Showing results by narrator "Eric Meyers" in All Categories

Sheriff Patrick Drake tried to lead an upstanding life. He did okay for a while, singlehandedly raising his family, but then he was hit with money troubles and ended up convicted of one of the biggest crimes in local history. Twelve years later Patrick is on parole under the watchful eye of his son, Bobby. But trouble isn't done with the Drakes, and a terrifying threat boils up from Patrick's old life. And this time, no one will be spared....

In the 1930s, as the world hurtled towards terrible global conflict, speed was all the rage. It was described by Aldous Huxley as 'the one genuinely modern pleasure', and one of the fastest and most thrilling ways to attain it was through the new sport of bobsledding. Exotic, exciting and above all dangerous, it was by far the most popular event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. It required an abundance of skill and bravery. And the four men who triumphed at those games lived the most extraordinary lives.

Old Rosa the bag lady shuffles along the streets, stinking, silent and shunned. Time and again her nephew, Michael Marcinkus, has tried to help - but Rosa remains unknowable. Then Rosa has a terrible accident. As she lies in a coma, Michael visits her squalid flat and unearths something remarkable from the junk: Two glittering pieces of Hollywood history. How on earth has Rosa come to own such treasure? And what is to be done with them now?

The murder of a police officer reveals a world of corruption in this contemporary noir thriller set in New York. When Detective Boots Littlewood’s regular bookie, Drago, reveals that the shooting of police officer Captain Christopher Palmer was no random killing but an organized hit in exchange for a lighter sentence, Boots is assigned to a task force to investigate with a new partner, Jill Kelly, and soon uncovers a trail of corruption that someone will do anything to protect...

This collection of stories about oddballs living in and hanging around Christopher Park in Manhattan is a zany and charming comedy of characters. Everyone here, from the unpublished novelist to the earthquake expert-cum-street shrink, is able to indulge their madness without fear in the way that only Edward Swift can present.

The Sounds of Crime is an exclusive collection of five brand new short stories by some of the best crimewriters around. Using the theme of 'audio', this unique collection features brand new stories by Lawrence Block, Peter James, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Christopher Fowler.

When a UN weapons inspector is assassinated, rumours surface that he had evidence of a shadowy worldwide group. But two parts of a coded text survived the assassination: one half is in the hands of a young female operative, the other is delivered to the only man alive capable of unlocking its secrets...

‘When the rains came they found the girl's face. Just her face. At least that was how it appeared...’. Sheriff John Gaines is called down to the riverside when the body of a teenage girl is found. It is that of Nancy Denton - a girl missing for over two decades. Now she's been found her mother can finally put her memory to rest, but Nancy's body bears horrific mutilations that suggest she was subjected to a terrifying voodoo ritual. As Gaines digs ever deeper into the dark secrets of the town he is forced to confront his own demons…

Tom Brodzinski finally decides to give up smoking, but a moment's inattention to detail becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of his holiday apartment it lands on the head of his fellow countrymen, Reggie Lincoln. The elderly Lincoln is badly burnt, and since the cigarette butt passed through public space before hitting him, the local authorities are obliged to regard Tom's action as an assault, despite his benign intentions.

There are a wealth of conspiracies surrounding World War II, from covert assassinations to outlandish secret missions and shocking cover-ups. Intelligence agencies practiced stunning deceptions and disinformation was spread widely, but what truths lie beneath these elaborate theories? Military historian Alexander Macdonald examines the evidence.

A History of the Civil War brings to life the realities of the war and the people who lived through it. It explains how the politics around slavery led to an unbridgeable divide between the North and South, and examines the strategies that led to the Union's eventual victory in 1865.

Our ‘fight of flight’ response is something hardwired into the primitive part of our brain. Our need to survive, to outlive whatever danger poses, that immediate threat to our lives is little short of a marvel. Everything else is abandoned in order to survive. Whilst in modern times that ability has been somewhat modified and ‘reasoned’ away to an extent, in past years it’s what usually kept you alive. In this volume people struggle valiantly to survive and to exist no matter the extent of the threat they face.

The second battle of El Alamein in November 1942 was followed in April 1943 by the complete withdrawal of German troops from North Africa. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Red Army had entered the hell of Stalingrad and emerged victorious. In the Pacific, American troops had captured and held the strategically vital island of Guadalcanal, in the teeth of frantic Japanese counterattacks. The tide of the war had begun inexorably to turn in favor of the Allies. Victory in World War II covers all fronts in detail as it charts the progress of the final years of World War II. 

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Prodigiously his first book was published at 17 and for he obtained his M.A. in English when he submitted a poetry volume as his thesis. Whilst travelling in France, in the early '20s, he met and quickly married a fellow writer and poet, Rosemary Carr. She would also collaborate with him on several works. In Paris he wrote the book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War ‘John Brown's Body’, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The American literary tradition has, in a far shorter span of time than others throughout history, achieved a glowing and glittering reputation. From its transatlantic roots it has absorbed the sons and daughters of other cultures, other lands and made them part of her own. Within this melting pot of styles, genres and wordplay one fact stands out: In the American short story, literary tradition has a strong, vibrant and almost inclusive history, if you know where to look.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died. Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. Amongst F. Scott Fitzgerald's many short story gems is ‘The Four Fists’. It follows a life, from boyhood to maturity, and how an occasional brush with physical force influences and changes that life.

William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. In December 1899, in McClure’s Magazine, he published a short story as O. Henry.

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio. In 1916 his first book, ‘Windy McPherson’s Son’, was released and in 1919, his most famous book, ‘Winesburg, Ohio’, a collection of short stories about life in an Ohio town was released. Anderson continued to write short stories, novels and non-fiction but his only true bestseller came with ‘Dark Laughter’. His influence on writers that followed, from Faulkner to Hemingway, was immense.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language. In 1891 Bierce wrote and published the collection of 26 short stories which included ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’. Success and further works including poetry followed.

Alan Seeger was born on 22nd June 1888 in New York. After attending several elite preparatory schools, he enrolled at Harvard in 1906, where he also edited and wrote for the Harvard Monthly. War’s looming dark shadow was to have a transformative effect on the young poet and on 24th August 24th, 1914, he joined the French Foreign Legion so he could fight for the Allies. On American Independence day, 4th July 1917, whilst urging on his fellow soldiers in a successful charge at Belloy-en-Santerrem he was hit several times by machine gun fire and died.