Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

Forged in the hot sun and sand of the Arizona desert, Chinook Shannon is as tough as they come. But Chinook is far from home—in the north country of Montana—and facing a challenge as big as the territory itself. Following his grandfather’s suspicious death, he’s come to Montana to claim his inheritance—the family’s cattle ranch. But the territory’s crawling with bandits and bankers, and they all want a piece of Chinook’s land.

This collection shows a vibrant young writer with a wide-ranging imagination, ferocious creative energy, devastating wit, and an eye for the wonderful and terrifying and tragic. Among the gems are "All the Sounds of Fear", "The Sky Is Burning", "The Very Last Day of a Good Woman", and "In Lonely Lands". Though they stand tall on their own merits, they also point the way to the sublime stories that followed soon after and continue to come even now, more than 50 years later.

Merciless in their penetrating analysis, Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail Hall have written the satirical portrait of America’s contemporary military-industrial complex. Drawing inspiration from the 1936 classic How to Run a War, by Bruce W. Knight, this book is a must-listen for anyone who would know the truth about America’s endless wars and the people who run them....

Here is a stunning and provocative guide to the future of international relations—a system for managing global problems beyond the stalemates of business versus government, East versus West, rich versus poor, democracy versus authoritarianism, free markets versus state capitalism.

Benedict XVI: A Life offers insight into the young life and rise through the Church’s ranks of a man who would become a hero and a lightning rod for Catholics the world over. Based on countless hours of interviews in Rome with Benedict himself, this two-volume biography is the definitive record of the life of Joseph Ratzinger and the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI. This first volume follows his early life, from his days growing up in Germany and his conscription into the Hitler Youth during WWII to his career as an academic theologian and eventual archbishop of Munich.

Professor Vlad Smith is on a terrifying quest, one that will take him from the halls of our most hallowed institutions to the most run-down of old houses in blighted neighborhoods. A mysterious committee, shredded yellowed newspapers, a daguerreotype of a Confederate soldier, a headless corpse, and a corpseless head.... These are the clues that Smith must piece together to save his sanity and his daughter and uncover the terrible secret of the Boss in the Wall.

In the world of speculative fiction… Your favorite authors… Have selected best new voices of the year.

It’s the fall of 1979 when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the Dakota in New York City. Anton’s father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter, is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown. Before long Anton is swept up in an effort to reignite Buddy’s stalled career, a mission that takes him from the gritty streets of New York to the slopes of the Lake Placid Olympics, to the Hollywood Hills, to the blue waters of the Bermuda Triangle.

Boldly go to times where no one has gone before. While transporting a contraband Russian time machine and developmental weaponry, Private Everett Dumphee finds himself cast into new settings when the device suddenly activates. What follows are fantastic high-tech experiences that might be called the ultimate off-road adventure. For the determined Dumphee - narrowly escaping with his life and three beautiful women - it is not necessarily a matter of will he make his destination, but when.

Retired to a small Colorado mountain town, former Denver homicide detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell yearns only to fade away. He has failed in so many ways—as a father, a husband, friend, and cop—he fears he wasted his chance at a meaningful life. When Bell stumbles across a long-forgotten, unsolved child murder, his first impulse is to let it lie—but he can’t. He is drawn into the macabre mystery when he realizes the killer might still be near.

Open the Writers of the Future and be carried away by stories—and illustrations—that will make you think, make you laugh, and make you see the world in ways you never imagined. Twelve captivating tales from the best new writers of the year as selected by Writers of the Future Contest judges accompanied by three more from L. Ron Hubbard, Nancy Kress, S.M. Stirling.

Richard Brautigan was an original - brilliant and wickedly funny. His books resonated with the 1960s, making him an overnight counterculture hero. Dark, funny, and exquisitely haunting, his final book-length fiction explores the fragile, mysterious shadowland surrounding death. Told with classic Brautigan wit, poetic style, and mordant irony, An Unfortunate Woman assumes the form of a peripatetic journal chronicling the protagonist's travels and oblique ruminations on the suicide of one woman and the death of a close friend from cancer.

Detective Terry Lane is a standout homicide cop who thought he’d seen it all ... until now. Lane has seen the darkest side of human behavior but he’s never seen a murder spree like this, targeting the wealthy, the powerful and the privileged. For the evidence is clear: the killers have not emerged from the seamy underside of the city ... but from six feet under it. They are the walking dead, spreading terror and showing no mercy.

The ancient jungles of the Yucatan hide a world of secrets ... the secrets of wealth, love, and fate. Now daredevil pilot Kurt Reid is about to tempt fate and fly into the heart of that jungle in search of his destiny—an adventure as daring and dangerous as any undertaken by Indiana Jones. He’s looking for gold, but not just any. He’s after one particular nugget—flying blind into a tropical haystack in search of a very valuable needle.

It’s not easy living in someone else’s world. But that’s the story of Mike de Wolf’s life...literally. The whole thing started at his friend Horace’s Greenwich Village apartment. Horace is a writer and he’s decided to model one of his villains after Mike. Sounds crazy...until Mike reaches to turn on a light and gets the shock of his life. Knocked unconscious, Mike wakes up to find himself tossing in a violent ocean surf and getting slammed against the rocks.

Caution is a second-generation ace pilot desperately trying to bury his past and the memories of his father - a daredevil barnstormer who perished trying to wow crowds and killed Caution's mother from the shock. Now Caution has worked his way up the ladder as an ultra-conservative general manager of a small airline. But against his better judgement, Caution must risk the hazards of a round-world air race. Joined by a fiery blonde stunt flyer as his female co-pilot, he begins the journey only to discover that a rival airline is trying to sabotage their every move.

In the sixth book of the Calendar Mysteries, Bradley, Brian, Nate and Lucy are getting ready for Father's Day. They've decided that strawberry jam from the Pintos' strawberry patch would be a great gift. But something or someone has been taking bites out of the strawberrys! Polly the Pony, Pal and the dog, and the twins' brother Josh are all suspects. If the kids can't protect the strawberry patch from the mystery chomper, they might be in a real jam!

Alan Corday, a smart yet desperate young man, is about to find out. His family fortune squandered and the woman he loves unattainable, Corday will go to almost any length to change his luck. But his desperation leads him into harm’s way—and into the hands of one Captain Jocelyn and his crew. Shanghaied from the spaceport at New Chicago, Corday is taken aboard the Hound of Heaven, a craft bound for the stars…on a journey through hell.

When it comes to big dreams and schemes, young Chuck Lambert would give Walter Mitty a run for his money. In fact, Chuck’s biggest dream of all is really out of this world. Because he’s got his eyes on a prize in the sky. Chuck wants to buy a planet of his own.... Madman Murphy, the King of Planetary Realtors, is more than happy to oblige. He’s got a whole galaxy of planets for sale. All Chuck needs is money . . . and a lot of it. Eleven years later, saving every penny he can scrape up, Chuck’s dream comes true. He takes possession and takes off for Planet 19453X...

Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It's been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia-bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel. He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local 11-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective.