Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

Between the end of his marriage and the excessive force complaints against him, Detective Sergeant Mickey Dolan is running out of chances. When a powerful and connected city councilman reports that his wife and two daughters have disappeared, Dolan is assigned the case - knowing full well that his career is riding on the outcome.

Noreen McAuliffe's Come Down in the World, a story about a nineteenth-century logging camp, wears a style so seamless and perfectly matched it feels tailor-made. From the first few lines to the quietly explosive finale, the listener is surrounded with instant authenticity that transports us to a time, place, and situation with stakes so high that most of us need a daring writer to imagine them for us.

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

In the summer of 2012, in the dead of night, three peace activists penetrated the exterior of Y-12 in Tennessee, supposedly one of the most secure nuclear-weapons facilities in the United States. A drifter, an 82-year-old nun, and a house painter. And if they had been terrorists armed with explosives, intent on mass destruction? That nightmare scenario underlies the government’s response to the intrusion.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural.

In the first audiobook, The Gumshoe Diaries: Fortune Cookies Always Lie, he introduces us to Whitey Roode, a shaggy but likeable former LAPD gold shield who turned private investigator after (as he tells it) being invited to retire by the brass. Stanton then takes us on a wheels-within-wheels scavenger hunt for the killer - or killers - of pretty Mei Li Teng (a.k.a Sally November), the not-so-innocent niece of Whitey's close friends and occasionally accurate snitches, Jai Lai and Lu Rong.

It's everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley's top "executive crook", sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn't know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper listing the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to for help is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

Kosh did not feel courageous. Looking at the disko, it was all he could do not to collapse into a quaking, blubbering puddle of terror. He was half certain he was going to die. But the alternative — leaving Emma in the hands of Gheen without even trying to rescue her — was unthinkable. He would not want to live if he had to live with that. In present-day Hopewell, an adult Kosh Feye discovers a sweet and painful piece of his past when he’s rescued by the Lamb Emma.

What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines? Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love.

Former Wall Street whiz and current convict Mickey Steinberg is nearing the end of his three-year sentence at Yankton - the cushy country club prison where he's enjoyed celebrity status - and he's ready to get out and get back on top. He doesn't have the resources he once did, but he's already hatched a new plan to sell a forgery of a stolen Van Gogh painting through the shady underground art market. He and his new partner, the smooth-talking Paul Reece, have a mark in mind: The sleazy con-man art dealer who swooped in on Mickey's beloved ex-wife after he was locked up. But with his old partner, Jack Grass, hell-bent on revenge and his pre-prison life closed to him, it won't be easy.

He's making news with his fists, his gun…and the ladies. The San Francisco Sun's freelance field stringer Stuart "Stringer" MacKail needs a new story to sell to pay the bills. His editor sends him back to MacKail's home town in Calaveras County for an update on an old legend about a stagecoach robbery by "Sulky Jack" and its missing treasure. Stringer's feet barely hit the ground when the bullets begin flying and it quickly becomes clear that folks are still trying to find the treasure and will stop anyone who gets in their way.

Stringer was just doing his job when he went to hear Teddy Roosevelt speak at a railway stop in Granger, Wyoming. But Stringer's job is to write about the speech - not get shot at! So suddenly a certain reporter has a powerful curiosity about who wants him six feet under. There's just one hitch: Stringer can't be sure if the bullet was meant for him or old Teddy. Now all MacKail has to do is dodge a pack of hired killers, swap lead with a few train robbers, match wits with a renegade Shoshoni, and bed a few lusty ladies on a trail that can end on the front page - or the obituaries….

Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens just lost his first election in 17 years. Maybe folks in the Arizona Territory were ready for a change…and then again, maybe Stringer ought to go have a look-see. The trouble is, Perry's vanished and everyone who knew him is either dead or vanished too. But when hot lead and hard knuckles start flying, Stringer's belt-buckle deep in ghostly mystery and willing women. And even if the ghosts may be hokum, the women are flesh-and-blood beauties!

Shortly after the abduction and brutal murder of legendary FBI agent John Coyle by a Russian hit squad, information surfaced that he was corrupt and his reputation was destroyed. But anyone who knew John Coyle knows that he had been framed, and by all accounts the only man who could have set him up was Big Dickey McVicker, a New York City underworld boss with ties to the Russian Mafia. For decades McVicker had been John Coyle’s chief informant - but he was also Coyle’s oldest and closest friend.

“Alex Peter Gregory, you are a moron!” Laurie slammed her palms down on my desk and stomped her foot. I get a lot of that. One car crash. One measly little car crash. And suddenly, I’m some kind of convicted felon. My parents are getting divorced, my dad is shacking up with my third-grade teacher. I might be in love with a girl who could kill me with one finger, and now I’m sentenced to baby-sit some insane old guy. What else could possibly go wrong? This is the story of Alex Gregory, his guitar, his best gal pal Laurie, and the friendship of a lifetime that he never would have expected.

On a crowded train from Pusan to Seoul, the brutal rape of a young mother sparks rage on the powder-keg peninsula of Korea, pitting Koreans against Americans and the 8th Army brass against the truth. Eyewitness accounts indicate the culprit was most likely a U.S. serviceman, but by the time Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, U.S. Army investigators, are called in, the rapist has disappeared and anti-American fervor in this proud Asian country is threatening to explode.

The world was desperate. Since the empire had fallen a hundred years ago, Gwin and her people had nearly given up hope that the Renewer would come. Gwin had lost everything. Her husband was killed in one of the wars. Her children died of Star Sickness. Even her work at the hostel was in jeopardy because the politicians had it out for her. The cursed Gwin, therefore, had nothing to lose. When she took in the girl, a survivor of the Star Sickness, it was a dreadful crime.

FBI Agent Andy Fisher has little respect for authority and even less love for paperwork. Fisher is in the Big Apple when he learns that an old girlfriend, Kathy Feder, has been shot dead. Armed with a pack of Camels and enough caffeine to kill an elephant, Fisher is determined to find out who killed Kathy and why. Kathy was a key employee of Icarus Sun Works, and her death threatens to delay the launch of a satellite that will harvest solar energy and beam it to Earth as electricity.

It happens every spring. Yankees pitching great Ron Guidry arrives at the Tampa airport to pick up Hall of Fame catcher and national treasure Yogi Berra. Guidry drives him to the ballpark. They watch the young players. They talk shop. They eat dinner together and tease each other mercilessly. They trade stories about the greats they have met along the way. And the next day they do the same thing all over again. As every former ballplayer can appreciate, in that routine, every spring, there emerges a certain magic.

The train robbery was bad. It cost Stringer 30 dollars. But when the Wild Bunch gives MacKail a .45 caliber invite to hear their side of what a nice bunch of boys they really are, it's an offer he can't refuse. After all, they're all mothers' sons, even if they would cut a man's throat for his boots. Even so, when Stringer decides to ride along, it has less to do with an exclusive than the gun pointed at his back. And when the shooting starts, MacKail's caught between the crossfire of a rabid posse and the meanest bunch of murdering, lying, cheating hombres to ever draw breath.…