Showing results by narrator "John McLain" in All Categories

"Three years ago, when my son was still in college and my daughter lived across the Bay, my wife packed her car with her clothes and things, discussed with me her reasons for taking half the savings and, after a farewell which I cannot recall verbatim, she left..." In this short story, which won a Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, a retired schoolteacher in his sunset years, gets his first glimpse at the failures in his life, cracking a window open to everything and everyone outside.

Pat Ruger is a retired detective in Denver, Colorado, who does freelance PI work. An old friend, Angel, is a long-time weed dealer who refers a case to Pat- a missing woman suspected of being kidnapped and radicalized by Islamic extremists. Pat’s new client and her best friend are young women of the street and they eagerly help him recover from mourning over his late wife. When Pat uncovers a terrorist plot, can he find a large explosive device set to kill thousands of people and disarm it in time?

After his wife Alison, First Assistant United States Attorney, unwittingly recruits an ex-CIA operative and former international arms dealer to help in an undercover operation, Brock Andrews learns that the man has a dangerous agenda of his own.

Deep in a South American mountain hideaway lies a Secret Kingdom of Incas, descended from the race which Pizarro, the Spaniard, conquered. Into this realm Alfred Bell, scientist, finds himself transported by the Inca's men, forever to remain. Here he finds his true love, Nona. But, Tupac, the High Priest, is betrothed to her. How will Bell rescue Nona from the evil clutches of Tupac and to escape from this Incan Kingdom?

Hector Molina controls Gangland. From behind prison bars, he rules a ruthless gang of renegades who deal in extortion, drugs, and death. US attorney Claude Massingill is determined to expose Gangland. He's got Molina locked up as a protected witness for a trial that's sure to make headlines - and Molina couldn't ask for a better hideout than the one the government is giving him. Now, Assistant DA Mike Swanson needs to penetrate Gangland - and fast.

A cruise ship loses power in the North Atlantic. A satellite launches in the South Pacific. Professor Malcolm Clare - celebrated aviator, entrepreneur, and aerospace engineer - disappears from Stanford University and wakes up aboard an unknown jet, minutes before the aircraft plunges into the high seas. An extortionist code-named "Viking" has seized control of a private warfare technology, pitting a U.S. defense corporation against terrorist conspirators in a bidding war.

Boston is under assault. Caught between the Islamists' bombs and the government ban of consumer goods detected in the bomb fragments, Bostonians must choose: accommodation or struggle, resignation or revolt, appeasement or rebellion. So far the good people of Boston have chosen accommodation, resignation, and appeasement. On the struggle, revolt, rebellion side is Mark Greene.

A 1935 hurricane in the Florida Keys destroyed the East Coast Railway, killed five-hundred people and blew away the town of Islamorada. Lost in that storm was Mathew Kriegel, a finance director for the railroad, and one and a quarter million dollars in gold. Now newly minted private investigators Skip More and James Lessor, of More Or Less Investigations have been hired to find that lost treasure. Fighting off competitors, scuba diving, digging in a spooky cemetery and almost getting killed is only part of their job. Skip and James have stumbled onto the biggest most dangerous adventure of their lives.

John the Posthumous exists in between fiction and poetry, elegy and history: a kind of novella in objects, it is an anatomy of marriage and adultery, an interlocking set of fictional histories, and the staccato telling of a murder, perhaps two murders. This is a literary album of a pre-Internet world, focused on physical elements - all of which are tools for either violence or sustenance. Knives, old iron gates, antique houses in flames; biblical citations, blood and a history of the American bed.

Mark Greene got the job! He will soon head public relations for a prestigious institute designed to be the clearinghouse of recovery groups worldwide. Unbeknownst to Mark Greene, however, its founder and guiding light, Dr. Blameshaw, has aligned its future with an alien come to earth with one purpose: curing patients of psychological sickness, and - with luck - conquering earth itself.

Annie Hamilton and Major David Grainger had a conflicted past as mis-matched spouses, and a conflicted present as separated parents. David saw the problem as her drive to be successful, and not fitting into the mold of an Air Force officer’s wife. Annie blamed their breakup on his unfortunate habit of bringing his dictatorial nature into their relationship as if she were in his squadron.... Can they ever learn to accept the other as they are? Will Annie let stubborn pride cause her to lose the only man she has ever loved? The real question for Annie is: does she take this man…again?

A Stirring in the North Fork is a thrilling listen about the brutal and unsolved murder of a woman on Long Island nearly four decades ago. Driven by an unwavering passion, Savoy Graves, an out-of-work attorney, reconstructs the fragmented murder case and uncovers a series of heart-wrenching and shocking truths. Worlds collide as Graves struggles to identify those responsible for the murder in this gripping and tragic tale about love, self-discovery, redemption and most of all, a quest for justice.

Manfred, a surly mountaineer recently abandoned by his wife, rents the upstairs apartment in his home in the Dolomites to Marina, a woman from the city, and her difficult young son. Deeply suspicious by nature, especially of women, Manfred spies obsessively on Marina, in whose shortcomings as a mother he finds resonances of his own mother’s desertion of him in childhood. When Marina’s frustration over her son’s refusal to eat or sleep leads her to harm the child, Manfred steps in, and the silent power struggle between them escalates. Yet Manfred’s attraction to Marina is as powerful as his distrust.

Mason Dupre has resigned himself to never being loved. Silver Whitney has fallen under a spell - the spell of graceful, antebellum Rosewood Plantation. But it is the spell cast long ago over Mason Dupre that prevents Silver from writing the book she has traveled hundreds of miles to complete. Mardi Gras, the interference of a ghost, and the heavy New Orleans air swirl around Silver and Mason as they struggle to solve and understand the mystery that keeps them both bound to the plantation and a vengeful curse.

Rotten Row is the worst place we've made. Humankind can travel to the stars - but only those content to be flung as a data stream through space, flitting from male to female, dark to fair, one random discard body to the next. Those who go are the Upshot, rare individuals subject to their own rigid laws. And then there's Rotten Row. Outcasts in breach of all codes, in Rotten Row people design their own bodies and sell them on for re-use after. Outlandish bodies: furred and feathered, winged and hooved and worse.

>Blood, Steel & Canvas: The Asian Odyssey of a Fighter is a story about fighting on two levels: the American lawyer author’s improbable career as Asia’s oldest amateur boxer and his fight to overcome colon cancer and its consequences. Through his friendships with boxers in the Philippines and Thailand, his efforts (not always successful) to learn the languages and his delight in experiencing local cultures, he sets an example for other expatriates who have the great fortune to live and work overseas.

Tom Judah, a former Marine recently discharged from the military after serving three tours of combat in the killing zones of Iraq. Jessica Spire, a young woman trying to reinvent her life after fleeing a callous and loveless marriage. Scars of the Prophet is a dynamic story of what happens when fate and destiny collide in an aggressive world of pawns and broken kings. Tom Judah wanted to fit back into society and forget the horrific necessities of a war his conscious was still fighting.

Heather and Mack McKay seem to have it all: wealth, a dream house in the suburbs, and two adorable children along with the nannies to raise them. But their marriage has lost its savor: She is a frustrated writer and he longs for a cultural trophy to hang on his belt. During a chance encounter in LA, Mack invites exiled writer Zoltan Barbu - once lionized as a political hero, now becoming a has-been - to live with him and his wife in their luxurious home. The plan should provide Heather with literary companionship, Mack with cultural cachet, and Zoltan himself with a pastoral environment in which to overcome his writer’s block and produce a masterpiece.