Showing results by narrator "Frank Clem" in All Categories

There are good reasons why compelling action stories are popular. They give us the catharsis of adrenaline-pumping risk and danger, the rush of edge-of-your seat suspense, and a welcome escape from the sameness of everyday life. These three stories provide all that and more-and even better, they're given to you in the wonderful format of screenplays. As you listen, you have the chance to be the director as well as the audience-and you'll appreciate the format, easy on the eyes compared to prose fiction.

In It's Just the Way It Was, Joe Broadmeadow and Brendan Doherty take you inside the investigations, covert surveillance, and murky world of informants in the war against organized crime. Make no mistake about it. It was a war targeting the insidious nature of the mob and their detrimental effect on Rhode Island and throughout New England.

Bill Travis, an unmarried, unattached investment counselor rapidly approaching his fortieth birthday, conceives that he may not live the most exciting of lives, yet Julie Simmons, his first appointment that Monday, is deeply in trouble. She has taken a North Texas quarter horse racer and liquor baron named Archie Carpin - the last of a dynasty of criminals from the 1920's - for a ride and cleaned him out of a neat two million bucks. And thus begins the adventure of Bill's life.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by the English poet William Blake consists of a series of texts written in the style of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own beliefs. Composed between 1790 and 1793, the book makes reference to Milton and Swedenborg, and adopts a device from Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost: a visit to hell. Blake expresses a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are both part of the divine order.

It is 1942, and World War II is raging. In the months since Pearl Harbor, the US has plunged into the war overseas—and on the home front, it has locked up tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans in concentration camps, tearing them from their homes on the West Coast with the ostensible goal of neutralizing a supposed internal threat. At each of these camps the government places a white lawyer with contradictory instructions: provide legal counsel to the prisoners, and keep the place running.

Who killed Edgar Bristow, millionaire philanthropist and war hero? In a small Texas town where everyone knows everyone else, the list of suspects can be every person you've met. What dark secrets wait for the man who is unafraid to turn over any stone? And will the killer strike again before Bill can get to the truth?

When Death Row inmate Norman Howell drops a tidbit about how he and his father once helped the current Texas Governor get rid of competing Vietnamese fisherman with the use of high-powered explosives, Bill Travis has to decide whether to kick (and awaken) this particular sleeping dog, or whether to let it go. But then the Governor's men come calling for him, and all hell breaks loose.

When mysterious fires begin plaguing the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, it doesn't take Sheriff Jim Weber long to realize that a serial arsonist is on the loose and has to be stopped before somebody dies or the entire forest goes up in flames. With the help of C.C. Callahan, a beautiful Deputy Fire Marshal, the sheriff begins the hunt while dealing with an upstart newspaper publisher hell-bent on smearing his good name and ruining his reputation. As the fires continue, fingers of blame are pointed and everybody in Big Lake wonders whose home or business will be the next.

The busy summer season is drawing to a close in the little mountain town of Big Lake, Arizona, and the locals are looking forward to a relaxing interlude before the first snowfall brings carloads of skiers to the high country. That all changes when a nearly nude woman rushes into a convenience store in the middle of the night begging for help. She tells Sheriff Jim Weber that her new husband has been murdered and she was taken captive by the mysterious killer, who seems to have disappeared into the thick forests of the White Mountains.

When an old man covered in dirt walks into the country honky-tonk and says "the falling," right before dropping dead, Bill Travis has to penetrate the gathering dark cloak of secrecy surrounding his death. He has to get the truth before a team of nuclear regulators can rake the entire incident under the carpet.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer, critic and journalist. His novel, Chita: A Memory of Last Island, is about a young girl, Chita, who survives a devastating tropical storm. Last Island, a holiday resort in the Gulf of Mexico, is destroyed by the hurricane that kills Chita’s mother and leaves her adrift at sea. Chita is saved and adopted by a Spanish fisherman, Feliu, and his wife, Carmen, a religious woman who perceives the baby as a gift from God.

What are these shrieks in the night in the small, historic Texas Gulf Coast town of Anahuac, and what is the Ghost-killer? Worse yet, why is the last person to hear the shriek dead, his body now as devoid of moisture as a 3,000-year-old mummy? Sometimes doing a favor for a friend and client can wind Bill Travis hip-deep in trouble, and this time is no exception. To get to the heart of the matter, Bill must take his family along for the trip and make contact with Wolf Dillard, a self-styled Sasquatch hunter who has a story to tell that is beyond belief.

What is the "blue bone" and what does a seventeenth-century French ship have to do with East Texas? When Bill Travis gets the word that his best friend has been murdered, he not only has to take a trip back to the town where he grew up, he has to go up against some old ghosts who were better left alone. What modern secrets lie hidden in the dark beneath the countryside where Bill grew up? And what darker, more ancient secret will he unearth?

Michael’s Eyes is the fictional account of the life of Michael Barone. In the story Michael was born with an ability that no other human has been known to possess. As Michael grows up in the small Texas town of Anson, his life and his adventures are shaped by his secret ability to be able to see in the dark.

Why would someone want to kill the curator of the Texas Rangers Museum? And why is Walt Cannon, a 30-year veteran Ranger, the chief suspect? And what could the murder possibly have to do with a very old arson case and satanic worship both north and south of the Texas-Mexico border? To answer these questions, Bill Travis needs the help of the unlikeliest of all sidekicks, including womanizing insurance agent Perry Reilly and Bill's own adopted daughter, Jessica.

Why is the 50-year-old secret of a missing military transport plane motivating some desperate men to begin setting deathtraps for Bill Travis, his client Holt Gatlin, and anyone else involved? To what lengths will they go to stop Bill for good? Does Holt Gatlin hold the cure to mankind's myriad diseases and possibly the answer to immortality itself, or is he instead the host for an ancient evil? To find the answer, Bill must have the help of the most unlikely sidekick of all.

American Imperialism is a short work in which Schurz denounced the Spanish-American war and the United States’ acquisition of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. He considered the war as a battle of conquest which violated the intent and principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Schurz believed that imperialism should remain the province of despotic European governments. Together with the other leaders of the American Anti-Imperialist League, such as Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain, Schurz insisted that imperialism was incompatible with democracy.

What do a leather journal from a previous century, a loaded pistol, and an old safe hidden in an aging barn have to do with a court order that halts the completion of a Texas highway project? Why are snipers taking pot-shots at Lief Prescott, the highway construction manager, and Bill Travis, whom Lief has called in to help? To answer these questions, Bill Travis must get to the heart of a century-old conspiracy before he himself becomes a casualty in a secret war.

Who killed local debutante Delores Fogel in the sleepy central Texas town of Elysium? Benjamin LeFren was exonerated for the crime and released from jail 30 years after the fact, thanks in part to Shane Robeling, former FBI agent and now Elysium's Chief of Police. But now Shane is not so sure of LeFren's innocence. When LeFren shows up in Elysium, Shane must guard LeFren from the townspeople he has sworn to protect.

It's 1975, two years before the murder of Delores Fogel shocked the Central Texas town of Elysium, setting up the chain of events that would lead to the post-millennium conclusion to the mystery in Murder In Elysium. Michael Lee "Mucho Love" Harper, Elysium's Chief of Police, has a double-murder on his hands, and this is the strangest killing of his career.