Ken Strauss

Her last entry is January 29, 1945, the day she was beheaded.

Strauss has also written Javea...Yes!, a romping post-apocalyptic bike ride across Europe, which has become a Mad Max world.

Billy Poem is an ambitious children's book exploring the surreal world of the critically ill.

It is told from the perspective of two children, lingering between life and death, who explore this magical world of ‘In Between’ as they lie in comas in Intensive Care.

Their search leads them inside a mountain which hides the secrets of death.

They bravely plunge in, seeking to find and defang it.

Ugly Duckling is an alternative history of the 45th occupant of the White House with a surprise outcome that both Republicans and Democrats will be delighted with.

Ken Strauss (born 1953) is a physician/author currently living in Spain.

He is an Internist and Endocrinologist.

For three decades he was Global Medical Director for BD, a leading medical and diagnostic enterprise.

He is also Director for Safety in Medicine at the European Medical Association in Brussels.

Born in New Orleans, Strauss was raised by missionary parents on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

He studied at Columbia Bible College (now Columbia International University) from 1971 to 1975 and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1975–78) with a focus on the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew.

After this he embarked on medical studies.

Strauss received his degree as a doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Columbia, South Carolina, USA (1982–86).

He did an Internal Medicine Internship and Residency at the Wake Forest University, North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA (1986–89).

His Endocrinology Fellowship was at the Harvard Medical School, Boston in the Beth Israel Hospital, Brigham & Women's Hospitals and Joslin Diabetes Center (1989–91).

He has lived most of his life in Latin America and Europe and speaks Spanish and French in addition to his native English.

He gives talks frequently to audiences throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia on topics related to diabetes, HIV disease and patient safety.

He has directed clinical trials throughout the world, developing medical tools ranging from high-tech molecular instruments to routine injection devices.

He has published 102 scientific papers written by himself and is an author on nearly 200 written by others.

Strauss has published twenty-seven books, beginning with a novel, La Tendresse, published in 2002 by Black Ace Books of Forfar, Scotland.

In it he juxtaposes the friendships and love affairs of its protagonist, Dr. Alain Hamilton, with the brutality of trench warfare during the First World War.

In the NYU Literature, Arts & Medicine Database, Jack Coulehan writes: "Two dramatically different themes—tenderness and war—duke it out in this novel. The reality of war is unrelenting. Humanity descends into the deepest levels of hell. All that survives is technique (Dr. Hamilton's skill as a surgeon) and commitment (his dogged persistence in doing his job, despite the failures and hopelessness). The second theme is love. The intimate relationship with his colleague Elizabeth (‘la tendresse’) is the deepest he has ever experienced. It carries them both through the horrors of war."

In another novel, Maria Lindisima, a chance encounter in Paris between Montse, a Catalan scientist, and Fernando, a Colombian entrepreneur, blossoms into a love affair just as Leo, a young American, begins a scheming entanglement with the two.

Unknown to Montse, her lab has been infiltrated by the Pentagon (using Leo) to develop a virulent flu strain—nicknamed Maria Lindisima—as a biological weapon.

When she finds out, she begins a race against time to produce a naked DNA vaccine, the sole protection against the virus.

However, on a visit to Colombia with Fernando, the guerrilla group, the FARC, kidnaps them, thereby acquiring the strain.

With Leo's connivance they release it, triggering a pandemic.

Montse has succeeded in producing the saving vaccine but she remains captive in the Colombian jungle.

Though a thriller, the book is a stinging indictment of America's thirst for world domination and the ends to which some will go to ensure it.

In a third novel, Madness, an orphaned Jewish girl, Rachel, marries a soldier who is later driven mad by the horrors of the First World War.

She must live with this madman during the chaos of post-war Germany.

Her discovery of her Jewishness coincides with the rise of National Socialism.

She escapes to Spain where she fights with the International Brigades against Franco and meets her true love, Janek, a Polish Jew.

Both are captured by the fascists and are deported to Hitler's Germany.

Rachel escapes and joins the White Rose, a group of German students who attempt to undermine the Nazis using clandestine pamphlets.

She becomes the principal smuggler for the Hamburg branch and continues writing pamphlets when the others are captured.

She is innocently betrayed by a little girl and is sentenced to death.

Madness is Rachel's life story as written from Stadelheim Prison, Munich.