Showing results by narrator "R.C. Bray" in All Categories

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.

Twenty years after the unsolved case of Stacey Walker's disappearance went cold, a Silicon Valley executive hires the retired Menlo Park police detective Hank Madden to find her body and track down her missing husband, the prime suspect in her unsolved murder.

Meet eight combat-injured men who sustained life-altering injuries. Hear eight inspiring stories of heroism and the re-building of independent, productive and fulfilling lives after seemingly impossible circumstances. This project looks at the struggles of these incredible men to reshape their lives after combat.

We all have that one older funny family member. You know the one, he tells stories from his experiences and usually has people rolling their eyes. William Stokes is that person! He presents a delightful collection of memories that are truly life lessons even today! Stokes, through his memories and wit, provides opportunities to learn through laughter, sharing of memories and love.

Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own - an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness.

Chas is a detective who doesn't stake out cheating husbands, track down missing persons, or match wits with femmes fatales. Instead of pounding the pavement, he taps a computer keyboard. He can get the goods on anyone, and it's all to make sure superstar Las Vegas mind reader Wallace the Amazing stays amazing. Thanks to Chas's steady stream of stealthy intel, Wallace's mental "magic" packs houses every night.

After working to free his father from prison in Fox Is Framed, Leo has now left private practice and is working as a public defender in San Francisco. He and his cocounsel, Jordan Walker, are in the midst of trial, brilliantly defending Randall Rodrigues, a mentally ill homeless man whom they contend falsely confessed to the rape of a young San Francisco socialite. After their client is acquitted, Leo and Jordan fall into an intense relationship - until Jordan is found brutally raped and murdered in her apartment.

The beautiful Bliss Fenton won't be winning any awards for Mother of the Year. Truth is, motherhood isn't nearly as important to Bliss as the cottage industry she's created: extorting wealthy men for the hefty child support she can collect. But Bliss' greed goes too far when she takes on Fletcher McClain. The handsome music industry mogul refuses to accept her conniving conduct lying down. He retains high-profile attorney Vernetta Henderson to sue Bliss for fraud.

With the literary chops of Bonfire of the Vanities and the dizzying decadence of The Wolf of Wall Street, The Fall of Princes takes listeners into a world of hedonistic highs and devastating lows, weaving a visceral tale about the lives of these young men, winners all...until someone changes the rules of the game. Goolrick paints a magnificently authentic portrait of an era, tense and stylish, perfectly mixing adrenaline and melancholy.

Faced with evidence of stunning prosecutorial misconduct, a San Francisco judge has ordered a new trial for the Maxwell brothers' father, Lawrence, who was convicted of killing their mother 21 years before. A prison snitch soon turns up dead, with Lawrence the only suspect, and Leo teams up with hotshot attorney Nina Schuyler to defend Lawrence against murder charges both old and new.

Edgar Allan "Poe" Rutherford's life has never been better. He's just relocated to Maui and moved in with his best friend, Foxx. And he's dating the beautiful and sexy Detective, Alana Hu. Then Poe gets dragged back into another murder investigation. This time, though, he's one of the prime suspects. Can Poe discover the identity of the killer before he gets arrested?

From award-winning author Pamela Samuels Young, author of Anybody's Daughter! Featured in the anthology The Funeral, this fast-paced short story wastes no time pulling the reader into a fascinating whodunit. When a prominent L.A. lawyer is found dead in his office, the detectives assigned to solve the crime search high and low for clues. What they discover at the lawyer's funeral may well lead them to his killer. But will the murderer turn out to be among the usual suspects?

From the introduction by Les Standiford: "The truth is that Miami, though naturally lovely, is a frontier town, perched on the border between the known and the rarely before experienced. The poet Richard Hugo once said that the natural place for the writer was on the edge, and 'edge' might well be the definitive word when it comes to this city... We are not only on the edge of the continent, we are to this country what New York was in Ellis Island's heyday, what the West Coast was in the middle of the 20th century.

Brand-new stories by: Daniel Woodrell, Matthew Eck, Catherine Browder, Nancy Pickard, John Lutz, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer, Linda Rodriguez, Nadia Pflaum, Phong Nguyen, Andres Rodriguez, and others. Kansas City: where East and West collide, where naked ambition meets broken dreams, where blues and the night go together like rye whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Yes, Kansas City is a surprising place of grit, gore, and betrayal, at least in the imaginations of our diverse lineup of contributors.

Known for best-selling military science fiction, David Drake now takes aim at the listener's funnybone. Meet goblin paratroopers, politically correct space cops, and more, and laugh all the way to the gallows.

When Artemus Black is hired to investigate a series of suspicious accidents at LA's most prestigious modeling agency, he quickly discovers that brooding pouts and mascara can be as dangerous as guns or bombs. From LA to Mexico to Tahoe to NY, the story pokes fun at the world of high fashion as Black races to discover who's killing the models.

Derek Adams is on the lam, framed for a strange murder and chased by a cult intent on getting their hands on the skin belt that writhes in Derek's pocket. When a firm of lawyers offers him a way out, he grabs it with both hands. Then things really go to the dogs!

Poised to make partner at a high-powered L.A. law firm, Vernetta Henderson takes on what appears to be an open-and-shut case of sexual harassment. As the case proceeds, Vernetta soon begins to suspect that her corporate client may be involved in a far-reaching cover-up. The deeper she digs, the more the case spirals out of her control. Determined to find the truth, Vernetta eventually unravels a conspiracy of greed and violence that places her career - and her very life - at risk.

Based on the real-life horrors faced by thousands of girls, award-winning author Pamela Samuels Young takes listeners deep inside the disturbing world of child sex trafficking in a fast-paced thriller that educates as much as it entertains. Thirteen-year-old Brianna Walker is ecstatic. She's about to sneak off to meet her first real boyfriend - a boyfriend she met on Facebook. But Brianna is in for a horrifying surprise because her boyfriend doesn't exist.

April 14, 1865. A famous actor pulls a trigger in the presidential balcony, leaps to the stage, and escapes, as the president lies fatally wounded. In the panic that follows, forty-six terrified people scatter in and around Ford's Theater as soldiers take up stations by the doors and the audience surges into the streets chanting, "Burn the place down!" This is the untold story of Lincoln's assassination: The forty-six stage hands, actors, and theater workers on hand for the bewildering events in the theater that night.