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A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism and an unexpected connection between themselves.
Contagiously exciting, it's about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives. |
 Audio Book (MP3) [ 214.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008  Audio Book (WMA) [ 109.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
"An intelligent, ingeniously plotted, utterly engrossing thriller that is variously a serial-killer saga, a search for a missing person and an informed glimpse into the worlds of journalism and business . . . Lisbeth is a punk Watson to Mikael's dapper Holmes, and she's the coolest crime-fighting sidekick to come along in many years." Washington Post
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book A Friday in November
It happened every year, was almost a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, as usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the telephone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same day--which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the call.
"It arrived."
"What is it this year?"
"I don't know what kind it is. I'll have to get someone to tell me what it is. It's white."
"No letter, I suppose."
"Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last year. One of those do-it-yourself ones."
"Postmark?"
"Stockholm."
"Handwriting?"
"Same as always, all in capitals. Upright, neat lettering."
With that, the subject was exhausted, and not another word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned back in his kitchen chair and drew on his pipe. He knew he was no longer expected to come up with a pithy comment or any sharp question which would shed a new light on the case. Those days had long since passed, and the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling.
The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette. It was a plant about ten centimetres high with small, heather-like foliage and a white flower with five petals about two centimetres across.
The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where it was to be found among tussocks of grass. There it was called Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her report that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more common cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in abundance in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pink dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge.
Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers Rock.
The botanist said that she herself had never seen one before, but after consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been made to introduce the plant at a nursery in Göteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to grow in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate and had to remain indoors half of the year. It would not thrive in calcareous soil and it had to be watered from below. It needed pampering.
The fact of its being so rare a flower ought to have made it easier to trace the source of this particular specimen, but in practice it was an impossible task. There was no registry to look it up in, no licences to explore. Anywhere from a handful to a few hundred enthusiasts could have had access to seeds or plants. And...
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The shadowy side of the Sunshine State, where blood runs cold even in the tropical heat, is the tantalizing, terrifying territory few know better than James Swain. His razor-sharp tales of criminals, cops, and South Florida--style suspense bite like a hungry gator and never let go.
The past has come back to haunt P.I. Jack Carpenter, former head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit. As a young cop he failed to stop the kidnapping of a college coed by a shockingly large assailant--and neither of them was ever seen again. The abduction has remained Carpenter's most chilling cold case, and even now the mystery of the missing girl lurks in his darkest dreams. But after eighteen years, it's about to become terrifying reality once more.
When his daughter, Jessie, asks him to bird-dog a camera-toting creep who's been shadowing her college basketball team, Carpenter's hot pursuit of the video voyeur leads him smack into another run-in with his old hulking nemesis, who abducts one of Jessie's teammates. While the Broward County cops are determined to pin the rap on a convenient suspect, Carpenter isn't about to let grim history repeat itself--especially when he discovers a pattern of unsolved kidnappings involving the same massive perp.
With the eager assistance of the kidnap victim's high-powered tycoon father, the uneasy cooperation of his old unit's new commander, and precious little time before the trail goes cold, Jack and his trusty dog, Buster, hit the ground running. And they'll need all the help they can get--including backup from an FBI man with a personal stake in the hunt--as they follow a twisted trail from the ruins of a shuttered mental asylum with an infamous past to the streets of a sinister small town with a ghastly secret.
With smooth-talking, uncompromising hero Jack Carpenter as guide, The Night Monster is an exhilarating journey into the heart of the American underworld. Bestselling author James Swain's fiendish plotting and energetic pacing will keep you electrified straight through till morning.
From the Hardcover edition. |
"Easily a top candidate for best crime novel of the year." Lansing State Journal
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Prologue Cops aren't supposed to get frightened. The badge and the uniform and the gun strapped to a cop's side are intended to ward off the normal fears that most people experience when confronted by unspeakable horror and evil.
But it doesn't always work out that way. Cops get scared, just like everyone else. Sometimes they get so scared, they run for their lives. Other times, they get shaken to the core and never forget the things they've seen. It happened to me, two years into the job.
I was going home in my cruiser when I got the distress call. A woman was being assaulted at the Sunny Isle apartment complex, and a neighbor had called 911. Sunny Isle was a mile from where I lived, so I took the call.
According to the dispatcher, a college student named Naomi Dunn was being assaulted by a man inside her apartment. It had sounded like a domestic disturbance, something I'd dealt with many times as a cop. When the dispatcher had asked if I wanted backup, I'd said no, I could handle the situation. The dispatcher had told me to proceed with caution.
I arrived at Sunny Isle a few minutes later. Four orange stucco buildings made up the complex, with entrances from each apartment facing a courtyard containing a pool and a children's play area. It had started to rain, and there were white caps on the water.
I searched for a place to park. The lot was filled with junkers, many with student tags. Several had bumper stickers that said Clinton in '92! I'd read about the Arkansas governor's run for president, and didn't think he had a chance.
I parked and got out of my cruiser. There was a yellow rain slicker in the trunk, but I didn't bother to retrieve it. I was a native, and was used to getting drenched by the occasional downpour.
Walking into the courtyard, I scanned the unmarked stucco buildings. They were quiet, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I walked around for a few minutes, then decided to leave. It had been a long day, and I wanted to eat dinner with my wife and two- year- old daughter, then hit the books. I was studying to become a detective, and the lengthy test was weighing heavily on my mind.
"Officer! Officer!"
A ghostlike woman materialized by the pool. Dressed in a simple black housedress, her soaking wet hair was plastered to her head.
"Did you call the police?" I asked.
"That was me."
Her voice was trembling, and she was shaking from head to toe. I couldn't tell if there was something wrong with her, or if she was just plain scared.
"What's the problem?" I asked.
"Earlier I saw a large man lurking around the complex. Then I heard noises from Naomi Dunn's apartment. She was screaming, so I called nine- one- one."
"Is Naomi Dunn still in her apartment?"
"Yes." The woman pointed at the last building, on the ground floor. "He's still in there, hurting her."
"Do you know who he is?"
"No, but he was huge."
I started to walk toward the building, and the ghostly woman called after me.
"Take your gun out," she said.
The words made me freeze. I'd been trained not to draw my weapon unless my life was being threatened. The tone of her warning said that it was. Unstrapping my holster, I rested my hand on my gun's handle.
"Please go inside your apartment and lock your door," I said.
"Yes,...
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Murder, a missing woman, and a sociopath from the past sweep Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus into a labyrinth of mystery and danger in this electrifying new tale of suspense from New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman. . . .
Fifteen years ago, high school senior Chris Whitman went to jail for murdering his girlfriend, Cheryl Diggs. Propelled by a misguided sense of chivalry, he confessed, determined to save another classmate, the beautiful and vulnerable Terry McLaughlin, from having to testify at his trial. When the truth came out, Chris was released from prison, married Terry—pregnant with his child—and changed his last name to Donatti. He also became a professional killer. Peter Decker was the detective on the case, and over the years, he and Terry kept in touch. Now his friend is in L.A. and asking for a favor. Though Decker knows full well that getting involved will bring Terry's sociopathic husband back into his life, the obsessive and duty-bound LAPD lieutenant reluctantly agrees. The favor soon becomes complicated when Terry goes missing and Donatti disappears, leaving their fourteen-year-old son, Gabe, with no one to turn to except Decker and his wife, Rina Lazarus. But Peter's search for Terry must share center stage with a gruesome murder. Adrianna Blanc, a neonatal nurse at St. Timothy's Hospital, had signed off her night shift at eight a.m. Six hours later, a foreman supervising the construction of a house in a nearby suburb discovered her body swinging from the rafters, a cable wire around her neck. Her car was found where she had parked it the night before, with no signs of foul play. A dedicated and conscientious professional, Adrianna had a circle of close friends. Yet as Decker and his able team soon learn, the young woman also had her share of detractors. A party-hearty girl, she enjoyed booze, kinky sex, and revenge-cheating on her boyfriend, Garth Hammerling, another nurse at St. Tim's. Suspicions heat up when Decker and his team find that one of Adrianna's last phone calls was a provocative and disturbing message to her vacationing boyfriend—who himself has vanished without a trace. Was Adrianna's death something personal because of her carefree lifestyle? Or was this unusually cruel and very dramatic murder the first signs of a serial killer? With lives hanging in the balance, Decker and his colleagues, Sergeant Marge Dunn and Detective Scott Oliver, need to find answers and fast. As if juggling two investigations weren't enough for the lieutenant (not to mention turning sixty!), things are becoming even more dangerous with his precarious home life. Ever the concerned parent, Decker wants to look after Terry's son, Gabe. Yet who will protect his own family? Because if there's one thing he knows for sure, with a sociopath like Donatti on the loose, no one is ever really safe. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 188.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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| D.C. Detective Alex Cross has seen a lot of crime scenes. But even he is appalled by the gruesome murders of two joggers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park - killings that look more like the work of savage beasts than humans. Local police are horrified and even the FBI is baffled. Then, as Cross is called in to take on the case, the carnage takes off, leaving a trail of bodies across America and sweeping him to Savannah, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Los Angeles…as his nemesis, the merciless criminal known as the Mastermind, stalks him, taunts him, and, once again, threatens everything he holds dear... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 233.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2005 Audio Book (WMA) [ 119.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2005
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Things look full of promise for Alex Cross. His new job with the FBI is prestigious and exciting. But no sooner has he gone in for orientation, when all hell breaks loose. An all - women team of kidnappers has been snatching successful, upstanding men and women right before their families' eyes... possibly to sell them into slavery. Alex's knowledge of the D.C. streets, together with is unique insights into criminal psychology, make this mind bending case one that only he can solve... if he can just get his colleagues to set aside their staid and outdated methods. With unexpected twists and whiplash surprises, this is another brilliantly irresistible audio program from America's bestselling thriller writer. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 235.2 Mb ] Street Date: Saturday, November 1, 2003 Audio Book (WMA) [ 120.0 Mb ] Street Date: Saturday, November 1, 2003
$13.95 $9.77
| Michael Anstruther-Wetherby is a man destined for power. Except that Michael, for all his political skill and intelligence, lacks the most important element of success: a wife.
So he goes searching for his ideal bride, a gently bred, well-managed young lady. Michael discovers such a paragon, but finds a formidable obstacle in his path, the young lady's beautiful, strong-minded aunt, Caroline Sutcliffe. Caro has lived through an unhappy political marriage, and wants nothing of the sort for her niece, especially as the young woman has already lost her heart to another.
Caro and the younger woman hatch a plot - Caro will demonstrate why an inexperienced young lady is not the bride for him. In deflecting Michael's matrimonial attentions away from her niece, Caro unwittingly focuses them on herself. And then it is Michael's turn to be persuasive, a task that requires every ounce of his seductive charm.
A series of mysterious and dangerous accidents befall Caro - it becomes clear that an assailant has stepped in with his or her own idea for Caro's future - one that could even involve murder. Before Caro can become Michael's ideal bride, they must race to uncover the unknown's identity before all hope of what they long for, and wish for, is destroyed. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 140.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2004 Audio Book (WMA) [ 71.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 7, 2004
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| Teaming up with a female San Francisco detective, Detective Alex Cross investigates a macabre series of killings, and finds himself inside a menacing and bizarre world where play acting explodes into bloodlust and frenzy. Cross will need all of his survival skills to catch this murderer—before someone else is killed. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 177.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2005 Audio Book (WMA) [ 90.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 1, 2005
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| Synopsis not available yet. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 53.2 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 27.1 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, January 6, 2010
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In Steelton, a newly revitalized city, two prominent men are found dead. One, Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of a company building a new baseball stadium appears to have died from an accidental overdose of heroin. The other, Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney is the victim of a ritual murder. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection? The question falls to Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz, called the Dark Lady by defense lawyers for her relentless, sometimes ruthless style. Making her way through a maze of corruption, deceit, and greed, trusting no one, Stella comes to believe that the search for the truth involves the bleak history of Steelton itself - a history that now endangers her future, and perhaps her life. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 411.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 210.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2007
"ENGROSSING . . . TRUE SUSPENSE." San Francisco Chronicle
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Chapter One
In the moments before the brutal murder of Jack Novak ended what she later thought of as her time of innocence, Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz gazed down at the waterfront of her native city, Steelton.
At thirty-eight, Stella would not have called herself an innocent. Nor was the view from her corner office one that lightened her heart. The afternoon sky was a close, sunless cobalt, typical of Steelton in winter. The sludge-gray Onandaga River divided the city as it met Lake Erie beneath a steel bridge: the valley carved by the river was a treeless expanse of railroad tracks, boxcars, refineries, cranes, chemical plants, and, looming over all of this, the smokestacks of the steel mills--squat, black, and enormous--on which Steelton's existence had once depended. From early childhood, Stella could remember the stench of mill smoke, the stain left on the white blouse of her school uniform drying on her mother's clothesline; from her time in night law school, she recalled the evening that the river had exploded in a stunning instant of spontaneous combustion caused by chemical waste and petroleum derivatives, the flames which climbed five stories high against the darkness. Between these two moments--the apogee of the mills and the explosion of the river--lay the story of a city and its decline.
By heritage, Stella herself was part of this story. The mills had boomed after the Civil War, manned by the earliest wave of immigrants--Germans and British, Welsh and Irish--who, in the early 1870s, had worked fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Their weekly pay was $11.50; in 1874, years of seething resentment ignited a strike, with angry workers demanding twenty-five cents more a week. The leading owner, Amasa Hall, shut down his mills, informing the strikers that, upon reopening, he would give jobs only to those who agreed to a fifty-cent cut. When the strikers refused, Hall boarded his yacht and embarked on a cruise around the world.
Hall stopped at Danzig, then a Polish seaport on the Baltic. He advertised extensively for young workers, offering the kingly wage of $7.25 a week and free transport to America. The resulting wave of Polish strikebreakers--poor, hardworking, Roman Catholic, and largely illiterate--had included Stella's great-grandfather, Carol Marzewski. It was on their backs that Amasa Hall had, quite systematically, undercut and eventually wiped out the other steel producers in the area, acquiring their mills and near-total sway over the region's steel industry. And it was the slow, inexorable decline of those same mills into sputtering obsolescence which had left Stella's father, Armin Marz, unemployed and bitter.
Recalling the flames which had leaped from the Onandaga, a brilliant orange-blue against the night sky, had reminded Stella of another memory from childhood, the East Side riots. Just as the West Side of Steelton was home to European immigrants--the first wave had been joined by Italians, Russians, Poles, Slovaks, and Austro-Hungarians--so the city's industry had drawn a later influx of migrants from the American South, the descendants of former slaves, to the eastern side of the Onandaga. But these newcomers were less welcomed, by employers or the heretofore all-white labor force. Stella could not remember a time in her old neighborhood, Warszawa, when the black interlopers were not viewed with suspicion and contempt; the fiery explosion of the East Side into riots in the sixties--three days of arson and shootouts with police--had helped convert this into fear and hatred. A last trickle of nonwhites--Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Koreans,...
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Gentle by name, gentle by nature. Everyone in the sleepy Scottish town of Lochdubh adores elderly Mrs. Gentle--everyone but Hamish Macbeth, that is. Hamish thinks the gentle lady is quite sly and vicious, and the citizens of Lochdubh think he is overly cranky. Perhaps it's time for him to get married, they say. But who has time for marriage when there's a murder to be solved? When Mrs. Gentle dies under mysterious circumstances, the town is shocked and outraged. Chief Detective Inspector Blair suspects members of her family, but Hamish Macbeth thinks there's more to the story, and begins investigating the truth behind this lady's gentle exterior. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 159.7 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, February 11, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 81.4 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, February 11, 2008
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From the New York Times bestselling author of Under and Alone comes an intimate and riveting account of federal law-enforcement agent William Queen's relentless hunt for one of America's most cold-blooded criminals.
As an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, William Queen must tackle a number of challenging cases, including going undercover to investigate a group of violent skinheads and infiltrating and busting a ring trafficking in high-powered explosives, drugs, and firearms. In the winter of 1985, he faces his toughest mission to date: he must apprehend Mark Stephens, a notorious narcotics trafficker who has been terrorizing the communities around Los Angeles with frequent rampages involving machine guns and hand grenades. A recluse living in the treacherous backwoods outside the city, Stephens is a cunning survivalist. Nobody has been able to catch him, but Queen is determined to take him down. Queen's unique expertise is not taught in any police academy or ATF training seminar--he honed his outdoorsman abilities as a kid. Stephens may have finally met his match in the unwavering Queen, who is adept at hunting and trapping and living for weeks in the wild. Queen will use these skills--along with surveillance, confidential informants, and intelligence gathering--as he doggedly tracks his dangerous quarry, a chase that culminates in a gripping showdown high in the San Bernardino Mountains.
A fascinating look into the daily life of an ATF agent and a taut portrayal of a monthlong manhunt, Armed and Dangerous depicts a classic race against time--lawman versus outlaw--in a harrowing true story of life-or-death suspense.
From the Hardcover edition. |
 Adobe Digital Edition [ 1.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 Microsoft Reader [ 0.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 MobiPocket (OD) [ 0.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 eReader [ 0.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 Audio Book (MP3) [ 159.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 81.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 3, 2007
"Gripping . . . fascinating and well-told, creating a vivid picture of the risks in undercover work." Cleveland Plain Dealer
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! Chapter 1
Everyone called him the mountain man. They said he was the most dangerous, gun-crazy renegade seen in the hills and valleys of Southern California since the days of the Wild West outlaws. The local police departments and sheriffs' offices all said it would be next to impossible for any cop or federal agent to bring him down alive from his mountaintop hideout.
In April 1986, when I first caught wind of Mark Stephens--this "mountain man" terrorizing the Inland Empire communities (those in Riverside and San Bernardino counties)--I was only in my third year as a special agent with the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But I'd been a law enforcement officer for over a decade, and I'd made my bones as a local cop in North Carolina and as a federal border patrol agent before becoming an ATF agent--I'd certainly heard my share of war stories. Some so-called badass or another was always being touted as the hardest, most cold- blooded criminal in the county, the scariest dude to make the most- wanted lists. I seen this guy whip a dozen cops, other cops would tell you. This guy, he ain't gonna be taken alive. He's crazy. If you try to get cuffs on him, he'll kill you. Ninety-five percent of the times when I confronted these so-called tough guys, all the fight instantly drained out of them. Their ruthlessness turned out to be nothing more than a front, an actor's persona. When I cornered them, they folded up, dropped their guns, and surrendered without so much as a peep.
But there are those few criminals out there who are righteously bad. Guys who won't give up without a fight. And when you do decide to confront them, you'd better be ready to fight for your life.
Mark Stephens was one such criminal. Stephens was the real McCoy, the most brazen and fearless criminal I encountered in my early years with ATF. He proved to be equal parts gunman, mountain man, drug trafficker, and out-and-out thug.
Mark Stephens was a paradox for a criminal investigator. He didn't fit the stereotype: He didn't come from the wrong side of the tracks and wasn't abused as a kid; he wasn't semiliterate or lacking in career opportunities. His parents were well-educated, fairly affluent people who lived in an upscale neighborhood in Rancho Cucamonga, a city of nearly one hundred thousand, located under the majestic San Gabriel mountain range in the Inland Empire, thirty-seven miles east of my ATF desk in downtown Los Angeles.
Sometimes the path to a criminal personality can't be easily explained; the factors that determine one's character defy reason. Mark Stephens wasn't a typical bully, the kind of person who seemed to get emotional gratification from picking on the weak. It didn't make any difference to him whether you were male or female, old or young, black or white--if you stood in his way, he was going to hurt you. Stephens was a man who had no conscience when it came to taking what he wanted by force. And he'd learned early on in life that hurting people was the way to get what he wanted. The intelligent man locked inside of him may have known that violence was wrong, that he had an uncontrollable problem. But violence physically possessed him; it was an overwhelming force he simply couldn't rein in. He understood that it would land him in prison one day, and prison wasn't an option for Stephens. So he decided to separate himself from society--literally. He headed for the hills, disappearing into the vast, impenetrable San Bernardino Mountains.
Stephens put together a basic plan. He would live off the land. He'd grow marijuana in prodigious quantities, smoke as...
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NO LOVE LOST – The Kings aren’t like other families. They are bound together by a hatred as vast as their oil-rich Texas ranch – and the purse strings of a fortune held by the cold matriarch of their wealthy clan. Helen King’s five children have as little love for her as they do for each other. So, when her eldest son, Howard, is shot to death in his Dallas home, there is no shortage of suspects. As administrator of the King fortune, he was the focus for his siblings’ deepest resentment. Everyone has a motive, no one has an alibi – and Matthew, who has always been the family peacekeeper, admits he was at the scene shortly before the murder...and saw nothing. As the police close in on the killer, Matthew faces an unwanted choice: loyalty to a family that’s never understood love...or saving his own skin. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 258.1 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 131.7 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008
$9.95 $6.97
| A BRUTAL LEGACY OF CRUELTY AND HATE IS AWAKENED IN THE BAYOU When Sonny Boy Marsallus returns to New Iberia after fleeingfor Central America to avoid the wrath of the powerful Giacanafamily, his old troubles soon follow. Meanwhile DaveRobicheaux becomes entangled in the affairs of the Fontenotfamily, descendants of sharecroppers whose matriarch helpedraise Dave as a child. They are in danger of losing the landthey've lived on for more than a century. As Dave tries to discover who wants the land so badly, he findshimself in increasing peril from a lethal, rag tag alliance oflocal mobsters and a hired assassin with a shady past. Andwhen a seemingly innocent woman is brutally murdered, allroads intersect, and Sonny Boy is in the middle. With the usual James Lee Burke combination of brilliantaction and unforgettable characters, Burning Angel isthe author at his best -- showing that old hatreds and newones are not that far apart. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 88.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 45.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 5, 2006
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When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favors, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer’s wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie Perine, is the only innocent in his life. What we don’t know is how Spade became who he is. Now Spade & Archer completes the picture.
1921: Spade sets up his own agency in San Francisco and clients quickly start coming through the door. The next seven years will see him dealing with booze runners, waterfront thugs, stowaways, banking swindlers, gold smugglers, bumbling cops, and the illegitimate daughter of Sun Yat-sen. He’ll bring in Archer as a partner, though it was Archer who stole his girl while he was fighting in World War I. He’ll tangle with a villain who never loses his desire to make Spade pay big for ruining what should’ve been the perfect crime. And he’ll fall in love–though it won’t turn out for the best. It never does with dames . . .
Spade & Archer is a gritty, pitch-perfect, hard-boiled novel–the work of a master mystery writer–destined to become a classic in its own right.
From the Compact Disc edition. |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 127.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
"Gores delivers the streets gritty, the action hard-boiled and the feel of late-night mist seeping into your bones. . . . Hammett would have approved." San Francisco Chronicle
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Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Spade's Last Case
It was thirteen minutes short of midnight. Drizzle glinted through the wind-danced lights on the edge of the Tacoma Municipal Dock. A man a few years shy of thirty stood in a narrow aisle between two tall stacks of crated cargo, almost invisible in a black hooded rain slicker. He had a long bony jaw, a flexible mouth, a jutting chin. His nose was hooked. He was six feet tall, with broad, steeply sloping shoulders.
He stayed in the shadows while the scant dozen passengers disembarked from the wooden-hulled steam-powered passenger ferry Virginia V, just in from Seattle via the Colvos Passage. His cigarette was cupped in one palm as if to shield it from the rain, or perhaps to conceal its glowing ember from watching eyes.
The watcher stiffened when the last person off the Virginia V was a solid, broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, dressed in a brown woolen suit. His red heavy-jawed face was made for joviality, but his small brown eyes were wary, constantly moving.
The passenger went quickly along the dock toward a narrow passageway that led to the city street beyond. The watcher, well behind, ambled after him. The first man had started through the passageway when he was jumped by two bulky, shadowy figures. There were grunts of effort, curses, the sound of blows, the scrape of leather soles on wet cobbles as the men struggled.
The watcher announced his arrival by jamming his lighted cigarette into the eye of one attacker. The man screamed, stumbled unevenly away holding a hand over his eye. The second attacker broke free and fled.
"'Lo, Miles."
Miles Archer, holding a handkerchief to his bloodied nose, said thickly through the bunched-up cloth, "Uh... thanks, Sam."
"Wobblies?" asked Sam Spade.
"Wobblies. Who else?"
They went down the passageway toward the street. Archer was limping. He had the thick neck and slightly soft middle of an athletic man going to seed.
"They finally made you as undercover for Burns?"
"Took 'em long enough," Archer bragged. He looked over at Spade. "Back with Continental, huh? Uh...?how'd you find me?"
"Wasn't looking. Was staked out for a redheaded paper hanger out of Victoria."
"I saw him miss the ferry in Seattle."
Spade nodded, put a smile on his face that did not touch his eyes. "Belated congratulations on your marriage, Miles."
"Yeah, uh, thanks, Sam." Something sly and delighted seemed suddenly to dance in Archer's heavy, coarse voice. "We're living over in Spokane so's she can keep working at Graham's Bookstore, even though I'm down here most of the time. Tough on the little lady, but what can she do?"
Spade was at a table set for afternoon tea when the fortyish matron entered from Spokane's Sprague Avenue. The Davenport Hotel's vast Spanish-patio-style lobby was elegant, with a mezzanine above and, on the ground floor, an always-burning wood fireplace. When the woman paused in the doorway he stood. His powerful, conical, almost bearlike body kept his gray woolen suit coat from fitting well.
She crossed to him. She had wide-set judging eyes and a small, disapproving mouth.
"I am Mrs. Hazel Cahill. And you are..."
He gave a slight, almost elegant bow. "Samuel Spade."
Mrs. Cahill set her Spanish-leather handbag on one of the chairs, stripped off her kidskin gloves,...
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After a lifetime on the front lines, Army Ranger John Holliday has resigned himself to ending his career teaching at West Point. But when his uncle passes away, Holliday discovers a mysterious medieval sword—wrapped in Adolf Hitler's personal battle standard. Then someone burns down his uncle's house in an attempt to retrieve the sword, and Holliday realizes that he's being drawn into a war that has been fought for centuries. Accompanied by his adventurous niece Peggy, Holliday must delve into the past and piece together the puzzle that was his uncle's life and his involvement with the enigmatic warriors known as the Knights Templar. But his search for answers soon becomes a race against ruthless, cunning opponents willing to die for their cause...and to kill Holliday for daring to uncover their past. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 281.9 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, August 23, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 143.8 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, August 23, 2010
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James Lee Burke's eagerly awaited new novel finds Detective Dave Robicheaux back in New Iberia, Louisiana, and embroiled in the most harrowing and dangerous case of his career. Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn't fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalized victim psychopaths usually prey upon. Robicheaux and his best friend, Clete Purcel, confront Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating by Purcel, in front of numerous witnesses, the case takes a nasty turn, and Clete's career and life are hanging by threads over the abyss. Adding to Robicheaux's troubles is the matter of his daughter, Alafair, on leave from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard, celebrated novelist and scion of a once prominent Louisiana family whose fortunes are slowly sinking into the corruption of Louisiana's subculture. Abelard's association with bestselling ex-convict author Robert Weingart, a man who uses and discards people like Kleenex, causes Robicheaux to fear that Alafair might be destroyed by the man she loves. As his daughter seems to drift away from him, he wonders if he has become a victim of his own paranoia. But as usual, Robicheaux's instincts are proven correct and he finds himself dealing with a level of evil that is greater than any enemy he has confronted in the past. Set against the backdrop of an Edenic paradise threatened by pernicious forces, James Lee Burke's The Glass Rainbow is already being hailed as perhaps the best novel in the Robicheaux series. |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 436.0 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Audio Book (MP3) [ 184.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 222.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 94.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010
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CHAPTER
1 THE ROOM I had rented in an old part of Natchez seemed more reflective of New Orleans than a river town in Mississippi. The ventilated storm shutters were slatted with a pink glow, as soft and filtered and cool in color as the spring sunrise can be in the Garden District, the courtyard outside touched with mist off the river, the pastel walls deep in shadow and stained with lichen above the flower beds, the brick walkways smelling of damp stone and the wild spearmint that grew in green clusters between the bricks. I could see the shadows of banana trees moving on the window screens, the humidity condensing and threading along the fronds like veins in living tissue. I could hear a ship's horn blowing somewhere out on the river, a long hooting sound that was absorbed and muted inside the mist, thwarting its own purpose. A wood-bladed fan revolved slowly above my bed, the incandescence of the lightbulbs attached to it reduced to a dim yellow smudge inside frosted-glass shades that were fluted to resemble flowers. The wood floor and the garish wallpaper and the rain spots on the ceiling belonged to another era, one that was outside of time and unheedful of the demands of commerce. Perhaps as a reminder of that fact, the only clock in the room was a round windup mechanism that possessed neither a glass cover nor hands on its face. There are moments in the Deep South when one wonders if he has not wakened to a sunrise in the spring of 1862. And in that moment, maybe one realizes with a guilty pang that he would not find such an event entirely unwelcome. At midmorning, inside a pine-wooded depression not far from the Mississippi, I found the man I was looking for. His name was Jimmy Darl Thigpin, and the diminutive or boylike image his name suggested, as with many southern names, was egregiously misleading. He was a gunbull of the old school, the kind of man who was neither good nor bad, in the way that a firearm is neither good nor bad. He was the kind of man whom you treat with discretion and whose private frame of reference you do not probe. In some ways, Jimmy Darl Thigpin was the lawman all of us fear we might one day become. He sat atop a quarter horse that was at least sixteen hands high, his back erect, a cut-down double-barrel twelve-gauge propped on his thigh, the saddle creaking under his weight. He wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt to protect his arms from mosquitoes, and a beat-up, tall-crown cowboy hat in the apparent belief that he could prevent a return of the skin cancer that had shriveled one side of his face. To my knowledge, in various stages of his forty-year career, he had killed five men, some inside the prison system, some outside, one in an argument over a woman in a bar. His charges were all black men, each wearing big-stripe green-and-white convict jumpers and baggy pants, some wearing leather-cuffed ankle restraints. They were felling trees, chopping off the limbs for burning, stacking the trunks on a flatbed truck, the heat from the fire so intense it gave off no smoke. When he saw me park on the road, he dismounted and broke open the breech of his shotgun, cradling it over his left forearm, exposing the two shells in the chambers, effectively disarming his weapon. But in spite of his show of deference for my safety, there was no pleasure in his expression when he shook hands, and his eyes never left his charges. "We appreciate your calling us, Cap," I said. "It looks like you're still running a tight ship." Then I thought about what I had just said. There are instances when the exigencies of...
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