Showing results by narrator "Richard Joel" in All Categories

Ares has interfered with the Spartan warriors for centuries, toying with them out of spite and jealousy. Now the vindictive war god has stabbed at their cadre's heart, stripping their beloved King Leonidas of his immortality, and allowing him to age rapidly. As Leonidas faces imminent death, his greatest regret is leaving behind his beloved Daphne, Oracle of Delphi.

Original story published in Lariat story magazine - July 1947.

In 30 years of prospecting, old Jim had never discovered Amber's Mirage - a shining cliff above a spring that ran heavy with gold. But his young sidekick took up the search to find the gold - a search that would cost him two years away from wild Ruby, the woman he loved.

A toolkit of proven strategies and practices for building capacity and creating transformation. Recent years have seen a proliferation of information on how to make change in business, in social and environmental movements, and on a more personal scale. But, even with all this attention, two out of three change efforts fail to achieve their desired result. How can you make your own effort buck this trend?

One November morning, Ben Bailey walks out of his Flagstaff, Arizona, home to retrieve the paper. Instead, he finds Ricky Begay, a young Navajo man, beaten and dying in the newly fallen snow. Unable to forget the incident, especially once he meets Ricky's sister, Shadi, Ben begins to question everything, from his job as a part-time history professor to his fianceé, Sara. When Ben first met Sara, he was mesmerized by her optimism and easy confidence. These days, their relationship only reinforces a loneliness that stretches back to his fractured childhood.

When Patrick Evans finds his asset (and friend) tortured to death in a Frankfurt basement, everything changes. Obsessed with revenge and haunted by guilt, Pat leaves CIA to track down the killer. Pat's pursuit is relentless and often reckless-only his mentor's advice and his growing bond with a former colleague are keeping Pat alive. For now.

In the gaslit streets of Victorian London, phantoms rule the night, demons dance till dawn, and one supernatural detective dares to be seduced by the greatest power of all…He's the man with the magic touch. A master of deduction, seduction, and other midnight maneuvers, Phaeton Black is Scotland Yard's secret weapon against things that go bump in the night. His prodigious gifts as a paranormal investigator are as legendary as his skills as a lover, his weakness for wicked women as notorious as his affection for absinthe.

In "Pecos Crossing", two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, have been cheated of six months’ hard-earned pay by their rancher boss, Larramore and intend to get what is due to them. In "Shotgun", Two Forks, Texas, rancher Blair Bishop must contend with a mean customer named Macy Modock, who Bishop sent to prison 10 years past. Modock is out of the hoosegow and has returned to Two Forks determined to get even with the man who sent him up the river.

A Holocaust survivor fights a Nazi conspiracy in the jungles of Brazil. In 1939, Erick Von Roesler was spreading Hitler's gospel in Brazil when duty to the Reich called him home. He distinguished himself during the war, organizing slave labor camps, overseeing executions, and manning the gas chambers of Buchenwald, but in 1945 he felt it necessary to leave the land of his birth. His enthusiasm for the German cause undimmed, he returned to South America to remake the continent in the image of the fallen Reich.

In The Safety of the Kingdom, J. Michael Martinez takes up the question of how the United States government has responded to terrorist attacks and, in the absence of an attack, the fear of foreign and subversive elements that may harm the nation. In some cases the government “overreaction” led to a series of abuses that amplified the severity of the original threat.

A cruel, hated man collects a fortune, then disappears in the desert. The Texas Rangers think it's murder and put one of their best on the job - but he'll need help. There's evil here that no one suspects.

Anna Draekus has harbored a shadowy secret all her life - a secret that she's trained for years to conceal from her king and fellow military officers. Anna belongs to an elite, underground guard charged with protecting the royal family at all costs. This sworn responsibility is one that must never be discovered - not even by King Jared himself. But when her superior officer, Nevin Daniels, uncovers her membership in the circle of protectors thought to be extinct, Anna finds herself in treacherous territory.

Franklin is a wanted man living under an alias, and, more curiously, he has three wives. No More Strangers and Foreigners is a true story of polygamy lived in the open - not the sordid brand of the 21st-century polygamy with its child brides and forced marriages, but the saga of ordinary love and extraordinary lives. In a chain of polygamist colonies south of the Texas border, founded by fellow Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), the Spencers immerse themselves in the culture of their adopted land.

In search of a missing treasure, Da Silva returns to an old case. Off the island of Barbados, the crew of a Brazilian ocean liner strains to hear the sounds of Carnival coming from shore. A small boat pulls alongside, and a band of steel drummers offer to play for them. As they make their rounds on the ship, the bandleader slips away. He pistol whips one of the crew, forcing him to open the ship's safe, and escapes before the song has ended, taking half a million dollars in gems with him.

Just after 4 pm on September 6, 1901, 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz pumped two shots into the chest and abdomen of President William McKinley. Czolgosz had been on a receiving line waiting to shake the president’s hand, his revolver concealed in an oversized bandage covering his right hand and wrist. McKinley had two Secret Service agents by his side, but neither made a move to stop the assailant. After he was apprehended, Czolgosz said simply, “I done my duty.”

Imagine more than a million litres of water dropping each second from cliffs up to 80 metres, or 262 feet, high. Such an image may seem like an impossibility, but such is the majesty of South America’s Iguazu Falls. More expansive than both the Niagara Falls in North America and the Victoria Falls in Africa, The Iguazu Falls is a network of more than 275 falls covering many acres.

Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend, Daniel, who's been interned in a psychiatric ward for murdering his fiancée. When Daniel unexpectedly calls to confess the truth behind the crime, Gustavo's long-buried loyalty resurfaces and draws him into the center of a quixotic, unconventional investigation. While Daniel reveals his unsettling story through fragments of fables, novels, and historical allusions, Gustavo begins to retrace the past for clues.

A fraud case leads Da Silva on a wild search across Brazil. It's snowing in New York, and Jimmy Martin is pleading for his life. He owes a loan shark $100,000, but he knows he will make his fortune if he can just hop a plane to Brazil. The lender gives him a 30-day extension, and Jimmy is on his way. But he will find Brazil a better place in which to end a life than to save one.

At an international summit, Da Silva searches for an assassin. Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, a freighter battles the waves. The steward has been stricken with appendicitis, but the sea is too rough for the ship to dock. A coast guard helicopter brings him to shore, where he is put in an ambulance and rushed the hospital. But when the ambulance arrives, the patient has disappeared. He was never sick, and he is not a sailor. He is an assassin, and he's vanished into thin air.

Ex-CIA Officer Patrick Evans is too late to save his colleague from a drug overdose—but just in time to kill the Chinese spy responsible. The two killings trigger an avalanche of twisted connections, treason at the highest level, and grim deaths in quiet places. Drafted to investigate by his Congresswoman employer, Pat follows a trail of chemicals and money from the Chinese provinces to Mexico City, and back home to Washington DC—where the Fentanyl boom is secretly financing one man's political machine.