Mostrando resultados por autor "Larry Vardiman" en Todas las categorías

Starbuck is a Rainmaker, not Coffee. A rainmaker with the name of Starbuck in a movie from the '50s starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn arrives in a small western town and, for a fee, offers to end a drought that's plaguing the ranchers and farmers. He offers to seed the clouds with his secret chemicals. Starbuck is a bigger than life figure who promises, "Rain in buckets, rain in barrels, rain in the lowlands, flood in the gullies, and the land will be as green as the Valley of Adam." Starbuck, a swindler and charlatan, eventually brings rain to the parched land and hope to a ...

Around the World in 80 weeks Pete's dad sailed around the world with his grandparents in the 50-foot sloop still stored next door in their yard. They don't plan to make the trip again and grandpa Langston has agreed to sell her to Mike Dempsey, a businessman and experienced sailor from Anacortes, Washington. Mike needs a three-man crew to sail her and has offered the position of Yeoman to Pete. After a year of restoration and several run-ups Expeditious is ready for the open sea. Join Pete as he sails to the watery part of the world.

An Exciting Life Requires the Right Hat. Larry led nine lives - Air Force officer, graduate student, cloud seeder, research scientist, college professor, science writer, creationist speaker, tour guide, and novelist. Each of these careers provided unique tales that are begging to be told. Larry's Tales is a compilation of adventures most readers would prefer to experience from the safety of their easy chair; experiences shared with friends to exciting destinations; and favorite jokes. A few stories are humorous, some embarrassing, and others downright scary. At the end of this collection of...

Danny and Lucy Bishop, a husband and wife team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, were vacationing in Key West, Florida. They noticed that a hurricane named Zelda just off the coast of Florida was acting very strangely. It was traveling in loops not far from their hotel. They decided to call up a friend in the National Weather Service and get permission to fly on the next Hurricane Hunter flight to see what was going on. This led to an international adventure of flying on multiple planes and advising the President about heat beams.

Curtis: Kelly’s Imaginary Brother Who Lived Under the House Curtis lived under the house. He was an imaginary older brother who was created in the fertile mind of Kelly. She was the second daughter of the Vardiman family. Kelly needed a playmate after her older sister began kindergarten. Curtis appeared and became her imaginary playmate. Kelly only revealed her new friend to her brothers and sisters as the family grew. But Curtis' presence was carefully hidden from the adults. He became a friend to all the kids and was a leader for many of their adventures.

A Whole Lot'a Shake'n Go'n On Trevor only has a year to go to earn his degree in Humanitarian Aid and Search and Rescue. He's taking the summer between his junior and senior years for a practicum in Search and Rescue. An 8.0 magnitude earthquake just occurred near Lake Van in Eastern Turkey. Trevor's on his way with four teams from the Orlando Search and Rescue Agency to assist in rescuing thousands of victims from the earthquake-prone region. He soon demonstrates that he has the knowledge and skills to lead in a remote and dangerous environment.

Gog, I will put hooks into your jaws Mossad Agent Abe Gagin returns from Iran with the unsettling news that Russia plans to push back against NATO and the West by invading Eastern Europe. Even worse news is that Russia has already started the offensive by moving into Ukraine. Abe meets with the B4 Detectives he hired earlier to solve the murders of Israeli leaders in the book, Israel Besieged. He assigns Bordeau and Katherine to travel by train from Istanbul to Stockholm and scouting for evidence that the Russians are coming. Bristol and Cindy will travel through Turkey and Iran looking for...

Mount Zion, the city of the great King! After taking a Mediterranean cruise for their honeymoon the B4 Detective Agency is looking forward to a three-week tour of Israel. They'd barely gotten settled in Haifa before Bordeau's friend and Mossad Agent, Abe Gagin, recruited them to solve the murder of three high-ranking Israeli officials. They investigate the murders and an attempt on the Prime Minister's life while simultaneously touring Israel. By the end of the first week they learn that Iran planned the killings and chatter in the intelligence community hints that the King of the North may...

Were Our Founders White Supremacists? Roger Steele, a Charlottesville FBI Agent and long-time friend of Bordeau"s, requests that Bordeau and Bristol help stop the local Antifa group from burning down Monticello. Antifa wants to make a political statement that America is racist and elitist since its founding. Bordeau identifies the leaders of the radical movement and develops a plan to capture them to prevent Monticello from being burnt. Coincidental to the investigation, the two confirmed bachelors become infatuated with two ladies from France they met the month before in Dodge City, Kansas...

The Big Boom Dreaded by All Mid-Eastern terrorists smuggle a dirty bomb through a tunnel under the border from Tijuana, Mexico with the intent of spreading death and destruction to millions of people living in Southern California. The terrorists come from five different Muslim countries to exact revenge on the infidels who defiled Muslim lands with their prescence. The plan is to bring as much pain and suffering to the West Coast as the New York Towers attack did to the East Coast. Two American Border Patrol agents are killed when they discover the smuggling operation. Bordeau and Bristol ...

Will socialism replace capitalism? Three Starbucks coffee shops near Washington Square in Lower Manhattan are firebombed early on Saturday morning of a march and rally by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The bombings are intended to start a revolution to replace capitalism with socialism. During the rally rumors are circulated that a 'Big Surprise' is expected somewhere in Manhattan later that afternoon. Only a few members of the DSA know that the surprise is to be the destruction of one of the Trump towers. They plan to float a nuclear weapon under the building through one of ...

Chairmen Don’t Die, Just Lose their Faculties Bodies of professors from UCLA are turning up in strange places - one in the Le Brea Tar Pits in central LA, another at the Getty Villa near Malibu, and a third in the Avalon Ballroom on Catalina. The second and third were posed to represent some bizarre parody of the victim's teaching specialty. Bordeau and Bristol are requested by their friend, Professor Bixler, Chairman of the UCLA History Department, to assist the LAPD investigate who's killing off members of his department and why. The motive is difficult to determine and, as the clues ...

How High Does the Villainy Go? A group of religious universities and seminaries in St. Louis are being vandalized by a local Antifa group. Bordeau is requested by his friend Luis, a priest at St. Louis University, to find out why the schools are being targeted. An ecumenical council of presidents from several schools wants to know what can be done to stop the culprits. The attackers began by spray painting threats and hate symbols on campus buildings and soon graduated to firebombing a dormitory and some buses. A student was killed at the university and fear spread that the violence would ...

Foreign diplomats are frozen to death clinging to the sides of Chicago skyscrapers, the Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Chicago is drowned in the Chicago River at the foot of the Sears Tower, and executives from several social media giants in California are tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge. A 'turf war' of sorts has broken out between the faculties at the University of Chicago and the University of California Berkeley over the issue of nationalism versus globalism; borders or no borders; sovereignty or subjection. The celebrated international investigative duo ...

When You're in Luck, You're in Luck Willie Nelson's bus driver is killed and his guitar, Trigger, is stolen in the parking lot behind Ryman Hall, Bordeau and Bristol are recruited by the Nashville Police Department to find the killer and the guitar. Willie carries the two detectives on his tour bus, Honeysuckle Rose, to Memphis, Branson, and Austin to recover Trigger. The chase turns into a version of Smokey and the Bandit from Branson to the Missouri/Oklahoma State line. Following several adventures Willie shows Bordeau and Bristol his ranch outside Austin, Texas; takes them to see his ...

Pretty Bubbles in the SkyNASA is losing engineers. They're not retiring, but simply disappearing without a trace. Is a foreign country kidnapping some of the best minds working on a new initiative to colonize the Moon by 2024? How is it possible that three specialists who design habitats for the Moon could vanish and leave no trace? Were they killed? Were they abducted by aliens? Bordeau and Bristol are recruited by the Houston Police Department to find the missing engineers and determine if they were captured or murdered for some nefarius purpose. Meanwhile a consortium of engineers who ...

Give Me Some Iron and I'll Give You an Ice Age Bordeau and Bristol are requested to assist the New Orleans Police Department investigate why two helicopters carrying graduate students to oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have mysteriously crashed killing five people. Suspicions are raised that the crashes were not accidental. The students were working on a National Science Foundation grant designed to solve global warming by seeding the Gulf with iron and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Rumours are circulating among the maritime community and local environmentalists that the ...

A Month in Boston The Vardiman family has traveled a lot, for week-long vacations, visits to the family in St. Louis, and trips to Disneyland. But, this trip was different. We were on our way to Boston, one of the birthplaces of our country. Living in the Midwest, Colorado, and on the West Coast provides only a limited exposure to the early history of our country, We were going to see where the shot heard around the world was fired, the Old North Church, the USS Constitution, and, maybe, Benjamin Franklin, if he happened to be visiting the Concord Inn while we are there. We anticipate ...

Hurricanes are Full of Sound and Fury On their way to New York and finally home to London Bordeau and Bristol's train intercepts Hurricane Jaye, a category five storm, on the Amtrak Crescent through Louisiana. They're forced to seek refuge at the L'AuBerge Lake Charles Resort along with other train passengers and tourists trapped in the hotel. On the first night someone's murdered in the room above by someone driven mad by the incessant sound of the one hundred fifty-mph wind. Bordeau and Bristol volunteer to assist the hotel manager investigate the murders and attempt to rescue the crazed ...

Did Katy Do It? The Katy Trail is a state park that runs about 250 miles along part of the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Louis. It's a hiking/biking trail that was converted from the old Missouri/Kansas/Texas Railroad. The trail crosses the Missouri River at Boonville, Missouri, a river town named for the sons of Daniel Boone who retired near St. Louis. Bordeau and Bristol are requested by an FBI agent and one of his former students at Scotland Yard to investigate the disappearance of a biker traveling the Katy Trail. The case leads to the discovery of a series of murders that ...