The Patient (R)

Trade Paperback

Rachel is a respected doctor who lives in a picturesque and affluent English village where her husband Nathan teaches at an elite private school. Competent, unflappable, and nearing 50, Rachel has everything in her life firmly in her control, even if some of its early luster has worn off. But one day a new patient arrives at her practice for emergency treatment. Luc is a French painter married to a wealthy American woman whos just bought and restored a historic home on the edge of Rachels posh neighborhood. The couple has only recently arrived, but Luc is struggling with a mental disorder, and so he goes to the nearest clinicto Rachel.

Their attraction is instant, and as Rachels sense of ethics wars with newly awakened passion, the affair blinds her to everything else happening around her. A longtime patient appears to be following her every movement, turning up unexpectedly wherever she goes. Her somewhat estranged adult daughter Lizzie is hiding a secretor at least, hiding it from Rachel. Nathan has grown sour and cold as wellor is that merely Rachels guilty conscience weighing on her? But when one of her colleagues winds up murdered and Luc is arrested for the crime, everything Rachel didnt know about her life explodes into the openalong with her affair with her patienta disgrace and scandal that will have consequences no one could have predicted.