Showing results by narrator "Dan John" in All Categories

Tipping is huge in America. Almost everyone leaves at least one tip every day. More than five million American workers depend on them, and we spend $66 billion on tips each year. And everyone recognizes that queasy feeling - in bars and restaurants, barbershops and beauty parlors, hotels and strip clubs, and everywhere else - when the check arrives or the tip jar looms. Omnipresent yet poorly understood, tipping has worked its way into almost every part of daily life.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includes 38 Stories of Santa, Christmases past, and the love of family.

Presidential candidate - and force of nature - Huey Long, the “Kingfish,” is in fear for his life. After Nathan Heller delivers the former Louisiana governor a bulletproof vest, the Kingfish hires the Chicago private eye to investigate death threats from political rivals. Soon Heller runs head-on into an IRS investigation seeking millions skimmed from state workers for Huey’s “de-duct box”... and into the arms of the ex-governor’s lovely ex-mistress. When the charismatic politician is shot down by a seemingly crazed doctor, Heller gets a new employer....

Ginnie Mullens was many things in her life: tomboy, hippie, businesswoman, and inveterate gambler. Now, she’s just dead - apparently by her own hand. But “apparently” doesn’t pass muster with mystery writer Mallory, because no matter what else she may have been, Ginnie was first and foremost his friend. There’s nothing Mal won’t do to prove she didn’t go into that good night willingly…and nothing that will stop him from coming down hard on her killer.

Nathan Heller is Chicago’s most celebrated private detective, hobnobbing with Hugh Hefner, getting written up in Life magazine, enjoying the fruits of a long career that began in a one-room office and now is a coast-to-coast agency. When he does a small favor for a friend - who handles PR for the Teamsters - Heller runs into an old West Side mob crony, a small-time hustler named Jack Ruby. And when that friend is found dead, warning signals start to flash. Suddenly Jimmy Hoffa wants to talk to Nate...and so does Hoffa’s arch enemy, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home - a safe life for her and her two daughters. Butcher Boy, released on his 17th birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south. New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness.

Tough, cynical, and clever, Nathan Heller has been called "the perfect private eye", the best investigator that Chicago (where "lightning" means gunfire) has to offer. Created by New York Times best-selling novelist and Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins, the classic PI comes vibrantly to life in this collection of 13 stories, all based on real cases of the 1930s and '40s.

In 1946 Chicago, Nathan Heller - president of the flourishing A-1 Detective Agency - is hired to protect racing-wire gambling chief James Ragen, who is nonetheless shot down on the streets of Chicago. Not one to take such an affront sitting down, Nate goes after the killer, but he’s in for the biggest surprise of his career. Demonstrating once again that he is the master of true-crime fiction, Max Allan Collins’ story of the birth of Las Vegas - and the dirty deeds that floated all around it - is a masterpiece of modern noir. Heller follows the trail as it leads to Hollywood and Las Vegas....

Two nights before the devastating military strike on Pearl Harbor, a young half-Japanese singer is found dead on a Honolulu beach. The murder appears to be a simple crime of passion, but writer Edgar Rice Burroughs - creator of Tarzan and John Carter - has his doubts. The writer’s suspicions lead him and his son Hully to conduct a sub-rosa investigation into the sultry singer’s death. Their pursuit of the killer coincides with rumors of an imminent Japanese attack against the Pacific fleet stationed in Oahu.

With bravura storytelling, daring imagination, and fierce narrative control, this dazzling debut introduces that rare writer who finds humanity in our most unconventional behavior, and the humor beneath our darkest impulses. In these strange, funny, and unnerving stories, animals become the litmus test of our deepest fears and longings

To Tim Anderson, playing the guitar is as natural - and just about as important - as breathing. He’s already decided he’s going to be a musician. But his father has other career plans for him - all involving college. And now, because Tim is on the verge of flunking math, he’s been forbidden even to touch his guitar. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. A top record company has just announced a nationwide contest for teenage rock groups - with a recording contract as first prize. Tim is sure his group, The Silver Sunshine, has a good chance of winning.

Everyone loves a good love story. And we all love stories about how the love started and blossomed. This fun new book about dating, romance, love, and marriage, will make you laugh and make you cry, and is guaranteed to inspire you to renew that search for your soul mate or open your heart a little more. Read about how couples met, when “they knew”, good and bad dates, proposals, maintaining the relationship, second chances, and all the other ups and downs of love, romance, and marriage.

When runners aren't running, they are talking about running, planning their next run, shopping for running. This book contains stories from runners, telling their stories to other runners about. running — how it has changed their lives, their bodies, and their spirits. Runners will love these inspirational stories of fellow runners challenging themselves, recovering from injuries, and staying motivated.

1934 Chicago dazzles with fast action and calculating, cold-blooded meanness as private detective Nate Heller combs Chicago’s North Side looking for John Dillinger. But things take a turn for the strange when self-aggrandizing G-Man Melvin Purvis shoots down a Dillinger double in front of the Biograph Theater. Full of muscle and oozing Chicago’s tough-guy persona to the hilt, Max Allan Collins’ Nate Heller is the ultimate private investigator.

Everyone loves Christmas and the holiday season. We reunite scattered family members, watch the wonder in a child’s eyes, and feel the joy of giving gifts. The rituals of the holiday season give a rhythm to the years and create a foundation for our lives, as we gather with family, with our communities at church, at school, and even at the mall, to share the special spirit of the season, brightening those long winter days.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includes 31 Stories on the true meaning of Christmas, Christmas through the eyes of children, and the spirit of giving.

Comics kill. Or so the esteemed Dr. Werner Frederick would have people believe - people like the Congressmen holding hearings on banning violent crime and horror "funny books". And when the crusade provokes a most un-funny murder, Jack Starr - comics syndicate troubleshooter - has no shortage of suspects. Was it the knife-wielding juvenile delinquent or the naked seductress? Perhaps a frustrated publisher or an outraged cartoonist. Or was it a comic book reader…?

Bernard Levy was always a mystery to the community of Guilford, Mississippi. He was even more of a mystery to his son, Mickey Moe, who was just four years old when his father died in World War II. Now it’s 1962 and Mickey Moe is a grown man, who must prove his pedigree to the disapproving parents of his girlfriend, Laura Anne Needleman, to win her hand in marriage. With only a few-decades-old leads to go on, Mickey Moe sets out to uncover his father’s murky past....

In "Dying in the Post-War World", Heller returns from combat to find his marriage in shambles and himself square in the middle of the notorious Lipstick Killer case of 1946. "Kisses of Death" follows the PI into the 1950s, when he is hired to guard Marilyn Monroe. Finally, in "Strike Zone", Heller is hired by baseball boss Bill Veeck to investigate the 1961 murder of a famous pinch hitter whose private life will pull Nate into a dangerous new world of little people and big sins.

In 1942, Chicago P.I. Nate Heller and his childhood pal, boxer Barney Ross, join the Marines and see bloody action together at Guadalcanal. Upon his return to gangland Chicago, the shell-shocked Heller - more dangerous than ever - is thrust into the midst of an inter-gang war to depose Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti, whose minions are infiltrating Hollywood movie unions.