Showing results by narrator "Michael Bowen" in All Categories

When Sheriff Jeff McQuede's friend, Barry Dawson, tricks him into attending a Bigfoot convention at the small town of Trails' End, he finds the adventure is only beginning. He is soon invited by the head of the research team, Dr. Adam Kurtz, to hike with them into the isolated mountains below Lost Man's Peak where few people ever venture.

It is the nightmare of every community – a school shooting. In 2001, When a disturbed teenager masterminds this terrible event, everyone in River City is plunged into the darkness that surrounds it. The students and teachers try to survive, and the men and women of RCPD try to save them. But when things go horribly wrong, everyone seems to be looking elsewhere for someone to blame. Officer Katie MacLeod is among many who discover that the nightmare doesn't end when the shooting stops.

It is December 1999, and the spectre of Y2K hangs over the police department. More menacing yet, officers respond to a hate-fueled home invasion robbery. As the entirety of the River City Police Department prepares for possible chaos when the calendar turns over to the year 2000, they also must stop a gang of white supremacists who plan to use that same chaos to mask their biggest crime yet.

At first glance, he was a fine figure of a man. Even the butcher knife buried in the middle of his chest didn’t seriously detract from his good looks. But that corpse, nude except for a pair of mismatched socks - and the butcher knife, of course - is trouble with a capital T for Leroy MacPherson, in whose wheat field the body is dumped, and the rest of his extended family. It’s also trouble for the opponents of the nuclear waste depository the DOE plans to build in the Texas Panhandle.

The protagonist, Brian Durston, is a bright young hotshot who left a big New York ad agency, and the fast track to mega-bucks, to join his uncle's medium-sized firm. Why? His uncle promised to turn over his stake in the agency. The future looks bright until Brian discovers his uncle slumped on his desk with a bullet through his brain.

A Lincoln Continental driven by Amy Steele, wife of millionaire rancher, James Steele, rams a tanker full of gasoline. Instant incineration of both drivers; a probable accident, according to Sergeant Larry Jenner of the Amarillo Police Department. Eight months later, it’s murder, according to Sergeant Ed Schroder of the Special Crimes Unit, and the probable murderer is the widower. Standing between James Steele and Sergeants Jenner and Schroder is John Lloyd Branson, reputed to be the best criminal defense attorney in Texas. In his formal three-piece suits, cowboy boots, Phi Beta Kappa key, he is certainly the most eccentric attorney.

To create excitement, Ruger, a shady dealer at the annual rendezvous flea market, puts up for auction a locked Civil War trunk with contents to be sold sight unseen! That night, the highest bidder, Zeke Jones, is found stabbed to death beside the trunk. Sheriff Jeff McQuede believes Jones has interrupted a robbery in progress. Several people had offered to buy old coins, photos, and medals from him, which indicates to McQuede that Jones had already sold what the robber had been after.

The preacher’s bride is a truck-stop waitress half his age with a reputation that horrifies his congregation and a free and easy way with the male membership. Still, no one expects Reverend David Hailey to stone his wife to death. But that isn’t the worst of Hailey’s acts. Substituting his wife’s body for the Virgin Mary in the Nativity Scene is a worse act of sacrilege than murder. With feelings at a fever pitch in the little Texas town of Canadian, John Lloyd Branson steps in to defend the reverend.

Sheriff Jeff McQuede is called in to investigate the death of Evan Spence, multi-millionaire and owner of Spirit Lake Resort, recently found dead when his boat crashed into rocks. Instead of leaving his vast fortune to his son, Oliver, Spence has formed a trust which includes seven members. Spirit Lake has long been rumored to be the home of a mysterious lake serpent fondly called Jessie, which is similar to Scotland’s infamous Loch Ness Monster.

Someone is killing prostitutes on Amarillo Boulevard after sending each a cryptic invitation to "cleanse your soul in the blood of the lamb." One victim mails a letter to John Lloyd Branson, the Panhandle's most famous lawyer, begging for his help. When she is murdered before she can talk to him, and her appointment is kept by her pimp and his stable of girls, John Lloyd declines any involvement in the case.

The famous Carlo painting Stealer of Horses sells for cash in a small Wyoming town and gallery owner Sheldon Spence gives the $200,000 to his wife, who walks over to the bank to make the deposit...and never returns. A witness claims to have seen a frightened-looking Susan Spence in a battered old Chevy, speeding out of town. And each succeeding clue reveals a different angle on her disappearance.

FEAT DESC

Every city has organized crime. But only River City has a Russian gangster like Valeriy. He’s meticulous, cunning, and willing to sacrifice anything - and anyone - to see his conquest through. In Val’s way are the men and women of the River City Police Department, including rookie B. J. Carson. She’s trying to fill the shoes of a legend while the pressures of patrol and her own past catch up to her. She and her colleagues must unite and work together with a former River City cop turned FBI agent to face down the single biggest organized crime threat River City has ever seen.

Contents: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, Utopia by Thomas More, Utilitarianism byJohn Stuart Mill, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, An Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant, The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, A Confession by Leo Tolstoy, Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, The Madman, His Parables and Poems by Kahlil Gibran, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau.

During World War II, the Night Witches were the only all-female fighting force facing the dreaded German Luftwaffe. These 18 to 23 year-old Russian women became the first in the world to fly combat missions.

This selection includes Tales and Poems: Tales. The Murders in the Rue Morgue ; The Gold-Bug ; The Black Cat ; The Pit and the Pendulum ; The Tell-Tale Heart ; The Fall of the House of Usher ; The Masque of the Red Death ; The Cask of Amontillado ; The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar ; Hop-Frog ; Ligeia ; Morella ; The Oval Portret. Poems. The Raven ; Al Aaraaf ; Annabel Lee ; The Bells ; The City in the Sea ; The Conqueror Worm ; A Dream Within a Dream ; Eldorado ; Eulalie ; The Haunted Palace ; To Helen ; Lenore ; Tamerlane ; Ulalume.

Enterprising Boyd Archer decides to purchase and renovate the old ghost town of Galva, Wyoming, site of the once prosperous Galva Gold Mine. During the mine’s heyday, a strongbox filled with gold and jewelry was stolen in a stagecoach robbery by Max Rigby, the vicious Black Mountain Bandit. This treasure is rumored to be hidden somewhere on his rugged mountain property. As a promotional stunt, in the spirit of fun, Archer advertises a hunt for the missing strongbox. Archer doesn’t count on the ruffians who appear in serious quest.

Times are tough for the River City Police Department. The city budget is collapsing, forcing an already understaffed department to contemplate laying off cops. The community is upset over the handling of recent events, and their anger is impacting the agency from the ground up. Negotiations with the police union are somehow both heated and stagnant at the same time.

In the heart of a raging blizzard Sheriff Jeff McQuede discovers a woman frozen to death in her car. At first he believes her death to be an unfortunate accident - until he finds clues that point to cold-blooded murder. Margaret's husband, Arthur, left her in the stalled vehicle to brave the storm and manages to reach Joe Trevino's isolated ranch. The case becomes more complicated because of the recent warehouse robberies at Trevino's store. McQueede finds that Trevino is Margaret Burnell's business partner and that she has traveled from their Casper store to conduct a company audit.

In a variation of the classic locked room mystery, Attorney John Lloyd Branson and his beautiful, trusted, but often impetuous legal assistant, Lydia Fairchild, scare up ghosts from the past and rattle family skeletons as they try to discover who murdered the young museum curator. It’s no Halloween trick when Brad Hemphill materializes in a locked museum at midnight, the main feature in a prehistoric display. Who among the museum staff would kill the harmless, mild-mannered young curator, and why?