Showing results by narrator "Keith Szarabajka" in All Categories

Simeon thought he was living a good life - solving mysteries, falling in and out of love, risking life and limb to do the right thing. Then the last Simeon Grist mystery was pulped to make newsprint, and he woke up in a room where nothing ever changed except his sense of who he was: His entire existence was a work of fiction that the real world was in the process of forgetting. And when one of his few remaining readers is murdered, Simeon discovers that he can step out of the pages of his books and into the world of the living.

An empty house on the edge of town … a teddy bear abandoned … a half drunk glass of wine … the TV left on and all the computer equipment missing. Where have Hutchinson Kemp and his wife and two children gone? Detective Rondeau is on the verge of cracking up as he pursues the trail of the film-maker and his family who have disappeared without a trace. Rondeau discovers disturbing evidence that big money and government might have something to do with the chilling crime but no one seems to believe him anymore.

Dave Brandstetter's afternoon does not begin well: His ex-boyfriend picks him up at the airport, and the ride home - in bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic - is one long argument between them. The insurance investigator's day gets worse when he finds a man - bloody, rain-soaked, and ice cold - lying on his porch, killed by a stab wound while Dave was out of town. There is a serial killer loose in Los Angeles, and this man is his sixth victim. Like the others, he had already been marked for death - by the unforgiving plague known as AIDS.

From comedian to president to freedom fighter, this is the story of Volodymyr Zelensky, the man who stood up to Vladimir Putin and forever changed the world. The authors of Zelensky chronicle his rise, discuss the changing attitudes toward him by Ukrainians there and abroad, and include some of his most stirring speeches.

Stan Fischler, the dean of American hockey journalists and best-selling author of more than 60 books on hockey, profiles the heroes of Hockeytown in Detroit Red Wings: Greatest Moments and Players. One of the National Hockey League's "Original Six", few teams in professional hockey have enjoyed more success than the franchise in Detroit. Among the players Fischler glorifies are the immortal Gordie Howe, Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, and Sid Abel, all players whose numbers reside on banners in the rafters of Joe Louis Arena.

Several years ago Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sport: what are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula and applied it to thousands of teams across the world from the English Premier League to the NFL. When he was done, he had a list of the 16 most dominant teams ever. At that point he became obsessed with another more complex question: what did these freak teams have in common?

The fight for the future of humanity begins...Jessica Rollins has made it to safety inside the Sanctuary system with the help of Ufuk Erdogmus, but is her mysterious savior really who he says he is? What secrets does he hide? And how is he connected to Dr. Muller? Jess doesn't have much time to ponder these questions, as soon she is fighting again for her life....

After 35 years of living on the Moon, cranky old oxygen farmer Millennium Harrison has stumbled onto a hidden facility in the shadows of the Slayton Ridge Exclusion Zone with a radiation leak and a deadly secret. Mil's discovery leads to the death of a young astronaut, sabotage, murder, and cover-ups that may go all the way to the Chief Administrator of the space agency. Unfortunately, she happens to be Mil's estranged daughter, busy trying to secure her own legacy—the first international mission to Mars.

When Ben Orton's head is found bludgeoned by a heavy flower pot, the people of La Caleta are stunned - not because their police chief has been murdered, but because no one thought to do it sooner. A bruising, violent man, Ben had a commitment to order, but often not law. But as insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter is about to find out, the corruption in Ben's police force did not die with him. By the time Dave arrives, a young activist has already been arrested for the murder. Only Dave seems to care that the evidence against the accused is laughably thin.

In his decades as an insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter has never shied away from violence, and he’s had more than his share of close calls. Time's catching up with him, his body's slowing down, and his wit isn't as sharp as it used to be. But he will forgo retirement once more for the sake of a puzzle no detective could resist. Walking on the beach, a friend finds a bedraggled child who claims he's witnessed a murder. The victim is a drug-addicted pop star, and the obvious suspect is the dead man’s ex-girlfriend - a junkie whom the child saw standing over the body.

Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has spent the last few years drifting in and out of retirement. For the sake of his boyfriend, Cecil, he has attempted to forgo dangerous jobs. But when a close friend’s death sends Dave into a depressive funk, Cecil recognizes that work is the only cure. During a high-stakes paintball game, a hardcore supremacist gets hit by a very real bullet. Although the police claim the death was accidental - nothing but a stray round from a nearby hunting preserve - Dave knows that a man this hated seldom dies by chance.

Russell Mullins has left intelligence work. When his wife died of cancer, Rusty quit the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a private protection company in Washington, DC, and is assigned to guard Paul Luguire, a Federal Reserve executive and chief liaison with the US Treasury. Mullins and Luguire form a strong friendship. So when a police detective calls in the middle of the night with word of Luguire’s suicide, Mullins doesn’t buy it.

His doubts are reinforced by Amanda Church, a former Secret Service colleague now in the Federal Reserve’s cybersecurity unit. She uncovered a suspicious financial transaction initiated by Luguire only days before his death.

Simeon Grist knows LA inside and out - the sex for sale, the chic seductions, every rip-off from City Hall to Venice. So when he's hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she's entangled in the Church of the Eternal Moment - a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium.

A Is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull, along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan’s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind....

A routine visit to one of Sam Acquillo's job sites becomes anything but. The home's owner, Victor Bollings, is lying in a pool of blood, the back of his head bashed in. One of Sam's closest friends in the cabinetry trade is quickly behind bars as the obvious suspect. For the cops, this is all standard operating procedure. But as it turns out, nothing about the case is routine, obvious, or standard in any way.

A gripping new thriller about a medical doctor with a powerful humanitarian impulse, an unhealthy appetite for risk, and a knack for finding himself between a rock and a hard place. Adam Knox comes from a long line of patrician Connecticut doctors - a line he broke to serve with an NGO in the war-torn Central African Republic. His attempt to protect his patients there from a brutal militia ended in disaster and disgrace, and now he runs a clinic near Los Angeles’s Skid Row, making ends meet by making house calls - cash only, no questions asked.

Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the post-traumatic stress disorder that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel he hung on long enough to get into recovery.

Ghosts are everywhere - whether you believe in them or not. Every town has its local legends, and countless books, movies, and television shows are haunted by their presence. But our obsession with ghosts runs deeper than we know - and is embedded in the very fabric of American history. Writer and historian Marc Hartzman dons the mantle of tour guide, taking listeners on a fascinating journey through supernatural history.

Lightening and thunder flashed over Bavaria as, in his private laboratory, Victor Frankenstein struggled to bring to life a creature constructed from pieces of the dead - only to find himself confronted by an inhuman monster beyond his control. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as well as countless horror movies, has made the legend of Frankenstein and his monster famous throughout the world. But what really happened on that dark and stormy night - and in the terrible months that followed? Now, in his own words, the monster reveals the true story of his strange existence.

Simeon Grist is about to face off against his most terrifying adversary - a madman who's setting fire to the homeless. As Simeon is drawn into the case, very much against his will, he realizes that the "Incinerator" has a huge advantage. Somewhere, years ago, the two of them met, and the Incinerator has been nursing hatred and resentment for years. Now, as helpless people burst into flame on Skid Row, Simeon has to scour the wastelands of Los Angeles, and his own past, looking for the face of a killer.