Showing results by narrator "Mark Peckham" in All Categories

Ellery Queen returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of a rich man - believed poor - who died of "old age," a poor man - believed rich - who committed suicide, and a scholarly drunk who disappeared. Shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief…and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen.

Some bizarre thingshave been happening to the eccentric Hatter family. First, the body of York Hatter is recovered from the ocean. But he didn't drown. He died of poison. Next, another poisoning occurs in the Hatters' old mansion in New York's Greenwich Village. This time the police have a witness. But what a witness! She is a blind, deaf mute. Naturally the authorities call in Drury Lane - retired Shakespearean actor, matinee idol, master of disguise, and amateur sleuth.

It's August 1969 in the sleepy college town of Holloman,Connecticut, and police Captain Carmine Delmonico is away on vacation. Back at home, first one, then two anonymous male corpses turn up - emaciated and emasculated. After connecting the victims to four other bodies, Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg realize that Holloman has a psychopathic killer on the loose. Luckily, Carmine decides to come back from vacation early.

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: A loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch, he's unable to look away from the world's corruption, and unable to avoid trying futilely to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging. She doesn’t have much to offer at all, in fact, and somehow that makes her disappearance all the more disturbing for Stoner.

The coed missing from Tisquanto State is the daughter of Governor Sam Holland's rival for reelection - and best friend. But she is more than that. She is Laura Thornton, a human being - somehow the pawn and victim of angry student upheavals not even the governor understands...

A card with the letter "J" on it appeared in Robert York's mail, and a day later he was dead. Then another card showed up, and Ellery Queen knew he was up against a brilliant killer who made a game of death by warning his victims. The only clue was the signature "Y" and Ellery had to find him and stop his remorseless vendetta before "Y" won his mad game.

With nearly 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, a growing percentage of women over age 40 choosing not to have children, and more than three percent of the population identifying as LGBT, modern life is clearly in need of some modern relationship advice. Sex from Scratch analyzes the facets of contemporary relationships through the struggles, opinions, and experiences of a diverse group of individuals living in nontraditional relationships.

Managers as Mentors is a rapid-fire listen and a provocative guide to helping associates grow and adapt in today’s tumultuous organizations. This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. As with previous editions there is a fictional case study of a mentor-protégé relationship running through the book, but this is augmented with six actual case studies of top CEOs who relate key mentoring experiences in their lives. This hands-on guide takes the mystery out of effective mentoring.

Dr. Harry Brown is a competent, respectable practitioner of the time-honored art of medicine--until the day old man Gresham, with his millions of dollars, failing heart, and young spouse, hires him. Suddenly it's money, luxury, and love. But what happens to a doctor when someone slips a corpse into his locked apartment? What can a man say when he finds himself a member of an organized crime ring? How can Harry tell his richest patient he's having an affair with a man's wife?

Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops… just another day for Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.

A con man always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecting until they get taken. When that happens, they turn to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to recover their money and what’s left of their dignity, and perhaps even to save their lives.

Madman or murderer? That was the question, and it was Police Inspector Omar Collins who had come up with the answer. All he had to go on was: the victim - Earl Genneman, wealthy president of Genneman Labs; the scene - right in the middle of a busy state park; the murder weapon - a shotgun that was still missing; the witnesses - Myron Retwig, Red Kershaw, Bob Vega, and Buck James, all friends or employees of the deceased; the motive - unknown; the suspects - everyone!

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on King's Session, gold comes out: TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies - the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright.

When Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland in World War II, his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney is dead and his two million dollar estate is left entirely to the soldier who saved him, Milo Hacha. But that fortune comes with a death sentence, for Barney's widow, Estelle, won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers.

When Ellery Queen first meets the award-winning novelist Karen Leith, it is at a party held to celebrate her most recent prize in literature. The next time he hears of her, she is dead - murdered, so the police suspect, by the daughter of her fiancé, the eminent cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. With no other suspects and only circumstantial evidence at hand, master detective Ellery Queen delves into the reclusive writer's past to uncover the startling method and motive of an intricate crime.

Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. While the future is unclear, Sabina and John know one thing for certain: they will protect their clients from flimflammers, thieves, and murderers, and do whatever it takes to run these dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes, that requires a subtle touch. Professor A. Vargas, self-styled medium extraordinaire, and his partner Annabelle, use guile and trickery to swindle bereaved men and women eager to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones.

In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, Quincannon goes undercover as a newly hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible. Meanwhile, Sabina finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon’s wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate scam and an abusive young man’s villainous secret.

A former US Navy intelligence officer, David Locke Hall was a federal prosecutor when a bizarre-sounding website, CRACK99, came to his attention. It looked like Craigslist on acid, but what it sold was anything but amateurish: thousands of high-tech software products used largely by the military, and for mere pennies on the dollar. Want to purchase satellite tracking software? No problem. Aerospace and aviation simulations? No problem. Communications systems designs? No problem.

Could murder really be hereditary? Davy Fox certainly thinks so. When he was only a boy, his father, Bayard Fox,was convicted of murdering Davy's mother in the small town of Wrightsville. Now that Davy has grown up and returned home from the war, he fears that it is onlya matter of time until he kills his own wife. But could he really do such athing? Desperate to find out the truth, Davy's wife, Linda, calls on Ellery Queen to investigate the twelve-year-old murder of Jessica Fox.

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?