Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

The private detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case involved the suspicious death of a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter’s death a suicide, but the client doesn’t buy it. He’s her brother - or is he? After his murder, police find multiple driver’s licenses, and his real identity is a mystery.

The gruesome corpse of a young woman is found beside a long Montana highway called the Hi-Line. Her jaw and teeth are missing, and she is impossible to identify. Full of anger and without a clue, Du Pre begins to hunt the countryside for her murderer. As more dismembered corpses - all young women - are discovered, the small ranching community goes into shock.

ch novelist de Moor (Duke of Egypt) traces narrative arabesques around the terrible romantic jealousy suffered by a blind music critic in this spare, delicate novel. In a series of chance encounters at European airports over the years, the musicologist narrator meets the famous blind patrician music critic, Marius van Vlooten, and extracts his history of tortured love. The first encounter elicits the desperate tale of unrequited love that drove Marius, as a student years before, to shoot himself in the head, thus blinding himself.

A memoir of the haunting and redemptive events of the acclaimed writer's life - the betrayal of a con-man father; a murder-suicide in his family's house; the presence of an oyster catcher - each one, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction. In the hands of Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and What Is Left the Daughter, life's arresting strangenessis made into a profound, creative, and redemptive memoir.

Gabriel Du Pré, the old Montana fiddler at the center of Peter Bowen's atmospheric, engrossing series set in the dirty, dusty Montana that's rarely featured in travel brochures, has a knack for finding trouble. Or rather, trouble has a knack for finding him. There's a rumor going around that Du Pré and his old sorceror friend Benetsee have come across a parcel containing the lost journals of Lewis and Clark, and outsiders, drawn by the spirit of the legendary explorers, are beginning to invade Toussaint.

Activist Elizabeth Devane wished for an end to nuclear weapons. Surely, she thought, if they'd known what they were unleashing, the scientists of the Manhattan Project would never have created such a terrible instrument of destruction. But during a protest action, the unthinkable happened: a flash of light, a silent confusion, and Elizabeth awakes to find herself alone in a desolate desert arroyo... and almost 50 years in the past.

Guy Langman can't be bothered with much. But when his friend Anoop wants Guy to join the forensics club with him in the (possibly misguided) hopes of impressing some girls, Guy thinks why not. They certainly aren't expecting to find a real dead body on the simulated crime scene they're assigned to collect evidence from. But after some girlish, undignified screaming, the two realize it is indeed a body. Which means they have stumbled across a real, dead murder victim. Meanwhile, Guy has been looking into the past of his father - a larger-than-life character who recently passed away.

It's St. Patrick's Day in Green Lawn. Bradley, Brian, Nate, and Lucy dress up a leprechaun statue for the town's yearly contest. They leave it out on the porch overnight, but the next morning, it's missing! Who is behind the mischief? It will take four kids and the luck of the Irish to find out. Ron Roy perfectly captures the reading level and interest of the earliest chapter book readers in this exciting spinoff of his popular A to Z Mysteries series.

Running off to join the French Foreign Legion used to be every boy's dream of action and adventure. But for Lieutenant Bill Reilly - half Irish, half American, and like Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, a Westerner at war in the desert - the dream has turned into a nightmare. And it all begins with the gruesome delivery of a severed hand…

Gabriel Du Pré’s aunt Pauline has burned through more than her share of husbands, so it’s no surprise when she shows up in Toussaint complaining that the latest one, Badger, has run off. Du Pré, the fiddler and sometimes deputy, agrees to go looking for her man and finds him shot, execution-style, in the wilds of the Montana countryside. A chat with his contacts at the FBI reveals that Badger, a small-time drug smuggler, had been working for them since his last arrest. Pauline’s husband was bait, but the big fish got away.

What's a congressman from Virginia doing in places where bullets fly and babies starve? Thirty years ago, Frank Wolf was elected to the U.S. Congress to address local transportation issues. Fueled by a faith that made him believe he could do something about it, the congressman grew to champion human and religious rights around the world---from cracking down on gang-related crimes in the U.S. to relieving suffering from war, AIDS, and famine in places like Darfur, China, and Bosnia.

A lost and frightened horse plods down the National Mall, startling the crowd. When Gabriel Du Pré spots the confused animal, the connection is immediate, for neither of these creatures belongs in the sweltering heat of a DC summer. Du Pré, a Métis Indian from the wilds of Montana, calms the horse and leads it to the nearest policeman. Du Pré is in Washington to play his people’s music for a Smithsonian festival, but after leading the horse to safety, he encounters a murder instead.

When it comes to boiling up a pot of coffee or stirring up a pot of stew, Old Laramie’s about as good a man as you’re going to find. But other than cooking three squares a day for the cowpunchers over at the Lazy G ranch, Laramie’s not good for much. But Laramie’s luck - and life - are about to take an amazing turn. Quite by accident, he somehow manages to save a family of Mexicans from bandits, and as a token of their gratitude they give him The Magic Quirt - a horsewhip that he’s told will turn him into a new man.

Saddle tramp Petey McGuire doesn’t have much to live for. The trail in front of him stretches out long and hot, and there’s no end in sight. He’s been beaten down, beaten up, and kicked around so long, he’d run away from his own shadow if he could. But there’s one fight he can’t run from - the fight against hunger. Petey needs a job quick, before he drops dead in the dust. But the only way to get one is to act cool and talk tough - in other words, become the exact opposite of Petey McGuire.

In the last days of pre-World War II China and the rise of Communism, Jim Dahlgren, representative of the Amalgamated Aeronautical Company, has had enough of the fatalistic brand of diplomacy from other nations that claim to want a united China, one that can resist invasion from without and treason within - but which refuses to intervene and prevent it's demise. When Dahlgren disappears - purportedly to find a mysterious aviator, the man called "Wind-Gone-Mad" - he ignites a series of actions which just may spell disaster.

A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. But when he’s brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world’s most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn’t be a case for historian turned deputy David Mapstone—except the victim had been dating David’s sister in law, Robin, and now she’s a target too. David’s wife, Lindsey, is in Washington with an elite anti-cyber-terror unit, and she makes one demand of him: protect Robin.

David Randall is a lively, carefree fellow with a talent for finding things. His perfect family life is derailed when he loses his little daughter, Lindsey, in a car accident. He is haunted by her in his dreams, fearful that she blames him. Randall, thrown out by his second wife and wanting to leave a dead-end detective agency to start his own, reluctantly accepts an invitation from Camden, his psychic friend, to stay in his boarding house.

When his friend Peralta, newly sworn in as sheriff, is shot by a sniper, David Mapstone, former historian and new deputy sheriff, can’t keep a cool, academic distance - and he’d better not. While Peralta lies comatose in the hospital, the powers that be install Mapstone as acting sheriff in his friend’s place. Mapstone feels unqualified, but he’s the only person whose temporary appointment won’t infuriate all the other candidates, who want the sheriff’s position permanently. Meanwhile, a cryptic note scrawled by Peralta before the shooting forces Mapstone to confront his own personal history, inadvertently drawing him into danger.

It's a Valentine's Day party! Bradley is passing out his class’s valentines, but one of them has no name on it. Inside, the card tells the class to look in the closet. When they open the closet door, the kids find a rabbit named Douglas in a cage! What mysterious “friend” left him there? And why? Then the bunny gets sick. It’s up to Bradley, Brian, Lucy, and Nate to track down his owner and figure out what is wrong with poor little Douglas.

Wrongfully accused, Spar has been condemned to suffer the brutality of the guards and the conditions on Devil’s Island. But they haven’t broken his will, and now, escaping, he has one mission in life: revenge. Spar’s out to kill the man who put him into the devil’s hands. But he’ll have to take on a gallery of rogues who are as treacherous as the waters of the Caribbean.