Showing results by narrator "Mark F Smith" in All Categories

A British newspaper editor in India does some favors for a memorable pair of strangers who confide in him their plan to become kings in Afghanistan. Then, two years later, he has a bizarre return visit - kings they have become, sure enough, but they've found the price of kingly mistakes was very high!

Madame Charmaine chronicles the adventure one summer of four close friends, three boys and a girl, all 12 years old, who discover a locked “treasure chest” half buried in the sandy shore of the Missouri River following a spring flood. As they play detective and try to find out who buried the chest and what its strange content means, they meet up with a tall, mysterious woman in a turban and soon find out that they are playing a dangerous game, one that threatens to bury them alive in a grave of their own digging.

Was Auntie Maim an axe murderer? Well, you might have thought so! Auntie Mame, on the other hand, can teach you and all of us an important lesson. The little things in life sometimes aren’t so little. Sheldon Beasley, 13, learned that lesson when his attempt to audition for a role in the wildly popular play Auntie Mame went horribly awry. In a letter to the play’s director, Sheldon made several references to "Auntie Maim". Oops. That’s no way to impress the boss, who politely notified Sheldon he would not be invited to tryouts.

Bret Harte paints a timeless portrait of undesirables who are forced to leave a self-righteous town, and who, in the face of oncoming winter and in the company of a pair of innocents, learn to become bigger than themselves.

At fifty degrees below zero, your spit freezes instantly upon hitting the ground. At seventy-five below zero, it freezes in mid-air. If you get wet at that temperature you need to know one thing, and know it very well - how to build a fire.

Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen made his name as the highest-scoring ace fighter pilot of WWI. His popular name, the Red Baron, owed to being of minor nobility (Freiherr = "free lord") and to choosing to fly a brightly-painted red aeroplane when camouflage colors were the norm. This advertisement to the enemy brought him frequent combats, so that he liked to claim that he shot down Englishmen before breakfast. When it seemed that he was being particularly sought by crack enemy pilots, the men of his command, Jasta 11, also painted their planes red.

Inconvenient owners of thrones in the kingdoms of the Islands of Sunshine have a habit of attracting the attention of an Evil Magician - and then disappearing! Prince Daimur, who, fortunately, has a helpful and caring disposition, receives some special gifts from a dying fairy. So when he, too, becomes inconvenient and is "disappeared", he possesses some potent defenses against spells. On the Island of Despair, his natural curiosity and good nature wins him allies as he attempts to solve the puzzles that await him.

Someone is killing women in the Chelsea nieghborhood of Manhattan - but, who? The only clues: a signature heart carved into each victim's breast (inside, the initials "J.C." and those of the deceased); copies of the New Testament (with underlined passages referring to infidelity); and fingerprints of a juvenile arrested in the 1960s. On the case is Matt Davis, a plodding but effective NYPD homicide detective who is addicted to fly fishing - and chocolate.

A breathtaking piece of luck, coupled with an unlikely coincidence, secured by a piercing intellect and curious nature, lead three friends to believe they might possibly uncover pirate gold! With all the insight and reasoning of a Sherlock Holmes, Poe's William Legrand plucks faint clues seemingly from mid-air and carefully arrives at a conclusion of exactly where in the world to dig.Has he reasoned - and guessed - correctly? Or, will the only gold he sees be the color of his eponymous beetle?

The Western Conference discovers the Reds have stolen their alien-source data on a colonizable planet...and so must rush their plans for an expedition. When their spaceship crashes on Topaz, Travis Fox and his party of modern Apache Indians, reverted to their tribal ancestral memories, find they have already been beaten there. And they must deal with more than Reds - for the Reds have brought along reverted members of Ghenghis Khan's Mongol Horde!

The Communists never have a chance. They are prepared to fight with atomic weapons. The U.S. instead uses... Dolliver Wims, history's first recorded person capable of turning other people accident-prone. Wims is a walking disaster who never gets caught in the shambles he creates! With great good humor, Sabia turns his lens on what might have happened had the Cold War gone hot!

The 1980s opened with the prime interest rate at an astonishing 21.5 percent, leading to a severe recession with unemployment reaching nearly 11 percent. Depression-like conditions befell the agricultural sector, a bubble burst in the energy sector, a rolling real estate recession swept the country, the entire thrift industry was badly insolvent and the major money center banks were loaded with third world debt.

When the first Martian capsule lands, Alex Smith is drawn to the scene out of curiosity and wonder. But soon he must flee, when the great alien striders begin devastating the countryside and harvesting the living bodies of men and women to drain their blood. Smith wanders south, being drafted into the Army, witnessing major battles between the Martians and the American troops, and following the trail of destruction all the way to San Francisco. There he finds a city deserted of human life. Mankind seems doomed, unless... A grand science-fiction adventure, inspired by H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

Abner Doubleday began the Civil War as a Union officer and aimed the first cannon shot in response to the bombardment opened on Ft. Sumter in 1861. Two years later, after a series of battles (including Antietam, where he was wounded), Doubleday took over a division in the Army of the Potomac's First Corps. These are his memoirs of service in two of the War's great campaigns.

Buck is living a happy life in California until he is sold to pay a gambling debt. Taken to the Klondike to become a sled dog, Buck must toughen up and learn the harsher rules of survival in the North. One of the first of these is how to deal with being harnessed in the same team as a dog that wants to kill him. Large, strong and smart, Buck toughens to his new life. But even the toughest dog can be worn down by constant work, and after 3,000 miles of pulling sleds, Buck nears the end of his rope.