Jacob M. Appel is a physician in New York City. Jacob is the author of five literary novels, ten short story collections, an essay collection, a cozy mystery, a thriller, a volume of poems, and a compendium of dilemmas in medical ethics. He is Treasurer of the National Book Critics Circle, co-chair of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry's Committee on Psychiatry & Law, and a Councilor of the New York County Psychiatric Society.