A fast-paced, rip-roaring historical fiction thriller that entertains and educates. So gripping, it will leave you desperately hoping that what you are reading is pure fiction!

"It is sure to be a major motion picture." - Louann Brizendine, M.D., New York Times Bestselling Author

When psychiatrist Dr. Gus Conrad is called to consult by the U.S. army for its growing epidemic of suicides and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, his problems begin.

Accused of murdering one of his own patients, a soldier with PTSD, Conrad learns from the mother that the answer to who is the real killer resides in England, where her family holds a long-hidden secret.

Now Conrad must find the real killer as he slips out of the country to uncover to his horror the practice over the past century of British and U.S. armies both secretly killing their own soldiers who claimed psychological problems following combat, deeming them cowards, making their deaths look like suicides.

The current head of the American death squad has apparently killed Conrad's patient, and is now targeting Conrad himself for death. Following the clues in England, Conrad is shocked at what he discovers.

Will Conrad and Warburton be able get back to the U.S. to expose the practice of armies killing their own soldiers they deem cowards?

Can they stop the rogue leader of the American death squad before they themselves are killed?

Praise for Shell Shock

Shell Shock is a stunning debut novel by best-selling textbook author and world famous psychiatrist, sure to capture your interest and outrage and leave you yearning for more.

"it becomes nearly impossible to tell where the fiction stops and the story continues ... in a fast-paced read that is reminiscent of Dan Brown." - Chad Clement, Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CWO3), US NAVY SEAL (RETIRED)

"Shell Shock is not only a page-turner but a tour de force first-novel by renowned psychiatrist Stephen Stahl. It is sure to be a major motion picture." - Louann Brizendine, M.D., New York Times Bestselling Author of The Female Brain and The Male Brain

"Iconic psychopharmacologist Stephen Stahl demonstrates his mastery of the crime mystery genre in a shock and awe novel that barrels along with Stahl's customary brio while informing us about PTSD and, as ever, man's inhumanity to man." - Professor Gordon Parker, Black Dog Institute, Australia

"Gripping and thrilling to the very end ..." - Lieutenant Commander Dr. William Sauve, former U.S. Navy psychiatrist embedded with army troops in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom About the author Steve Stahl is an internationally renowned psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, holding faculty positions both at the University of California San Diego and at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. He is the best-selling author of several psychiatric textbooks, and coauthor of hundreds of academic papers in psychiatry. Trained at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University, Dr. Stahl has received numerous awards in psychiatry. He resides with his wife and near his two daughters in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Lake Arrowhead, California, where he is working on his next novel, The T4 Project, based on the true story of Nazi psychiatrists choosing mentally disabled patients for extermination, a project that was eventually expanded into the Holocaust.