Showing results by narrator "Richard Ferrone" in All Categories

Hank is walking home from the bar when the Model T pulls alongside him. It's been decades since he saw a car this old, and the sound of it takes him right back to his 20s. The door is open, and when he climbs in, the car takes off - without a driver. Before he knows what's happened, Hank is right back at Big Spring Pavilion, where he spent his youth drinking bootleg whiskey and chasing pretty girls. He will find the past is not quite as he remembered it, but still a lovely place to go for a drive.

When Presidential Deal hit the bestseller lists, fans of Les Standiford’s other books, including Done Deal and Raw Deal, rejoiced. They already knew what new listeners would find: taut suspense, tough characters, and a superb sense of mood. Now in Black Mountain, Standiford combines high-country adventure with a tale of ruthless revenge.

Prince Manfred and his mentor and bodyguard, the deadly warrior Erik, survived dangers and enemies both natural and supernatural, and if they thought that their new mission was going to be anything but more of the same, they soon gave up on that hope.

When his truck slammed into a telephone pole and burst into flames, the seventeen-year-old became pinned in the driver seat. Moments before the vehicle was consumed by fire, Mike was pulled from the burning wreckage of twisted metal as his body burned. After his guitar was incinerated in the blaze, Pete Townsend from The Who, a musical inspiration, sent him a new guitar, offering, “This is the Phoenix.” In the wake of his Phoenix moment of rising from the ashes, Mike wanted to believe that his life had been saved for a unique purpose.

Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the 100 points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today.

The former president of St. Johns College reveals why 2,500 years of learning in the West is of inestimable value to all of us—and why its trashing is a crime of monumental proportions.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Röschenberg has inherited a ghost train and its members of the undead are very lively! And it's a suspenseful time for our young Ghostsitter: Vlarad the vampire has consumed too much hamster blood and has now turned into one, and Wombie the Zombie's hundredth deathday is coming right up. But the ritual for celebrating Wombie's deathday is no easy task: It requires a voodoo dagger, a magic ring, and an enchanted cauldron, and if Tom and his undead friends don't perform the ritual in time, Wombie will turn to dust.

Ben Thompson carved out a name for himself as a gambler and a shootist - from Dodge City to the Rio Grande. But settling down in Austin with a wife and young son didn't settle Ben's taste for the sporting life. He still found himself in the gambling dives - where the turn of a card too often led to a shootout. Soon a circle of powerful businessmen decides that Thompson is the only man who can tame Austin's wild side. They ask him to rule the streets - and take no prisoners. They want him to take on the job of a marshal in a town in which every man packs a gun.

When the wife of a mob witness is killed and his teenage son is kidnapped, the ransom isn't cash - it's his life. The dead can't testify. If the witness kills himself, the mob will let his son live. Now veteran cops Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan need to protect their witness from himself while they turn Chicago's gangland upside down to save the kid. It doesn't help that Hanrahan is newly sober in AA, battling drink urges and the guilt of recently losing another informant. Lieberman has seen his partner at his worst with the booze and always had his back.

Most days, the counters at Maish's Deli on Chicago's North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish's is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple - the fifth in a row - and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right. A veteran cop whose low-key attitude and sardonic humor conceal an intense commitment to justice, Lieberman is taking the break-in very personally - the synagogue's president just happens to be his wife.

When you're a 62-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman's life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew, David, has been shot dead and David's pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it's up to Lieberman to track down the killers. With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew's bright future.

After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: Meet his demands, or he'll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it's a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish's deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one's giving him a choice.

Gilbert Gilbertson, an inept magic clown whose biggest gigs are kids' birthday parties, suddenly develops skills in sleight-of-hand and stage illusions that confound expert magicians. He also begins affecting people in strange ways, as well as winning staggering amounts of money in Las Vegas, which he donates to the Catholic Church. Enter a far-right fringe group within the Catholic Church, convinced that Gilbert is working legitimate miracles - miracles they believe will convince Catholics to return to more conservative ways.

Adam Rait just wants to guide his crew across the state of Texas, deliver his cargo, and get paid. But his convoy is almost immediately joined by mysterious Mexican travelers - the beautiful and mysterious Angel de Acera and her brother, Bernal. When Kurt Hanover, the man running the deal and Rait's employer is murdered, Rait is left wondering what he should do with an entire wagon train of smuggled arms?

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This anthology includes brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

Bruce Martell is a man of principle. Riding into Indio Basin in search of his kid brother, he immediately feels uneasy. Before he can encounter even a single settler, he happens upon the corpses of four poached cows. After a brief encounter with the angry owner of the slaughtered cattle, he makes his way into the town of Starlight. Here he finds a climate of hostility, the farmers and settlers pitted against the cowboys and cattlemen. He feels the settlers' hostility keenly, and after an altercation with a drunkard, he finds himself in need of rescue from the angry mob.

When young Jarret Pekoe aims to bring a band of violent border-jumpers to justice, his sister hires rifleman Lem Beauchamp to scare some sense into him. But when trouble arrives, they must work together to defeat the outlaws once and for all. Jarrett Pekoe cares about two things: his ranch and his family. So when rustlers kill his kin and burn his land to the ground, Jarrett won't rest until the men responsible have their necks caught in the hangman's rope.

Young Jim Curry's father is killed unjustly by an enraged mob, and the boy barely escapes the same fate. He shoots two pursuers and assumes they are dead, and in desperation becomes a most unusual outlaw, the Red Devil. He never kills, takes only ill-gained money, secretly returns it to the rightful owners, and escapes every pursuit on his remarkable horse, Meg. Spoiled Charlie Mark has left home to seek thrills and easy money. He vows to find the Red Devil and discover why he is so merciful and so particular about his victims.

On December 7, 1941, even as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft flew toward Pearl Harbor, a small American cargo ship chartered by the army reported that it was under attack from a submarine halfway between Seattle and Honolulu. After that one cryptic message, the humble lumber carrier Cynthia Olson and her crew vanished without a trace, sparking one of the most enduring nautical mysteries of the war. What happened to the ill-fated ship? What happened to her crew?

The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put aside their own agendas to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress to George Washington's battle against his slave, Harry Washington, these less discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation.