Showing results by narrator "Matt Godfrey" in All Categories

Ben Harris and his best friends Richie and Jack knew the stories about Old Man Brewster, what happened to his wife...and the flies. They had no idea why anybody would want to live there, but then they met Greg Lupescu, the new kid who had moved in. He looked strange, his father was never around, and he had this creepy butler named Karl. Soon, however, he became their close friend.

Through years of poverty, racial tension, and legal battles, Ruby Graves has suffered the worst the Great Depression could throw at her. But an enemy she couldn’t possibly imagine awaits just over the horizon. After she and her brother, Henry, escape to the tropical paradise of the Philippine Islands, Ruby volunteers as a nurse at a medical clinic in Manila. Although surrounded by beauty, Ruby can’t shake her guilt over leaving Matthew behind, even if it was for his own good.

In 1961, the small town of Haven thought they'd gotten rid of their monster. After a series of child killings, Paul Greymore was caught carrying a wounded girl. His face, disfigured from a childhood accident, seemed to confirm he was the monster the community hoped to banish. With Paul in prison, the killings stopped. For 17 years, Haven was peaceful again. But Paul served his time and has now returned to Haven - the town where he grew up, and the scene of his alleged crimes.

After Edward, a rising young author, pens a savage review of the new novel by the world-famous O.M. Tyrell, he is surprised to receive an invitation to visit the old man at his villa in the south of France. The night of their meeting, Tyrell dies, and soon after, Edward's career mysteriously starts to soar as he earns fame, fortune and critical acclaim. But despite his achievements, Edward seems haunted, even tormented.

One of the preeminent writers of weird fiction, Robert Aickman is celebrated for his unsettling and often ambiguous "strange stories", but he once wrote that "those, if any, who wish to know more about me, should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters," his only novel, originally published in 1964.

In the aptly titled Offbeat, Richard Matheson, a modern master of strange fiction, offers 13 excursions into the unsettling and bizarre. In these stories you will encounter a major league pitcher with a horrific secret for his astonishing success; an ordinary man who wakes to find himself in a silent, empty world; a death row prisoner with an extraordinary explanation for his innocence; and a novelist whose fictional creations transcend the printed page.

Hugh Walpole (1884-1941) was one of the most popular and prolific English authors of his time, best known for his historical fiction and novels for boys. But it was in the field of the macabre and supernatural that Walpole was at his best, and this collection of 16 tales contains many of his finest.

Wyatt Stryker, ex-special ops, has suddenly found his more recent roles as a father, husband, and doctor thrown into a world of chaos. A deadly drug cartel has targeted him and his family and forced Stryker to revisit a chapter of his life he thought forever closed. Fortunately for his family, this transition was easier than he imagined - leading a simple life was never really in the cards for Stryker.

Over four years have passed, and still Matthew Doyle can't shake the guilt of turning his back on Ruby, the girl who saved his life. As much as he's tried to avoid returning home to Hanceville, Alabama, he must do so in order to complete his service with the Tennessee Valley Authority, helping to establish electricity throughout the county. But Ruby continues to haunt his dreams, and the only way to move on is to seek her out and make things right.

Peyton Cabot's 15th year will be a painful and transformative one. His father, the heroic but reluctant head of a moneyed Savannah family, has come home from WWII a troubled vet, drowning his demons in bourbon and distancing himself from his son. A tragic accident shows Peyton the depths of his parents' devotion to each other but interrupts his own budding romance with the girl of his dreams, Lisa Wallace. Struggling to cope with a young life upended, Peyton makes a daring decision: He will retrace a journey his father took at 15, riding his bicycle all the way to Key West, Florida.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

Even before Lawrence Block could rest on his laurels from "In Sunlight or In Shadow", a question arose. What would he do for an encore Suppose each author was invited to select a painting from the whole panoply of visual art - from the cave drawings at Lascaux to a contemporary abstract canvas on which the paint has barely dried. And what a dazzling response!

Recovering from a terrible auto accident just before the turn of the millennium, college dropout and hobbyist computer-game programmer Lucien Swenson becomes the caretaker of a house in Northern Minnesota. Shortly after moving in, Lucien sets out to find a woman with whom he had an affair, who vanished along with money stolen from the bank where they had worked together. His search will take him to Rose of Sharon, a white supremacist church deep in the wilderness, where a cabal of outcasts await the end of the world at a place they call The Land.

In a story of perseverance and determination told with warmth and sparkling with humor, a short winter day finds Samuel and Papa walking a long road on Samuel's first trading trip. Meeting strangers, practicing good manners, and proud to be in Papa's company, Samuel watches and learns as Papa trades up from almost nothing to the milk cow Mama is yearning for. Simple text combines with vivid illustrations for a satisfying tale that will resonate with readers who enjoy an adventure with dad.

When Kirk McGarvey investigates the mysterious death of his parents so many years ago, he uncovers long-buried secrets that put him head to head and mano a mano with Vladimir Putin. After Mac calls Putin out, the Russian dictator decides he wants him dead. Battling Russian hit squads as well as enemies at home, McGarvey must fight like the devil to save the himself, his friends, and the US of A in this engrossing international thriller from David Hagberg.

It is the beginning of Kirk McGarvey's career as a CIA black ops officer. Fresh out of the Air Force OSI, he receives his first assignment: assassinate a Chilean general known as the Butcher of Valparaiso, a monster who has tortured and killed more than one thousand dissidents at a soccer stadium in Valparaiso. McGarvey manages to cross the border over the mountains from Argentina without being discovered, and even makes his way to the general's remote compound. But the odds are stacked against him.

Henry "Biggie" Abbott is the son of one of Finch, Iowa's most famous athletes. His father was a baseball legend and his step-dad is a close second. At an obese 300+ pounds though, Biggie himself prefers classroom success to sports. As a perfectionist, he doesn't understand why someone would be happy getting two hits in five trips to the plate. "Forty percent, that's an F in any class", he would say. As Biggie's junior year begins, the girl of his dreams, Annabelle Rivers, starts to flirt with him and suggests he should play baseball.

An invisible force is beating citizens. No one knows why. Chief Wen of Harmony Services blames the Lumenians. President Bartle directs his advisor, Raekon, to hire the legacy Earth rescue five to investigate. Invisibility makes the odds of success slim, if at all.

Is there anything more random than middle school? Sixth graders Oliver and Frankie don't think so. Their first few weeks have been full of weirdness-lunchtime thievery, free beef jerky, and Matilda, the mysterious new girl who knows everything about them, but has a lot to learn about making friends. But what if none of it is random at all? What if a reclusive genius is keeping an eye on them and making sure the tiny pieces of his puzzle fall into place, one by one, until strange, seemingly unconnected incidents snowball totally out of control?

Rett Ward knows how to hide. But when Rett wakes up locked in a small depot with no memory of how he got there, he can't hide. Not from the stranger in the next room, nor from the fact there's someone else’s blood on his jumpsuit. Worse, every time he tries to escape, he wakes up right back where he started. Same day, same stranger, same bloodstained jumpsuit. As memories start to surface, Rett realizes the blood on his jumpsuit belongs to someone - or something - banging on the door to get in.