Stuart Fiction

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Never before in audio, these vintage stories are the darkest of the dark, and the best of the best.

Crime fiction fans old and new will delight in rediscovering these taut, character-rich, heart-stopping tales, now on audio for the first time.

Stone Barrington is back in New York, and after a rather harrowing sojourn in Key West, he's looking to stay closer to home and work on some simple divorce and custody cases for Woodman & Weld. But when he crosses paths with a fetching Broadway actress-and sometime lip model- Stone gets a little more deeply involved with business than he'd expected. When his new lady love turns out to be a lady with a shady past, Stone and downtown cop Dino Bacchetti realize that her beauty may have an unusually high price.

She steps into the room and it’s like going back in time. Catapulting her right into the heart of the 1940s. The spindle of the record player frozen and ready to play. The flowery wallpaper faded but intact. A soldier’s uniform pressed and hung on a door, coal still in the fireplace.

Stone Barrington is back in the exciting new adventure from perennial fan favorite Stuart Woods. It’s not often that Stone Barrington finds a woman as accustomed to the jet-set lifestyle as he, so he’s pleasantly surprised when he meets a gorgeous pilot who’s soon moving to New York, and available for closer acquaintance. Their travels together lead them from Wichita to Europe, but trailing them is some unwanted baggage: His new lady love’s unstable, criminal ex-boyfriend. And while Stone is fending off his newest adversary, trouble is brewing on the international stage.

Mary Stewart's stunning Arthurian saga that began with The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment continues with The Wicked Day, the story of the clash between King Arthur and his bastard son, Mordred. Born of an incestuous relationship between King Arthur and his half-sister, and prophesied by Merlin to kill Arthur, Mordred is stolen away from his mother and raised in secrecy by a kind couple on an isolated Orkney island in the hopes that he will defy his fate.

Berlin, 1945: Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the camp, Ester gave birth to a tiny fair-haired infant, only for her precious baby to be snatched from her and taken to a German family. Now the war is over, Ester longs to find her little girl.

Daisy meets Adam on their first day of university. Immediately, they become friends. But when tongues wag and their relationship is questioned, Adam shares his secret with Daisy, who promises to stand by him. When their grandmother dies, Adam’s older brother Ryan returns from abroad, and Daisy quickly falls for him. After a troubled upbringing at the hands of a drunken mother and jailbird father, Adam and Ryan have only each other. In adulthood, their bond holds firm, glued together by Daisy with whom they are now both in love.

When someone takes aim at Rhonda Rhino, FunJungle's pregnant (and endangered) Asian greater one-horned rhinoceros, the zoo steps up security measures in order to protect this rare animal and her baby. But the extra security isn't enough - someone is still getting too close for comfort. Teddy and company start to suspect that whoever is after Rhonda is really after her horn, which is worth a lot of money on the black market.

Iron Man and Captain America are two core members of the Avengers, the world's greatest superhero team. But when a tragic battle blows a hole in the city of Stamford, killing hundreds of people, the US government demands that all superheroes unmask and register their powers. To Tony Stark - Iron Man - it's a regrettable but necessary step. To Captain America, it's an unbearable assault on civil liberties.

Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor.

The last reward Kira Demirci expected for heroism in a time of war was to spend the rest of her life dodging assassins - but when her government betrays her as part of their surrender, she and her comrades flee the star system of Apollo to the edge of civilized space. The Syntactic Cluster is disorganized, disunified, and in desperate need of the nova fighters Kira smuggled out of Apollo with her. With an entire squadron supposed to follow in her wake, it falls to her to build a new home for her comrades.

As Molly Dark knows all too well, the problem with being able to see ghosts is that they never tell you what you wish to know. For instance, how a proper young lady like Miss Dark is supposed to support an impoverished family after her father has died a ruined man. Or how she is going to impersonate a missing princess long enough to steal a fortune out from under the collective noses of a whole family of royal monsters. Or exactly why the charming imposter claims to be none other than Grand Duke Vasily Nikolaevich, when he certainly isn’t a prince…or a vampire.

There's nowhere to hide on the world's first moon base. After all, it's only the size of a soccer field. So when Nina Stack, the commander of Moon Base Alpha, mysteriously vanishes, the Moonies are at a total loss. Though he may be just 12 years old, Dashiell Gibson is the best detective they've got. But this confusing mystery pushes Dash to his limits. Especially since Dash accidentally made contact with an alien and has to keep it a secret.

Teddy Fitzroy, his family, and some other FunJungle employees have been invited to visit a bison ranch just outside Yellowstone National Park that FunJungle’s owner, J.J. McCracken, is considering purchasing. But as usual, trouble isn’t far behind. The ranch’s endangered bison have been mysteriously disappearing. Then a massive local grizzly bear named Sasquatch breaks into the house, causing chaos. In the aftermath, Kandace McCracken discovers that her exceptionally expensive sapphire necklace has vanished.

Clare is on the run. From her past, from her husband, and from her own secrets. When she turns up alone in the remote mining town of Blackmore asking about Shayna Fowles, the local girl who disappeared, everyone wants to know who Clare really is and what she's hiding. As it turns out, she's hiding a lot, including what ties her to Shayna in the first place. But everyone in this place is hiding something - from Jared, Shayna's secretive ex-husband, to Charlie, the charming small-town drug pusher, to Derek, Shayna's overly involved family doctor, to her distraught parents.

When President Kate Lee calls Stone Barrington to Washington on an urgent matter, it's soon clear that a potentially disastrous situation requires the kind of help more delicate than even he can provide...and he knows just the right man for the job. Teddy Fay: ex-CIA, master of disguise, and a gentleman not known for abiding by legal niceties in the pursuit of his own brand of justice.

It has been over a year since the UnArcana Worlds of the Protectorate of the Mage-King of Mars seceded, shattering the unity of the human race. The new Republic of Faith and Reason has raised new banners in defiance of the power of the Protectorate's Mage aristocracy. Now, Hand Damien Montgomery commands a relief mission to a Republic world ravaged by famine. His humanitarian mission collides with a newborn military beginning to flex its muscles - and a newborn nation prepared to accept no violations of its sovereignty, regardless of their needs.

Shatina is a young woman with a troubled past and present. She lives in the shadows of her fraternal twin sister, who sucked up all the beauty genes, her best friend, whose seductive charm will sway any boy who listens, and her cousin, who is more than a knockout, but a force to be reckoned with. Shatina feels like she has nothing going for her but her grades and her full scholarship to a four year institution of her choice…until someone comes along to threaten that.

After the government publicly praise Dedsec for their role in the Zero Day affair, there is a resetting of relations between the surveillance state and the public. However, the reality is that a brand new clampdown on civil freedom is underway. Responding to an increase in activism and disruptive protest that’s seen mass strikes and huge cost implications to the treasury, SIRS have been directed by the Department of Culture and Media to orchestrate a system of message manipulation, fake news generation and discrediting dissenting voices.

This Collection of 62 Poems by various authors including William Cowper, Thomas Kelly, Willie Mullan, Robert Murray McCheyne, Charlotte Elliott, George Herbert, Charitie Lees De Chenez and many others, has been brought together in order that these spiritual truths and impressions, presented in poetical form, will comfort and edify God's people as they wrestle daily with the world, the flesh, and the devil.