Showing results by narrator "Rick Barr" in All Categories

In this suspense-filled, neo-monster horror novelette, a writer named Gene Winfield discovers an ominous handwritten book among the belongings of his late adventurer aunt. As Gene reads, he becomes captivated with the volume’s account of a savage, unearthly creature. In spite of the book’s warning, with his writing career failing, Gene can’t resist the inspiration. Near the roaring fire in his aunt’s otherwise cold, empty manor, Gene begins a story of his own. But will he unleash more than his imagination?

Detective Levin must find the cause of an outbreak of mass murders in his hometown. Norcastle was the first town to fall. Not long after entire cities fell one by one to The Decay. It seems that everyone who enters Norcastle...goes insane. No one has come out alive. Some believe The Decay is a virus spread by the government. Others say it was brought by a cult known as the Ravelim. Can Detective Levin solve the mystery before he falls victim to The Decay? Or will he go insane like all the others who have tried?

Just as Katie's life is settling into a new normal after leaving Zion and the birth of her son, she is given news that will forever alter her reality. Meanwhile, the moment that Michael has so desperately wished for, but never thought would come, has finally arrived. He must make the hardest decision of his life, and if he doesn't choose correctly, he could lose everything, forever.

Detectives link gruesome murders to the Eunuch Maker, a serial killer targeting men. The stakes soon escalate to global proportions.

Michael felt like his life ended the day his family left. In a way, it did. While he struggled to remain composed when he was in the company of others, he allowed his thoughts and anxieties to consume him when he was alone. Though the life that he had always known had ended, a new one quickly emerged, one that had been suppressed by the Elders for far too long. While Michael struggled to wrap his brain around the information he was learning about his true identity, his heart continuously pulled him toward a young girl.

Time continues to march on with no end in sight for kidnapping victim Jack Petrov. His family holds out hope that one day he will be found, and they will all be reunited, but although they have that hope, they do wonder, "What if?" Despite the stress and unknowns of the situation, the Petrovs continue on with their lives, but the unthinkable happens again. With another Petrov missing, the question remains - will they ever be together again?

A parish priest has a gambling problem, a girlfriend, and his brother just killed his bookie. A police detective and mobster both investigate, while the town questions if it's a crime at all or a public service. It has everything you need in a mystery: gambling, drinking, Girl Scout cookies, a wedding with a miracle, a canine ring bearer, a dead man telling a terrible joke, fast food, diners, and spit takes, and road rage.

Katie was born into a cult. Her family lived there for generations. As she got older, she realized the Elders were keeping secrets from the community. Risking everything, she leaves the cult and searches for the truth. With the help of outsiders, Katie and her young husband David are put in touch with an organization called Purple Haven, which provides medical care, shelter, counseling and job training to individuals who have escaped from cults. She soon discovers she’s pregnant.

Fear is all in the mind.... But Mia's nightmares become a reality when she and her troubled sister, Jamie, inherit their deceased uncle's house and experience phenomena that extends way beyond a typical haunting. Only Mia's infant daughter is aware of the sinister presence of a man that roams freely about the house, but it's Jamie who has become the subject of the entity's torment. No one's secrets stay buried for long, and the psychological abuse that the family are forced to endure soon turns physical.

Across continents and into and out of the hands of royalty, revolutionaries, smugglers, thieves, and the world's greatest tech engineers, was Marie Antoinette's watch, the "160" worth an estimated $40 million in today's dollars. Perhaps the most sought after personal technology device of the last 200 years, the timepiece, designed by the legendary Abraham-Louis Breguet, is the launching point for a thrilling and fluidly woven set of narratives that are, in part, forbidden love story, historical document, and police procedural.

A look back at a trio of teenage girls who belied their innocent looks to become serial killers. Sisters Regina and Margaret DeFrancisco were two teenage girls who made national headlines for murdering Oscar Velazquez, a suitor of Regina. Marlene Olive was the teenage girl who became notorious for the "BBQ murders" in which she murdered her adopted parents and tried to dispose of their bodies in a barbecue pit. Marlene was 16 at the time, and would go on to serve only four years for the crime.

Last Chance in 1895 is a shadow of what it once was, filled with too many women competing for the few men left to save them from poverty, starvation, and spinsterhood. Closed businesses and broken dreams rule the day, drawing a diversity of men to the struggling town; men on both sides of the law.

Emmaline Holton was five years old when the blizzard of 1878 left her an orphan. Her uncle wanted to raise her, but his difficult wife objected. That left only one relative to help Emmaline, her cousin Rachel and her new husband, Samuel.

When the ties of friendship bind too tightly, what do you do?

Lies, infidelity, and murder... what is a little mayhem among friends?

At its founding, the United States was an overwhelmingly Protestant country. However, over the last 250 years, it has become increasingly diverse with tens of millions of Catholics, millions of Latter-day Saints, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, alongside a rapidly increasing share of Americans who claim no religious affiliation at all. The American Religious Landscape uses an in-depth statistical analysis of large datasets to answer foundational questions about this diversity.

California's 1849 gold rush triggered creation of the "instant city" of San Francisco as a base to exploit the rich natural resources of the American West. City of Wood examines how capitalists and workers logged the state's vast redwood forests to create the financial capital and construction materials needed to build the regional metropolis of San Francisco. Architectural historian James Michael Buckley investigates the remote forest and its urban core as two poles of a regional "city."

Loneliness marked Randolph Tihalt as surely as the prosthetic leg he'd received after his service to the Union at Gettysburg. Still, despite the lingering effects of his injury, Rand found his place in Taylors Falls, Minnesota, with family and friends. However, when his Regiment Captain contacts him out of the blue, the surprised man agrees to an extraordinary proposition.

Roseanna Sherman escapes the wealthy man who is determined to steal her children. But will the ruse of becoming a proxy bride fall apart when she’s thrust into the arms of a small-town sheriff? Only time and the wanted poster stuck to the jailhouse wall will tell. Southern grace meets Western grit, and love becomes the greatest gift of all. Join these Southern Belles on a Christmas journey to bridge the North and the South.

Ugly reality kept young Nicolet Sherman tied to the oldest profession in the world - at least until a determined Yankee soldier stole her away from her mother’s house of ill repute. But years of broken trust and abuse left the exquisite beauty with scars no eye could see. And what could one very determined army chaplain change . . . except her mind?