In My TBR Stack:

Assassin's Lullaby

by Mark Rubinstein

Thunder Lake Press

Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In every life, there lurks catastrophe. So believes Eli Dagan, a thirty-nine-year-old man whose traumatic past led to his service as an assassin for the Mossad. He now lives in New York City, where under various assumed names he’s a contract killer. Anton Gorlov, the head of the Brooklyn-based Odessa mafia, has a new and challenging assignment for Eli. Gorlov wants to leave the country permanently, so all loose ends must be eliminated. He’s willing to pay $1 million for a task divided into two parts. The job involves extreme measures along with unprecedented danger for Eli, who has lived a ghostly existence over the last ten years. Is accepting Gorlov’s offer a subliminal death wish? Or is it a way to reclaim part of his damaged soul? For the first time since his pregnant wife and parents were killed by a suicide bomber years earlier, Eli Dagan faces challenges that will reconnect him with his blighted past and may yet offer hope for a new and better life.

In My TBR Stack:

Beyond Bedlam's Door: True Tales from the Couch and Courtroom
by Mark Rubinstein
Thunder Lake Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

What drove a psychiatrist to enlist a patient in a plot to murder six people?

What was the secret bargain struck that allowed a 104-year-old woman to live such a long and productive life?

Why would a woman refuse to emerge from the confines of her bedroom? And after treatment liberated her, why did she suddenly take a turn for the worse?

In Beyond Bedlam’s Door, former practicing psychiatrist Mark Rubinstein takes you outside the hospital and into his world of private patients, nursing home residents, and the challenging legal system in which he worked as a forensic expert. As in Bedlam’s Door, great lengths were taken to preserve people’s anonymity, but the raw truth of each story remains intact. The resiliency of some individuals and the venality of others are laid bare in these pages.

Beyond Bedlam’s Door invites you to meet twenty-one unforgettable people. Some stories will disturb you, others will make you smile, but all will give you a deeper appreciation of what it means to be human.

On My Radar:

Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope
by Mark Rubinstein, MD
Thunder Lake Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Why would a man born in Hungary and living on Manhattan's Lower East Side run down Delancey Street ranting "I'm king of the Puerto Rican's"?

What would compel a physically healthy woman to persuade surgeons to operate on her more than a dozen times?

How was it possible for a man wearing a straitjacket to commit suicide within a locked psychiatric ward while in the company of a well-trained guard?

Though these and the other stories in this volume read like fiction, each is true.

Former practicing psychiatrist Mark Rubinstein opens the door and takes the reader deep into the world of mental illness. From the chaos of a psychiatric emergency room to the bowels of a maximum security prison, the stories range from bizarre to poignant and the people from noble to callously uncaring.

Bedlam's Door depicts the challenges mental illness poses for patients, their families, health-care professionals, and society. More importantly, it demystifies the subject while offering real hope for the future.