Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Jimmy Breslin can sniff out a story like he can sniff out a rat. Here, he tells a lifetime of anecdotes in his inimitable New York voice, giving us a view through the keyhole of the people and places that define the Mafia: characters like Sammy the Bull, the original snitch; Gaspipe Casso, named for his weapon of choice; and hangouts like Pep McGuire's, the legendary watering hole where reporters and gangsters (all hailing from the same working-class neighborhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories.

Lacey Elliot has been a woman without a past since the day her mother whisked her off to Charlottesville, refusing for 30 years to speak of her father, her family or her history. But when Lacey intercepts a desperate letter from an aunt in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, she sees her chance to confront the past that has terrified her mother and to fill in the gaps in her own life. Against the charm and the colorful, turbulent history of the picturesque town, the violent history of Lacey's own heritage is about to repeat itself.

It's 76 A.D. during the reign of Vespasian and the Roman festival of Saturnalia is getting underway. The days are short; the nights are for wild parties. But not for "informer" Marcus Didius Falco. His job is to uncover unwelcome truths and deal with sensitive situations, frequently at the behest of the imperial government. So when a general's famous female conquest escapes from house arrest - leaving a horrendous murder in her wake - Falco is on the case.

Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.

Secret agent Richard Hannay travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic messiah. He is joined by three others: John S. Blenkiron, an American who is determined to battle the Kaiser; Peter Pienaar, an old Boer Scout; and the colorful Sandy Arbuthnot, who is modeled on Lawrence of Arabia. Their success or failure could change the outcome of the First World War.

Fletch, as unbridled as ever and still living the good life in Italy on his ill-gotten fortune, gets a surprising visit from two surly FBI agents. The pair offers him a deal: either he attend the American Journalism Alliance convention and work as an undercover spy for them, or be shipped back to headquarters and face jail time for tax evasion. Reluctantly agreeing to the scheme, he catches a red-eye flight back to the States. But just as rubber hits tarmac in Virginia, news breaks on a murder at the convention.

He is a killer, a rapist, a monster and knows only pain and survival. That is until the capo's sister walks into his life and changes everything. She's a light who makes his darkness darker; her smile makes his heart turn to ice, and he can't escape the fear her seductive looks instill - knowing it's only a matter of time before he fails again and takes her for himself.

In midtown Manhattan, Mike Hammer, recovering from a near-fatal mix-up with the Mob, runs into drug dealers assaulting a young hospital messenger. He saves the kid, but the muggers are not so lucky. In a New York of flashy discotheques, swanky bachelor pads, and the occasional dark alley, Hammer deals with doctors and drug addicts, hippie chicks and hit men, meeting changing times with his timeless brand of violent vengeance.

When a colleague extends his summer vacation, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is forced to stay in Vigàta and endure the August heat. Montalbano’s long-suffering girlfriend, Livia, joins him with a friend - husband and young son in tow - to keep her company during these dog days of summer. But when the boy suddenly disappears into a narrow shaft hidden under the family’s beach rental, Montalbano uncovers something terribly sinister.

The grand tale begins in 1939 Berlin, where young Paul Christopher and his family are struggling against the rise of Nazi totalitarianism. The Christophers are known to be sympathetic to the persecuted Jews, and 16-year-old Paul has fallen in love with the daughter of a Jewish doctor. Their enemy is a sadistic S.S. officer named Stutzer, who will stop at nothing to destroy the young couple.

When crime reporter Mia Hale is discovered on a Florida beach, she is bloodied and disoriented but alive. She remembers nothing, but her wounds bear the signature of a sadistic serial killer: The Collector, who has resumed his grim hobby of abducting women and taking gruesome souvenirs before dumping their bodies. None of his victims has ever escaped - and he desperately wants Mia back. FBI agent Eric MacFarlane has pursued The Collector for a long time and now Mia holds the key.

In these five tales, Sherlock Holmes is shown at the height of his powers: he co-operates with a young Winston Churchill in the famed Siege of Sydney Street, helps defeat a plan for a German invasion outlined in the Zimmerman Telegram, establishes a link between two missing lighthouse keepers and the royal treasures of King John, contends with a supernatural curse places upon an eccentric aristocrat, and discovers a lost epic of Lord Byron.

Escape is a classic encounter between the forces of good and evil in human form that asks, and answers, questions of how to deal with supposedly "God-inspired" acts of murder and mayhem. In a riveting trial of garish courtroom confrontations, newly elected New York District Attorney Karp battles the "insanity of the insanity defense", as he tries to make Jessica Campbell, a rabble-rousing political science professor at NYU, pay for the murder of her three children. While Campbell claims that God told her to "send her three children to Him," it is up to Karp to prove that she was fully aware of the nature and consequences of her actions.

On a beautiful spring morning on the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, a small fishing boat moored at the docks suddenly explodes. When it becomes clear that the fire was deliberately set and the boat’s owners brutally murdered, Commissario Brunetti tries to dig up information from Pellestrina’s close-knit - and closemouthed - citizenry. But it is with mixed feelings that he accepts Signorina Elettra’s offer to visit her relatives there and search for clues.

As the story opens, Cass arrives in London, where she's arranged to meet her long-lost lover, Quinn O'Boyle. When Quinn fails to show at their rendezvous point, Cass meets the eccentric couple Mallo and Morven Dunfries. When Mallo catches Cass rifling through his medicine cabinet in search of drugs, he threatens to turn her in to the authorities then puts her to work as a runner for his illegal goods. Cass makes a delivery to Poppy Teasel, a famous singer from long ago.

The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, finished just a few weeks before Per Wahlöö’s death. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene.

Daniel Hecht has created a plausible, heart-stopping ghost thriller. Relying on the science of parapsychology to spine-tingling effect, he brings to life a remarkably compelling character in Cree Black, as well as the ghosts she confronts.

In this tantalizing tale of Victorian ghost stories and family secrets, timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal Alice and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. As he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery - or will they bring about his untimely death, as they seem to foretell?

Drive is the story of a man who works as a stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. He drives, that's all - until he's double-crossed.

The London summer of 1854 is drawing to a close when a deadly outbreak of cholera grips the city. Florence Nightingale is back on the scene marshaling her nurses to help treat countless suffering patients at Middlesex Hospital as the disease tears through the Soho slums. But beyond the dangers of the disease, something even more evil is seeping through the ailing streets of London. It begins with an attack on the carriage of Florence's friend, Elizabeth Herbert, wife of Secretary at War Sidney Herbert. Elizabeth survives, but her coachman does not.