to matter. On his first night, he's visited by a terrifying creature who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates...

"The highly anticipated debut from the acclaimed award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv compels us to examine how the stories we tell about mental illness shape our sense of who we are"-- In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes...

Nine-year-old Louis Drax lies in a coma in a hospital bed, re-living the events that led to his near-fatal fall into a ravine. Despite being attracted to the boy's mother Natalie Drax, Louis' doctor, Pascal Dannachet, begins reluctantly to question her version of Louis' accident and the apparent culpability of her missing husband. As the boy struggles to communicate from within his coma, the chilling truth emerges...

When young doctor Edward Newgate arrives at Stonehearst Asylum in search of an apprenticeship, he is warmly welcomed by Superintendent Dr. Lamb and a mesmerizing woman by the name of Eliza Grave. Edward is intrigued by Lamb's modern methods of treating the insane until a series of unusual events leads him to make a horrifying discovery, exposing Lamb's utopia and pushing Edward to the limits of his conscience.

When Jace Cooper turns up severely injuired at the hospital where Rebecca Bradshaw runs the physical therapy department she must decide whether to give him a second chance. Jace left her seven years earlier without a second thought.

A bum hip has bed-and-breakfast hostess Judith McMonigle Flynn limping off to Good Cheer Hospital--a questionable "Haven of healing" where two recent patients didn't make the cut after routine surgery. She is sharing a room with her cousin. They both make through surgery, but the ex-pro quarterback is sacked forever. Can the cousins find the killer?