Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

Goon Squad is set in a version of modern-day Manchester. Its biggest divergence from the real city is that it - along with most other large urban centers - has a team of superheroes to protect it against unusual threats with which the conventional forces of law and order would have problems.

San Francisco judge Ramsey Hunt, longtime friend to FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich, begins the murder trial of Clive and Cindy Cahill, only to have federal prosecutor Mickey O’Rourke, known for his relentless, aggressive style, suddenly turn tentative and distracted. Hunt suspects that something is very wrong - and then O’Rourke goes missing and Judge Hunt gets shot in the back. Savich and Sherlock receive news of the attack as a mysterious note is delivered to Savich at the Hoover Building.

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life - the baseball cards themselves.

It’s not easy living in someone else’s world. But that’s the story of Mike de Wolf’s life...literally. The whole thing started at his friend Horace’s Greenwich Village apartment. Horace is a writer and he’s decided to model one of his villains after Mike. Sounds crazy...until Mike reaches to turn on a light and gets the shock of his life. Knocked unconscious, Mike wakes up to find himself tossing in a violent ocean surf and getting slammed against the rocks.

Boldly go to times where no one has gone before. While transporting a contraband Russian time machine and developmental weaponry, Private Everett Dumphee finds himself cast into new settings when the device suddenly activates. What follows are fantastic high-tech experiences that might be called the ultimate off-road adventure. For the determined Dumphee - narrowly escaping with his life and three beautiful women - it is not necessarily a matter of will he make his destination, but when.

When an American Airlines plane explodes in the sky, detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson are first on the scene. They don't hear the gunfire. At first. The weapon that took down the plane is a remote-controlled Vietnam-War-era machine gun. The list of those who possess the training and expertise to operate the stolen .50-caliber weapon is short. And time runs even shorter. But this isn't the only case the pair must solve. They're also tracking a serial killer who's ambushing young men in what the media are calling the 'Dead Hours' murders.

If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy.

Itauk the Madman has spread death to the Yukon, throwing the bodies of his victims to his sled team of 12 wolves. Tracking him down are Canadian Mountie Tommy McKenna and his partner, Simmons. But when the pair separate to hunt for food, Itauk attacks Simmons and lets his wolves make an unmentionable feast that Tommy later discovers on his return to camp.

Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It's been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia-bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel. He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local 11-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective.

The crew of Moonbase Columbus makes an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon - a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply. Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation?

It has been said that somewhere in the world you have an exact double. This rocket-ride of a novel ignites with the sudden cry of "Ai! Pedrito!", as Naval Lieutenant Tom Smith discovers that his exact look-alike is the notorious South American revolutionary and spy, Pedrito Miraflores. Inspired by a real incident in the life of L. Ron Hubbard, Ai! Pedrito! is a fun-to-listen-to, compelling novel of what can sometimes happen when intelligence goes wrong.

In The Drudge Revolution, investigative journalist and author of Newtown: An American Tragedy Matthew Lysiak pulls back the curtain on the world’s most powerful journalist, for the first time telling the inside story of how one man’s visionary belief in the potential of the internet, coupled with the post-Fairness Doctrine growth of conservative talk radio and the rise of cable news and social media, created the perfect storm that seized the narrative from the mainstream media and ushered in the presidency of Donald Trump.

More than ever, Americans are realizing that if we want to keep this country great, we must be citizen-patriots. And here’s the handbook every citizen-patriot needs: The Essential American, featuring the fundamental documents of our nation’s history.

A memoir of a composer’s life in the Alaskan wilderness and a meditation on making art in a landscape acutely threatened by climate change. In the summer of 1975, the composer John Luther Adams, then a 22-year-old graduate of CalArts, boarded a flight to Alaska. So began a journey into the mountains and forests of the Far North - and across distinctive mental and aural terrain - that would last for the next 40 years.

In Conduct Unbecoming, you’ll discover how Obama is not listening to his generals’ recommendations on Afghanistan, how Obama’s first two acts as commander-in-chief weakened our national security and military, and how Obama’s feckless diplomatic efforts with other countries are severely threatening our national security.

When his friend Peralta, newly sworn in as sheriff, is shot by a sniper, David Mapstone, former historian and new deputy sheriff, can’t keep a cool, academic distance - and he’d better not. While Peralta lies comatose in the hospital, the powers that be install Mapstone as acting sheriff in his friend’s place. Mapstone feels unqualified, but he’s the only person whose temporary appointment won’t infuriate all the other candidates, who want the sheriff’s position permanently. Meanwhile, a cryptic note scrawled by Peralta before the shooting forces Mapstone to confront his own personal history, inadvertently drawing him into danger.

Johnny D. Boggs turns the battlefield itself into a character in this historical retelling of Custer's Last Stand, when George Custer led most of his command to annihilation at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana in 1876. More than 40 first-person narratives are used - Indian and white, military and civilian, men and women - to paint a panorama of the battle itself. Boggs brings the events and personalities of the Battle of the Little Bighorn to life in a series of first-hand accounts.

One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he begins to publish novels and becomes an internationally renowned author.

JW is a small-town banker; his specialty, teaching other bankers in towns near Indian reservations how to profit from casino deposits without exposing themselves to risk; his problem, he lost his son in a car accident a year ago, he's depressed, his wife is leaving him, and he can't stop gambling. When he is caught embezzling funds to support his addiction, JW's boss offers him a choice.

Brody Ellis is short on luck and even shorter on cash to buy the medication his sister Molly needs. Desperate, he robs a convenience store, but on the way out, he bumps into a young woman and loses his wallet. Just when he expects the cops to arrive, the phone rings. It’s Blair Mayo—the woman he bumped into—and she’s got the missing billfold. Brody will get it back, but only if he does her a favor: steal her late mother’s diamonds from her wicked stepmom. But when he gets to the house, he finds a gruesome crime scene—and a security camera. Brody knows he’s been framed.