Showing results by narrator "Basil Sands" in All Categories

It was one hell of an inheritance for former Chicago reporter Tom Coleman: a broken-down pickup truck, ramshackle campground, a canoe livery - and one pot-smoking, barely working employee he doesn’t need, doesn’t want, and can’t afford. But the truth is, after losing a child and a marriage, Tom doesn’t really care.

It's the middle of a sweltering late-summer heat wave in Los Angeles. In the nearby mountains, a seasonal wildfire burns out of control. If not for this fire, authorities might never have discovered wreckage of an Alfa Romeo convertible - or the body of the car's driver - in the dense underbrush at the bottom of Topanga Canyon. But when firefighters happen across the crash site while battling the nearby blaze, it's only a matter of time and basic forensics before the apparent accident is upgraded to homicide.

The latest volume in the bestselling Ultimate series, Jim Stovall and Tim Maurer's The Ultimate Financial Plan: Balancing Your Money and Life is a one-stop, comprehensive, personal financial planning book exploring the intersection of money and life. The Ultimate Financial Plan examines the connection between actions, thoughts, and feelings when it comes to all things financial.

Much the way Donald Hall’s Seasons at Eagle Pond captured New England, Sky Time in Gray’s River captures the essence of the rural Northwest. Although Rober Michael Pyle is a lepidopterist, and southwestern Washington is notable for its lack of butterflies, something about the village of Gray's River spoke to him on a visit thirty years ago. Ever since then he has lived in the village, which was one of the first to be established near the mouth of the Columbia River and which still feels only tenuously connected to the twenty-first century.

A terrible judge comes like a thief in the night. While the world sleeps, everything changes. In the diseased light of a festering sun, planes drop from the sky, machines sputter and stop, and the graves of the shrieking damned burst open. Angels from hell clothe themselves in the flesh of corpses to form an unholy army. Dreaming of his father hammering his way out of a coffin, Gary Holland is jolted awake by the phone to learn that his father is dead. Bickering over infidelity and religion, the family gathers for the funeral…and confronts hell on earth at the Jersey Shore.

Enjoy the end of the world through the eyes of a desk-bound civil servant. Nathan is a middle-aged father and husband working as a police dispatcher for the campus police of a large university in Richmond, Virginia. During late night working hours he gathers details on the R33PR Virus, dubbed the Reaper Virus, as it spreads from the far reaches of the globe into a pandemic that begins infecting the city around him. As the city rapidly succumbs to the Reaper Virus, Nathan becomes trapped at the police station while his family waits in their barricaded home.

For decades, the Mexican drug cartels looked at the United States of America as a business partner. The cartels supplied the drugs, and the millions of American addicts supplied them with an endless amount of money. But when the War on Drugs heats up and the money alone is not enough, the cartels decided to up the ante. With the help of a ruthless Russian mercenary, they unleashed a lethal bio-weapon, initially conceived during the Cold War to quickly bring the West to her knees.

On a near future Earth, Good Man does not mean good at all. Instead, the term signifies a member of the ruling class, and what it takes to become a Good Man and to hold onto power is downright evil. Now a conspiracy hundreds of years in the making is about to be brought to light when the imprisoned son of the Good Man of Olympic Seacity escapes from his solitary confinement cell and returns to find his father assassinated.

Once we step on the treadmill of progress, it's hard to step off. Yet Edward Tenner shows that human ingenuity can be applied in self-preservation as well, and he sheds light on the ways in which the users of commonplace technology surprise designers and engineers, as when early typists developed the touch method still employed on today's keyboards. And he offers concrete advice for reaping benefits from the devices that we no longer seem able to live without. Although dependent on these objects, we can also use them to liberate ourselves.

Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing on authoritative materials not previously available, including thousands of hours of tape-recorded allied councils of war, award-winning military historian Lewis Sorley has given us what has long been needed - an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these important years.

The original short story by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on which this remade version of 2BR02B is based, appeared in the January 1962 edition of "Worlds of If." This version is a complete rewrite based on the original story including significant artistic and textual changes, while retaining the general concept, the bones, of Vonnegut's original story.

They should've let him go. They should've let him retire in peace. They should've left his woman out of it.

Kharzai Ghiassi has served the US Government his entire adult life. The best infiltration agent they've ever had. Death is not just his business, death is his life. He's gone off the CIA's radar and all they know is that someone is in danger.

Written by R.A. Mathis, a veteran armored cavalry officer, this unique novel exposes the pain, horror, and exhilaration of the Iraq War - harsh realities that can only be revealed by one who was there. Spiked with elements of the supernatural, it peers into the abyss and reveals how unchecked obsession can damage those around us and ultimately lead to our destruction.

When struggling hardware store owner Bill Ferguson witnesses a kidnapping in progress, he reacts instinctively, breaking up the crime and saving a young girl. But the kidnapper, a sociopath known as the "I-90 Killer," escapes and vows revenge, targeting Ferguson's own daughter as his next victim. Now one terrified father must unravel a plot that may go much deeper than he realizes, racing against time to save his only child from an unthinkable fate.

God forgives when we ask sincerely. Men, not so much. Self, even less. And the Dead....never. Pastor Mike loves his family, and loves his flock. Life is good, but to get there he had to traverse a trail of blood. The faces that haunt his nightmares are no longer just specters, and a long thought dead enemy is about to unleash a very real hell.

In Blade of Hearts, hear some of the back story of a handful of Basil's recurring major characters. Find out about the past of Kharzai Ghiassi ("Karl's Last Flight"), Mojo Johnson ("65 Below"), and Mike Farris ("Faithful Warrior") - as well as others.

New England preacher Benjamin Conroy thought he had it all figured out: The keys to his family's eternal salvation lay in an ancient Egyptian ritual to the god Osiris. Following a little black magic - and the crucifiction of his entire family - the Conroys would rise from the dead, united for all of eternity, bringing salvation to the world. Assuming, that is, that the ritual went off with out a hitch. But for the Conroys, things went drastically wrong, and death was just the beginning of their suffering.

From a "master of suspense" ( Library Journal) and writer of "heart-whamming" fiction ( Publishers Weekly) comes an all new suspense collection by James Scott Bell. In the full-length novella One More Lie, high-flying divorce attorney Andrew Chamberlain is on top of the legal world. He buys his suits in Beverly Hills and wins his cases in court. But one day he's approached by a friend to handle the split with his wife. That's the day things start to go very wrong for Andrew Chamberlain...up to and including murder.

Defining Moments is the award-nominated collection by author David Niall Wilson. This book collects a lot of stories written over a lot of years. It was first published by Welsh publisher Sarob Press. Defining Moments was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award as a collection. The story "The Gentle Brush of Wings," first published in this collection, WON the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction.

Retired Marine Master Sergeant Marcus Johnson returned to his family homestead in rural Alaska after 20 years chasing bad men. Now he wants nothing but to hunt and fish and run his trapline in peace and quiet, and no more war. Meanwhile, lurking deep in a long forgotten bunker in the remote arctic hills is a decades-old secret that could not be destroyed, and was never meant to be rediscovered.