This image is the cover for the book Illicit Liaisons

Illicit Liaisons

This is a novel within a novella. It is set in Philadelphia, in a failing hospital of a crime-ridden neighborhood. The stresses of medical practice and the hospital administration are compounded by lawyers, gangs, drug dealers, and police investigations. Malpractice claims mount. Personal relationships are strained. The novella takes place twenty years after at a birthday party for the former hospital chief of staff. Three couples were invited along with their college-age children. The daughter of the former chief of staff is given a quasi-autobiographical novel he wrote but never published to give her perspective on the young man she is considering for her first lover. Therein, she gets a deep insight into the secret liaisons among the attendees; relationships that, if revealed, could destroy friendships.

H. Ernest Christman

Ernest H. Christman got his MD from the University of Pennsylvania. He did his residency in ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, a Harvard University teaching hospital. He served as a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, stationed in Verdun, France. After a stint in academic medicine, he went into private practice. His non-medical publications include books on teaching reading via phonics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerican pottery.

Austin Macauley Publishers