Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Thriller & Suspense

Innocent, his own country had called him a murderer. Now murder was his livelihood. John Seldon hired himself out as an assassin, a sharpshooter, to kill a tyrant named Castro in exchange for cash. He did not flinch from his task until the fatal moment, when he found the girl whose love had made him want to live again.

Rachel Rainsford should be excited. She was on a train traveling across the US to a well-paid position as an old lady's companion. But after several hours spent with the man who hired her and is accompanying her on her journey, she's having doubts. His manner seems strange, and she may have acted too hastily in accepting a job so far from home. Meanwhile, in the parlor car, Chan Prescott overhears two men concocting a plan to abduct a young woman. When her name is mentioned, Chan recognizes it as the daughter of a former beloved teacher.

Two children savagely stoned to death in the California desert. Top employees of a US defense contractor dying at an alarming rate. A cryptic message sent by a strange, secretive source warns the contractor’s products have been corrupted and could be used against the US Armed Forces. They all seem to be connected. But how? Only two men on earth are capable of putting it all together; those men are Jack Wilder and Jeff Bradshaw, two of the greatest special-operations forces soldiers who have ever lived.

It is a black Chinese cabinet decorated with figures that once ignited little Chloe Dane's imagination. It was in the drawing-room of her family home, Danesborough. Later, it held secrets that shamed and sickened her. Poor but honest Chloe hasn't been to Danesborough for years and believed she was the last of her family. So when a distant cousin introduces himself and declares that she will be his heir, she finds herself in the huge house again. And she wants none of it.

Jane is broke, she's just lost her job and her landlady has kicked her out. When an amorous young man approaches her on a park bench it soon becomes clear that he has mistaken her for her cousin Renata. Their mothers were identical twins and even though Jane has never met her, Renata's fiance insists they too are identical. He's desperate. It seems Renata sleepwalked into a meeting of her father's friends and overheard their criminal plans. She's lied about hearing anything but they doubt her story and are holding her prisoner.

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

When an elderly man is found dead on a bench overlooking Eagle Lake in Maine, the authorities eventually identify 74-year-old Nathanial Johns. But what they discover leaves more questions than answers. Having been laid to rest hundreds of miles away, the authorities are stunned to find a fresh corpse in his reburied coffin. Soon more bodies show up, each replaced with a fresh victim. But if Sam and the team think this is just a serial killer with a twisted sense of humor, they are about to discover a shocking truth that leads right back to the heart of their own organization.

In Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice, a distinguished writer's holiday from the burdens of his work turns out very differently from what he expected. By means of the story, Mann explores the relationships between disciplined intellect and ungoverned passion, and between decaying age and youthful beauty, against a background that resonates today in a time of pandemics. It was first published in German (as Der Tod in Venedig) in 1912.

Rachel Innes, a middle-aged spinster, has barely settled in at the country house she has rented for the summer when a series of bizarre and violent events threaten to perturb her normally unflappable nature. A strange figure appears briefly in the twilight outside a window. At night, a rattling, metallic sound reverberates through dark halls, and - most disconcerting of all - the body of a strange man is found lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of a circular staircase.

Two children savagely stoned to death in the California desert. Top employees of a U.S. defense contractor dying at an alarming rate. A cryptic message sent by a strange, secretive source warns the contractor’s products have been corrupted and could be used against the U.S. Armed Forces. They all seem to be connected. But how? Only two men on earth are capable of putting it all together; those men are Jack Wilder and Jeff Bradshaw, two of the greatest special operations forces soldiers who have ever lived.

Elizabeth is utterly alone in her Montana cabin, shocked by the sudden, brutal death of her brother, the last of her family. His killer has threatened to return and claim her, and she has only one thought: to flee across country to the East and search for relatives she has never known. With the villain and his gang in pursuit, she rides across perilous terrain, encountering those who help her and those who, in their own way, are just as dangerous as the men she is fleeing.

Pangloss would have been right at home in a post-truth, social media world. You can imagine the tweets, “I was hanged and survived #soggyrope,” or, “#nosyphilisnochocolate.” Candide, written in 1759, was never more relevant than today. Blind obeisance and denial, barbarous villainy, greed, and rapacity, are all in a day’s toil for the young Candide. And this is in the best of all possible worlds!

A series of cataclysmic events are felt around the globe, and throughout the United States the last vestiges of society band together in rag-tag groups to face off against the ghastly horrors of their shattered world. Opposing them is the enigmatic Adam Sigil - a man seemingly able to inflict others with his own darkest fears - and his equally mysterious companion Jelnik. As the world slips into darkness, the survivors of the onslaught struggle with the new normal of their now-dystopian lives amid ongoing skirmishes with mankind’s nightmares.

Immediately after the death of the aunt who raised her, Joyce Radway's cousins treat her like a servant. They even attempt to block her from taking exams to qualify as a teacher and earn her own living. Angered by their constant demands, she impulsively grabs her hat and purse and runs to her aunt's grave to weep and rest. But she's not alone; thieves are using the cemetery to hide stolen goods, and she's heartsick to discover their leader is a man she once knew and admired.

Released in France anonymously in 1678, The Princess of Cleves is a terse, fictional account of unconsummated love set in the court of Henri II. Regarded as a pivotal piece in the history of women's writing, this tragic tale sees the life squeezed painfully out of the young, female protagonist as she struggles to abide by confusing moral mores amidst a world of complex, amorous intrigues and the fierce grip of her own—disastrous—passion.

In the 1930's and 40's Southern justice could be quick or slow. "Terror in the Sun" narrated by Mike Vendetti and written by Talmage Powell originally appeared in Suspense, a pulp magazine in the Fall of 1951. A Southern farmer and his younger son find his older son murdered and left beside a creek being attacked by a vulture. The father's rage demands retribution, but how to satisfy that rage without going to jail is the problem. Listen to this short tale and discover his unique solution to his dilemma.

From the February 1960 Issue of Manhunt magazine, one of the popular pulp magazines of the era. A man getting his life back together after spending two years in the penitentiary witnesses the murder of his best friend and boss. He recognizes the murderer, and the murderer recognizes him. As the murderer is leaving the scene he leaves a warning that if the police find out, things will go very badly for the man and his wife. A phone call while the man is eating dinner confirms that. A visit to his house by a goon while he is at the police station drives him into action.

An artist creates paintings that create emotions. Staring at the painting for too long, people become mesmerized, acting out what they witnessed on the canvas.

Travel into the world of a pickpocket who has turned a new leaf. He has put his skills and fast hands to productive work and now is happily married. Everything is wonderful until he is the only witness to a murder. The murderer recognizes him immediately. Why not another Murder?

Running away from an abusive stepmother, a little girl scrambles across London rooftops, a favorite hiding place. She peers through a window and sees a man apparently burglarizing a studio, but quickly realizes that she has witnessed the aftermath of a murder when the man puts a gun in the hand of a body on the floor. When she cries out he glimpses her and she escapes in terror. Very soon after, she is sent to live with her deceased mother’s aristocratic family and her secret is kept from the police.