Showing results by narrator "William Dufris" in All Categories

In "McQueen of the Tumbling K", a man, left for dead, seeks revenge. A prospector finds gold - and hostile Apaches - in "Big Medicine". And in "Dutchman's Flat", a posse tracking a killer runs into far more trouble than they bargained for.

It's been three years since Damian failed Vicky. Three years she's clung to existence as something not quite alive, but far from dead. While the path before her darkens, Vicky battles to spread light and hope through a tortured world. But now the Destroyer has come to claim her ... and Damian can’t fail her again. Aided by his closest allies, he journeys into a realm of fire and death. Knowing Vicky’s fate lies in the Burning Lands, Damian must face the flames of war for a chance to save the little girl lost, or risk the end of all things.

Lucien Ortane is a Paragon in the Etherian Empire. His job is to explore the universe and spread Etherian doctrines of peace, justice, and immortality to sentient beings everywhere. Like all Paragons and most citizens, Lucien believes that Etherus, the benevolent ruler of the empire, is exactly who he claims to be: the one true God and creator of the universe.

From the introduction to Philadelphia Noir: "America's first great city, first capital, and first industrial metropolis contained from the beginning the mix of poor workers and elite culture, of ethnic enclaves and religious intolerance, of easy skullduggery and flesh-pot possibilities, that led Lincoln Steffens in 1903 to famously rule it 'corrupt and contented'."

P.I. Bill Smith is sent on a high-stakes chase when an electronically modified voice on his cell phone informs him that Lydia Chin, his occasional partner, has been kidnapped. Now, if Bill wants to keep Lydia alive, he'll have to play an elaborate game of the kidnapper's devising. The first move sends him to an abandoned building, where Bill finds the corpse of a small Chinese woman dressed like Lydia and the building being rapidly surrounded by police. Now he's on the run....

Late one night in August 1934, following a yearlong spree of bank robberies across the Midwest, Jason and Whit Fireson are forced into a police shootout and die for the first time. Now it appears that the bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by an admiring public have at last met their end in a hail of bullets.

Five deranged CIA killers, all of them dependent on their meds and deep in the woods of Maine, are forced to break out of the asylum when someone murders their psychiatrist and frames them for the deed. Crazy and traumatized by their experiences in the CIA, they operate under somewhat skewed perceptions of reality. Their training, however, has prepared them to survive in an unfriendly world, even if that world is the Boston-to-Washington corridor as they chase down the real killer.

An ancient ally. An immortal enemy. The rise of a mad god. An ocean of darkness lives within the pages of a long-forgotten journal. The arrogant god Ezekiel threatens the future of all as he calls forth ancient creatures from the Abyss.

Soon after the new Constitution took effect and George Washington became president, the United States was in serious danger. A bitter political rivalry between two men who had once been allies, and two surging issues that inflamed the nation, led to grim talk of breaking up the Republic. Then, a single great evening, arguably the most important dinner party in American history, achieved the compromises that led to America's mighty expansion.

TEXAS EMPIRE MATT BRAUN Jack Jordan, an Indian fighter turned trailblazer and cattleman, is willing to risk it all for a spread of Texas land in the uncharted Llano Estacado—and for the adventure of a lifetime. Already a legend before turning thirty years old, Jordan's greatest quest still...

Over the course of his shady legal career, Victor Carl has made a host of bad decisions, but letting his ex-fiancee Julia, fall back into his life and into his bed might be the worst. Julia's husband has just been murdered, her fingerprints are all over the crime scene, and $1.7 million in cash has inexplicably vanished. If Victor didn't know better, he might think Julia was setting him up.

""I'm reading the OED so you don't have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on..."" So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED. The word lover's Mount Everest...

In 1893, Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer and his brother, Gustav "Old Red," find themselves in a situation that they never expected: they have a bit of money and time to do something other than scramble. It's enough to confound even that most unconfoundable of men, their mutual inspiration, Sherlock Holmes.

The War of Spanish Succession is over, many sailors are out of work, and the thriving American colonies are quickly becoming the place of opportunity. For Sam Bellamy it is the opportunity to become the captain of his own ship.

Who wants to live in a house, wear clean clothes, be good, and go to school every day? Not young Huckleberry Finn, that’s for sure.So Huck runs away, and is soon floating down the great Mississippi River on a raft. With him is Jim, a black slave who is also running away. But life is not always easy for the two friends. And there’s 300 dollars waiting for anyone who catches poor Jim.

A slumbering Georgia community almost chokes on its mint juleps when Hollywood calls to film the true-life (and death) story of a heroic local lawman. Aside from the chaos that trails in the moviemakers' wakes, one person has a very private reason for not wanting the intimate details of the gentleman's life story revealed - his widow, Grace. So begins her inventive, comic crusade to obstruct proceedings, aided and abetted by a cast of quirky eccentrics, including the movie star's personal bodyguard, and a good-hearted ex-con with a private tragedy of his own.

Andre de Laurent is the second son of an extremely wealthy family, which basically means he'll always be number two. That is, until his mother's uncle dies and leaves him a multi-billion-dollar fortune. So what's the trouble? Andre has 60 days to take a wife, and he'll have to remain married for one year or forfeit the inheritance to distant relatives - who are hell-bent on claiming the inheritance as their own.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. Jack London is widely regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent writers of the great outdoors. His stories are raw and, at times, harrowing, but always dependable fare. His work also includes stories on pandemics and bizarre scientific experiments. An author so much more than the usual wrapper proclaims.

When Odile Meével agrees to help smuggle out of the former Soviet Union several works of Communist folk art, this clothing designer doesn't bargain for more than a few days' worth of illicit activities. But by the time she arrives back home in Paris, her partner-in-crime has disappeared. That's not all: her apartment is ransacked for no discernible reason, and she will have already unintentionally set in motion a chain of events that will put her and those closest to her in grave danger.

Everyone knows the Frankenstein monster was played by Boris Karloff. But before Karloff’s memorable portrayal, another famous 1930s Hollywood icon, Bela Lugosi, tested for the part of the monster. The screen test footage was lost for decades, until Valentino, the never-say-die film archivist, gets a hot tip about the whereabouts of the incriminating (for really bad, heavily accented acting) footage. But it comes with a price far greater than the money he’ll have to pay.