Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

There’s not a dare Smoke Burnham won’t take, and there’s not a wager he won’t make. Now he’s betting his life that he can fly his plane, Super Comet - with his pet cheetah Patty coming along for the ride - across the mountains and jungles of South America to a prize-winning payday. All he has to do is out-race the competition, out-maneuver a saboteur, and make out with his girl - who’s determined to bring him down to earth. One thing you can count on - in the air, in a fight, or in his girlfriend’s arms - he’s a man who likes to turn up the heat.

Something is rotten in the Fort Belknap Reservation. Life has always been tough on this barren stretch just south of the Canadian border, but now the children are dying. While playing his fiddle in a reservation bar, part-time deputy Gabriel Du Pré meets an accordionist who suspects that the children’s health defects and low test scores are connected to the nearby Persephone mine.

When Gabriel Du Pré's precocious granddaughter, Pallas, returns from her studies in Washington, D.C., the entire clan in Toussaint, Montana, is happy to see her. Except Du Pré, that is, because the crotchety old fiddlin' cowboy knows that where Pallas goes, trouble is likely to follow. A van full of praying, protesting fundamentalist Christians has arrived in Toussaint at just about the same time. A young soldier follows, just back from Iraq, missing a leg, an eye, and his grip on reality. Du Pré suspects that he's going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future.

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.

Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars in banks across the country during his vaudeville days - before he became one of the silver screen's most recognizable funnymen. But it's no laughing matter when a burglar has the audacity to rob him blind, stealing his bankbooks and cleaning out his accounts. Steaming, the comedian hires Hollywood private investigator Toby Peters to track down the missing dough and protect what remains of his nest egg.

Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed "Fingers" (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer - and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna's throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can't refuse: Find the killer - or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave.

On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick's studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword.

Working in Hollywood, Private Eye Toby Peters has met a lot of phonies. But his newest case concerns a four-legged faker who threatens the fate of the free world. A few classy dames have crossed the detective's doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the first lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who's come to him on a matter of top-secret national security.

In February 1942, Californians may be living in fear of a Japanese attack, but the show must go on. The circus is in town - unfortunately so is a killer saboteur who's targeting the star attractions. Private detective Toby Peters is no stranger to going undercover, but this is the first time his disguise will include a red nose.

Winchester Remington Smith is a crack shot. Problem is, surrounded by roller coasters and merry-go-rounds, his talent is going to waste, knocking down ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. Win wants some real action, and he’s running off to join the US Marines to fight a guerilla insurgency south of the border. In the jungles of Central America, Win takes a different kind of roller-coaster ride. Quick and quiet, he’s now a runner. It’s a vital role, but he feels like a messenger boy, unable to put his rifle to good use.

Joanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of 10 novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (Publishers Weekly) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.

In The Drudge Revolution, investigative journalist and author of Newtown: An American Tragedy Matthew Lysiak pulls back the curtain on the world’s most powerful journalist, for the first time telling the inside story of how one man’s visionary belief in the potential of the internet, coupled with the post-Fairness Doctrine growth of conservative talk radio and the rise of cable news and social media, created the perfect storm that seized the narrative from the mainstream media and ushered in the presidency of Donald Trump.

During its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone. This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic facade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

Uh-oh! Squish’s friend Pod just hasn’t been himself lately. One minute he’s happy-dancing; the next he’s sobbing in his soup. What’s going on? (Hint: “mitosis” is the process that splits single-celled organisms. That’s right, splits.) It is truly Pod vs. Pod - and may the best Pod, umm, win?

Uh-oh! A deadly disease is spreading through Small Pond! People are dropping like flies! And yikes - it looks like Squish is patient number one. Will this epic epidemic be the end of everyone’s favorite amoeba? (And if it is, who will he leave his comic collection to?) Find out the answers in the seventh hilarious Squish adapted-for-audio novel: Deadly Disease of Doom!

Gulp! A scary new movie has everyone talking - and Squish is spooked out of his cellular mind! But it’s just a movie, right? Right?! Will Squish be eaten alive by a terrifying movie monster? Will his friends think he’s (gasp!) totally chicken? And can Squish’s comic book hero, Super Amoeba, defeat his creepiest foe yet? Find out the answers to these questions and more in the sixth Squish adapted-for-audio novel: Fear the Amoeba - saving the world, one cell at a time!

Beep! Beep! Squish can't get enough of his awesome new video game Mitosis! (Mitosis is what happens when cells divide. Who says video games can't be educational?) In fact, he may even be obsessed! He plays at home...at school...even in his sleep! Are video games taking over Squish's life?! And can Squish's favorite comic book hero, Super Amoeba, stop the Creeping Black Mold that's taking over Small Pond?

It's soccer season! But the Waterfleas (Hey, it could be worse - Okay, maybe it couldn't.) are getting pummelled game after game. Squish knows winning isn't everything, but it's something right? Can Squish turn the losing streak around when he becomes team captain? Will Pod figure out how to harness the power of lightning? And how can amoebas play soccer when they don't have any feet? Find out in the electrifyingly funny Squish, Book 4: Captain Disaster - saving the world, one cell at a time!

He's baa-ack! It's a brand new school year for everyone's favorite amoeba! Will Squish finally get to sit with the cool kids at lunch? Will Pod stop the giant asteroid from destroying the world? Will the leeches be the end of Super Amoeba? And what makes cafeteria nachos so delicious anyway? Find out the answers to these questions and more in Squish's second electrifying, fast-paced adventure!