Read Excerpts from Great Thrillers
by Joseph T. McFadden

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Life in The Deadly World of Medicine

Most people reacted with astonishment and doubt when the numbers were first made public more then five years ago. The reports claimed 100,000 to 300,000 preventable deaths every year in the medical system of the United States. As would be expected, the same reaction came from the public at large and from patients and doctors alike to this startling news. Impossible! Unbelievable! Surely these figures can't be right! And who says so, anyway? So you look to see who's talking and find the facts even more sobering.

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Burnt Offering

Each morning now he, John Powers, comes fully awake out of nocturnal struggles with an old grief, to find a widow in his bed beside him sleeping peacefully as the morning light begins to lift, she of a pearly white glowing, his condolence, a gift delivered to his side by ironies from hell, through long suffering and anguish. Two murderers on the mountain, here in ski country, plotting to murder each other have wrecked other lives, delivering her, elegant little Millie, from the clutches of an abusive husband on his 100th conquest and she finally has her revenge. John Powers, world famous author, busy at the resort writing a history of lovers and a history of murder, meets and falls in love with a queenly lady, but loses her to illness and to the plotting and deceptions of the two murderers...

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A Hooker in the Choir

Facing the row of books on gambling, those about God behind her, she looked up as the librarian sidled down the aisle wearing an anxious expression and towing a tall, good-looking guy by the hand, her other arm outstretched, bringing them together.


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Hermes ' Viper

Standing before the mirror, Sara shut her eyes and thought of fire, and began counting slowly from ten backward. At the number five she changed, and Hera the scholar, keeper of Hera's Journal, stood unsteadily, looking at her reflection. Heads blurred in a long moment of confusion before her posture stabilized. Then she began to commiserate with herself ...

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Fulton's Monkey and other short stories

While she works, Mabel Mills looks across her kitchen counter through a rear window into the simmering landscape where the sun of late summer wilts everything to a silent standstill. Listening, almost holding her breath in the silence of the smothering land, she awaits and dreads the approaching mid-afternoon hour. She drips sweat in the heat of the kitchen, both hands too busy to fan. The silence deepens as the day advances.

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The Wafer

While driving home through the dusk of a warm, rainy April day, Eric Stuart spotted a young woman running down the sidewalk ahead as though trying desperately to escape something about to overtake her. On impulse he swerved out of traffic, slowing along the curb behind her racing feet as she lowered her head and dashed forward once again, turning in stride to glance back through vernal greens and pale yellows of wet foliage along the street, panic on her delicate and lovely face. Alarmed blue eyes met his gaze as he reached back to swing the rear door open-a silent offering-and without missing stride she leapt across the grass divide and plunged into the back seat.

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