Showing results by narrator "Clark Linden" in All Categories

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 20 stories about laughter and accepting help.

After six months of perfect weather, the people of Berkeley, California, have forgotten how to drive during a thunderstorm. Newly christened homicide detective Jill Smith is on her way home to a chocolate ice cream dinner when she gets caught in a traffic jam at the city’s only roundabout. At the front of the line, she sees the trouble: a flipped-over Cadillac and one dead driver. The man behind the wheel was one of the city’s leading citizens, a philanthropist in a town that puts charity first.

Two witnesses see the man drag the old woman into a canyon while brandishing a rifle. As night falls, detective Jill Smith and the Berkeley police department set up a perimeter. The canyon is a hostage negotiator’s nightmare - dark, rough, and full of escape routes - and when she finally opens communication, the gunman doesn’t respond. Rather than wait for dawn, Jill leads her team into the darkness. At the bottom of the canyon they find a battered old mannequin and a box of stolen parking tickets.

In Berkeley, people don't just disagree; they make careers out of it. And in a city where anything goes, where burned-out '60s hippies haunt the shadows along Telegraph Avenue, no one can outrun the past. Now police detective Jill Smith is plunged into a case that's pure Berkeley: a tangled tale of sins and retribution that has led to one man's disappearance, and another man's murder.

When Philip Drem, the most feared and hated IRS auditor, is murdered, junk food junkie Jill Smith finds a long list of suspects among Berkeley's eclectic community.

From the international bestselling author of Virgins comes this hilarious take on the sexual politics and high seriousness of the Kennedy years. A young White House reporter's evolution from personal ambition to public spirit is brilliantly set against a background of advancing civil rights and the first stirrings of American involvement in Vietnam.

Thirty years have passed since Christine and her father, Heinz, vacationed together. It was such a disaster - an exasperated Heinz left the moody teenager at a gas station to teach her a lesson - that Christine vowed never to travel with him again. But now her mother is insisting that Christine and her best friend, Dorothea, take Heinz along on what is supposed to be a relaxing girls’ trip to the beach. And she’s not taking no for an answer. Suddenly Christine and Dorothea have a chaperone, though high school is long since over.

In Berkeley, California, Telegraph Avenue is the headquarters for the city’s strangest inhabitants. Cultists, drug addicts, and hippie burnouts wander its streets, looking to raise their consciousness or, if that fails, to just get high. And Jill Smith walks with them, a beat cop with her finger on the pulse of one of the most unique neighborhoods in America. With time on her hands after her divorce, Jill lets a friend drag her to hear the district’s hot new guru, a Buddhist holy man from Bhutan.

A gift from an overseas relative, Graycie, an African Gray parrot, arrives in the Gardiner home not long after the birth of their first child, adding the responsibilities of parrot-hood to their newfound parenthood. Jenny Gardiner and her husband were hoping for a docile, beautifully plumed, Polly-want-a-cracker type of companion - but patchily feathered, scrawny, ill-tempered Graycie was the furthest thing from what they envisioned.

Berkeley cop Jill Smith is back in another adventure that could only occur in this brazen, eccentric town. Gym owner and former Olympic diver Bryn Wiley is in a turf war with sixties radical Sam Johnson, who owns a competing gym. When Bryn is shot, Sam is a prime suspect. Throughout her investigation into the naked truth, Jill is sidetracked by a band of nude citizens protesting the citys new anti-nudity ordinance.

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 30 Stories about play, what's important, and belief.

A deadly supercolony of ants with razor-sharp claws that pierce skin like paper and stinging venom that liquefies its prey is killing in Manhattan. The desperate mayor turns to the greatest ant expert in the world, Paul O’Keefe. Paul calls on his ex-wife Kendra Hart, a spirited entomologist. When the ants launch an all-out attack, Paul and Kendra hit the dangerous, panic-stricken streets of New York, searching for a coveted queen. It’s a race to unlock the secrets of an indestructible new species, before the president nukes Manhattan.

A call from an ex-husband is never welcome. For Berkeley cop Jill Smith it wins a Nobel Prize for chutzpah. Her ex wants a favor. His "friend" and co-worker, Anne Spaulding, is missing. Anne's ransacked apartment - complete with blood-sprayed walls - gives Jill the chilling feeling that her ex may be up to his arrogant neck in murder. Now Jill's out with the street people of Berkeley and the crazies of People's Park to uncover the fate of a welfare worker. But her best suspect is her ex: the former "significant other" who still pushes her buttons.

Escaping her broken marriage, successful author Elena settles into a hastily arranged sublet. Shattered, on the verge of coming unhinged, she’s unable to sleep, write, or even unpack. Then she discovers an innocent pastime to occupy her restless days and nights - watching her neighbors through the kitchen window. The Storms seem like the perfect family, but the more Elena sees and hears, the more she believes that there’s something terribly wrong in the house next door.

Twelve years have passed since Angie Robinson fled her hometown of Groves Point, South Carolina, with ten thousand dollars and a broken heart. She knows Simon Canfield still lives there. His powerful family practically owns the town. Now she’s back, if only to return the money Simon’s mother paid her to leave. For too long Angie has lived with her regrets, her mistakes, and her suffering. If there’s forgiveness to be had, the time has come.

With the current divorce rate spiking at a dizzying sixty percent, it is clear that young couples are not being taught the skills needed to navigate through the conflicts and difficulties of being in a committed relationship. Charlie and Linda Bloom, psychotherapists with fifty-five years of combined experience in relationship counseling, are acutely aware of this. For the last fifteen years the Blooms have been leading seminars on improving life relationships through their organization, The Empowerment Network.

The Parrot’s Perch opens in 2013, when Karen Keilt, age 60, receives an invitation to testify at the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN in New York. The email sparks memories of her “previous life” - the one she has kept safely bottled up for more than 37 years. Hopeful of helping to raise awareness about ongoing human rights violations in Brazil, she wants to testify, but she anguishes over reliving the horrific events of her youth.

Patti M. Hall’s life is pitched into an abyss of uncertainty when a golf ball-sized tumour is discovered in her teenage son’s head and he is diagnosed with gigantism, a disease of both legend and stigma. After scrambling to access a handful of medical experts in the field, Patti learns that her son could grow uncontrollably, his mobility could be permanently limited, and his life could be cut short without timely and aggressive treatment. Patti’s attention shifts fully to her son, away from her relationships as well as her own career and health.

Melanie Hansen loved her younger sister, Carrie. But when Carrie moved to Missouri to restore an antebellum house, Melanie was pretty sure her baby sister had lost her mind. Then her worst fear comes true: Carrie dies. When a letter arrives, asking Melanie to return to Celebration House, she has no choice but to leave all that she knows in Seattle and travel to Missouri. All Melanie wants to do is find a buyer. But that’s a difficult task with all of the restrictions her sister and the local historian, Zach Oakes, put on the sale of the house.

Beth Kozera promised her best friend, Carrie Hansen, she would stay and manage Celebration House in Carrie’s absence. How she regrets that promise! She has no idea how to run an event venue. Since when did brides become so demanding and grooms so lecherous? Plus, she can’t boil water, let alone supervise a sit-down dinner for 200 guests every weekend! Thank goodness for Joshua - or, at least, she thinks. But when Beth offers his mom a job overseeing the kitchen, Josh shows his patriarchal colors - so much for tall, dark, and haughty.