Showing results by narrator "Jeff Woodman" in All Categories

A victim of foul play, Firman Birdsong spends the Grand Opening of the Birdsong brothers’ chicken restaurant dead under a table—with his gravy covered, parsley-garnished body and his tomato-stuffed mouth. Biggie and her young grandson, J.R., investigate the murder. But as the suspect list swells, J.R. believes Biggie cares more about detecting than protecting him from a brewing custody battle—and the investigation takes an awful turn.

Bobbie always spends her summers breaking horses and rounding up stray cattle on Grandpa’s ranch. But this year is different. Alex, her cousin from Los Angeles, is visiting. And Bobbie doesn’t want to ruin her summer teaching a “city greenhorn” what to do. While saddling up their horses to search for cattle, the two girls start a vicious feud. But when they run into the horrible Bledsoe boys and a wild bull, they must depend on each other to survive!

Thirteen-year-old Jesse Rodriguez has learned everything he needs to know about skydiving by working at the small airport near his home. As soon as he turns sixteen, he'll make his first jump. His new friend, Robin, is training to skydive, even though she really prefers photography to parachutes. One day, while visiting Jesse at the airstrip, she unintentionally takes some pictures of several drug dealers disembarking from a small plane. Suddenly, the two teenagers find themselves on a flight that may force them to make their first jump much sooner than they expect.

Here are four unforgettable stories by Yann Martel, the New York Times best-selling author of Life of Pi. In the exquisite title novella, a very young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the 20th century.

It was made like a television movie, and completed in less than three months. It killed off its star in 40 minutes. There was no happy ending. And it offered the most violent scene to that date in American film, punctuated by shrieking strings that seared the national consciousness. Nothing like Psycho had existed before, and the movie industry, even America itself, would never be the same.

Edgar Award-winner Bruce DeSilva returns with Liam Mulligan, an old-school investigative reporter for a dying newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island. Mulligan knows every street and alley, every priest and prostitute, every cop and street thug. He knows the mobsters and politicians - who are pretty much one and the same. Inspired by a true story, Providence Rag finds Mulligan, his pal Mason, and the newspaper they both work for at an ethical crossroad.

Darek and his family and friends are returning from their dragonquest with something different: Zantor, a live baby dragon. The villagers are surprised that it is nothing like the fierce creatures the Zorians have grown up believing dragons to be. This exciting sequel to The Dragonling continues the exciting story of Darek and Zantor.

But when he encounters a monster straight out of stories one night, Baltasar faces trouble even he can't talk his way out of. Captured by the Malleus Maleficarum, a mysterious witch-hunting arm of the Spanish Inquisition, Baltasar is put to the question. The Inquisitor demands he reveal the whereabouts of Amir al-Katib, a legendary Moorish sorcerer who can bring myths and the creatures within them to life.

One of only three Sam Spade short stories, this one involves a blackmailing poet, a seductive chanteuse, her rough-hewn stage-door-johnny, and, of course, murder. Recorded before a live audience in New York.

Caught in a riptide of haphazard underemployment, at turns violent and unpredictable, suffering under a bad economy with no family or friends to speak of, Stratton Brown longs for the chance to escape his small-town past and build a new life. He sets out for Chicago, where he meets a new and fresh hell: a nine-to-fiver in a nondescript, meaningless company, and an obsessive love affair with woman who may be a bit too attached to her abusive ex-boyfriend. Is this all America has to offer its 20-somethings?

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into bizarre new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis Jr., Jr. What they are looking for seems elusive - a truth hidden behind veils of time, language and the horrors of war.

The South Orange River (S.O.R.) Middle School is famous for its winning sports teams. That is, until the seventh grade soccer squad comes along. Led by Ed Sitrow, who has never played soccer before, this amazing team of non-jocks sets new lows in team spirit and new highs in scoring - for the other team. When they lose their first game 32-0, they’re ready to call it quits. But the teachers insist that the team keep playing through the entire soccer season.

Lord John Grey, a lieutenant-colonel in His Majesty’s army, arrives in Jamaica with orders to quash a slave rebellion brewing in the mountains. But a much deadlier threat lies close at hand. The governor is being menaced by zombies, according to a servant. Lord John has no idea what a zombie is, but it doesn’t sound good.…

In May of 2004 the dead return to life and begin to hunt the living. Within a few weeks nations have fallen and the few survivors are scattered and desperate. Rise follows a group of survivors on their journey through the apocalyptic Canadian Rockies, the desolate and empty lands of northern British Columbia and Alberta.

Morgan Fairfield is one of the few survivors of the Titanic disaster. Now a celebrity journalist in New York, he persists in his story that Hunter Kennedy was murdered on that doomed voyage. But with the evidence miles underwater—and now a different Hunter Kennedy arriving on the scene—Morgan and his wife Margaret need to find a way to solve this conundrum fast.

Billboard magazine had this to say about The World's Shortest Stories Vol. 1, "What is most impressive in this collection of great stories is the sheer variety. Let's hope a second volume of these tiny gems will not be long in coming!"

A Gary Paulsen World of Adventure book, The Gorgon Slayer takes young listeners into the exciting world of ancient heroes and monsters.

Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Zindel delights even the most reluctant listeners with his thrilling P.C. Hawke Mysteries. Everyone is upset when P.C.'s junior class trip ends with classmate Timmy Warner plunging to his death over a 300-foot waterfall. So when Timmy's mom exhibits some strange behavior at the funeral, P.C. and his friend Mackenzie just have to investigate. What they don't expect is that the trail of clues will lead them to Los Angeles-and to a surfer who's a dead ringer for their dead classmate!

"How lucky I was, arriving in New York just as everything was about to go to hell." That would be in the autumn of 1972, when a very young and green James Wolcott arrived from Maryland, full of literary dreams, equipped with a letter of introduction from Norman Mailer, and having no idea what was about to hit him. Landing at a time of accelerating municipal squalor and, paradoxically, gathering cultural energy in all spheres as "Downtown" became a category of art and life unto itself, he embarked upon his sentimental education, seventies New York style.

Sex. Money. International terrorism. And, of course, the ultimate question- Can a compact backswing save the world? A clubhouseful of acclaimed authors pass the baton (or at least the six-iron) to creat an ensemble tour de force of suspense, romance, and hilarity on the links. Golf is not a team sport. But who says fiction can't be? Get ready....