Bøker av David Marks

Life Blood, written by a renowned leukaemia physician, tells unforgettable stories of his leukaemia patients' battles to be cured but also uniquely describes the stresses that doctors face when looking after extremely ill young people during an extraordinary time in their lives. In reflecting on his long and illustrious career, Professor Marks' memoir offers frank descriptions of his own medical family, some personal experiences of ill-health and his relationships with colleagues and patients in the NHS. Partly written during the Covid pandemic and as he approached retirement, Life Blood offers highly informed and compassionate views on modern medicine, from a pivotal point in both the author's own professional life and the history of healthcare. Uniquely, through these real-life stories, we enter the world of the leukaemia patient, to understand what it is like to be diagnosed and treated for a life-threatening yet frequently curable cancer. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia or ALL was the first cancer to be consistently cured in children and is a model for much of modern cancer therapy given that more than half of us will develop cancer in our lifetime. Looking to the future we read of Nitya, whose treatment-refractory leukaemia was cured by CAR T cells, a modern immunotherapy using genetically modified white blood cells, which is now being adapted to treat breast, lung and colon cancer.

In the heart of Chicago, where shadows conceal secrets and organized crime reigns, one retiree embarks on an extraordinary journey. David Blazen spent 50 years comfortable in his work routine but now is retired and desperately searching for purpose in his life. He ultimately finds it in the most unlikely of ways: by becoming a self-proclaimed detective. Travel through a labyrinth of adventure in this award-winning novel, where suspense lurks around every corner and laugh-out-loud moments break through the tension. Follow along as David's search for truth and justice gets him caught in a web of contentious cases, all within his first week on the job. The most puzzling? A murder he witnessed that police are calling a suicide. Will his investigation help identify the killer? It's up to this amateur sleuth to solve that mystery, prevent a budding turf war between Chicago's two dirtiest crime lords, keep a corrupt candidate out of the mayor's office, and bring peace to a city rattled by crime and violence. The problem is, to succeed, he must become a criminal himself. All net proceeds from this book will be donated to non-profit organizations benefitting senior veterans."We're all searching for purpose and fulfillment in our lives, and this crime fiction adventure is both heartwarming and inspiring, An action-packed and surprisingly poignant yarn about a man's search for himself as he enters his golden years." - Kirkus Reviews2023 BookFest Awards Winner: 1st Place in Cozy Detective and 2nd Place in Amateur Sleuth

David Marks was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. His loving parents, Donna and Steven Marks, adopted him when he was six months old. David grew up in Southwest Florida. In this book, David acknowledges his faith in God and the love both of his parents have for him. Ultimately, it was his mother's loving heart and his father's unconditional support that changed his life. Growing up knowing he was adopted, David struggled with feelings of rejection rather than focusing on the fact that he was selected. His parents helped him see the value of family. He learned to overcome feelings of rejection by focusing on the love in his life, reinforcing strong bonds with his family, and surrounding himself with people who care about him. He wrote this book to honor God and his mother.

An unusual perspective on the first Blitz, being seen from the German point of view.

I wrote Time Being while on a trip from Portland to Baja California while on a hiatus from college. I traveled with a family friend, Gary De Young. Gary had bought a British Land Rover with the steering wheel on the right side. We visited friends down through California to Mexico. We ended up with car problems at Bay Concepcion in Baja. We thought about leaving the car to be repaired and hitchhiking down to Cabo San Lucan but I wanted to get back to college so we stuck with the land rover. Money got tight and we subsisted on refried beans and tortillas. They never tasted better. Once the car was repaired we zig zagged our way back up Baja and California to Oregon, stopping at friends' places.The poetry is something I did during college. I make no pretentions of it being musical. I cant sing Happy Birthday. My greatest influence was Jack Kerouac. Jack tried to "sketch" his surrounding with words. Also sometimes he considered writing to be something like playing blues on a musical instrument. But though I may use words like song and tune in my poetry, I really never considered my poetry "songs". Neither are they "rap". I wrote my poetry before rap got off the ground. They are even better called "pages of poetry" than "poems" per se. Time Being is bracketed by the structure of the journey to Baja with Gary. The poetry tends to run from one book to another. I don't write poetry any more, switching to prose.