Showing results by narrator "Michael Levine" in All Categories

In a forgotten town on the wrong side of Texas, James Hawker stumbles into a fetid dive bar. The most dangerous vigilante in America is blind drunk, and stinks of mescal. He begs the bartender for help getting back across the border, and the man obliges - for a fee. He introduces Hawker to a pair of toughs, who chain him up in the back of a truck and begin the long trip north. Hawker has been captured by a modern-day slaving outfit - and it's exactly what he had in mind.

James Hawker finds her in the Yellow Pages, listed under "P" - for prostitution. This is Las Vegas, after all, where the world's oldest profession is just another business. Vegas has been a wide-open town for more than a century: a place where respectable Americans can indulge their darkest fantasies. But an unpleasant new attraction has been added to this paradise of gambling and perversion - the forbidden vice called murder. Hawker isn't a gambling man, but murder is his business.

Two torturous months came and went. Detective Bennett refuses to give up on finding his daughter. Even as the authorities of New England and beyond, trailing the blood in the girl's wake, devised a ruthless manhunt to bring her back. Well aware of the young woman's fragile state, Bennett is determined to locate her first. He's terrified to learn that he and the officers aren't the only ones looking...

When a pregnant federal judge is abducted, Max Freeman pursues an eccentric gang deep into a hidden world he knows better than most: the shadowy waterways of the Florida Everglades. US district judge Diane Manchester has looked across the courtroom into the eyes of evil before. But today, as she presides over the extradition hearing of a notorious Colombian drug lord, she is also eight months pregnant. Her chair is uncomfortable, her robe is constrictive, and her due date is fast approaching.

America's Favorite Holidays explores how five of America's culturally important holidays - Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving - came to be what they are today, seasonal and religious celebrations heavily influenced by modern popular culture.

J. is a young Cuban man who, thanks to his knowledge of Russian and Spanish, has become the tutor of the young son of a wealthy Russian couple living in Marbella, in the part of southern Spain that the Russian mafia has turned into its winter quarters. As J. attempts to give the boy a general grade-school education by exclusively reading him Proust, he also becomes the personal secretary of the boy's father, Vasily, an ex-scientist whom J. suspects is on the run from gangsters.

Considered by many to be the first Beat novel, this underground classic follows a clique of young bohemians from dive bar to dance hall in 1940s New York. Recently fired from his job and not yet ready to find a new one, aspiring author Blake Williams begins his evenings at the Sporting Club Bar in Greenwich Village, where he knows he will find Henry Porter.

Business. Violence. Concerns about profits. Questions of conscience. This is the untold story of the dealings between a US tire giant and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the man who would become the first head of state convicted of crimes against humanity since the Nazi era.

Cheerful and friendly, Aaron Blake has never met a puzzle that intrigues him more than brooding Greg Falkner. He wants to get to know his roommate, but it seems the only way past his shell is through it. When a reluctant friendship turns into a budding romance, can the two keep their feelings secret from their classmates? Or will their newfound love destroy them both?

Even after the "I do's" are said, relationships change and need work to grow and thrive. Aaron has found himself increasingly drawn to the idea of taking his and Greg's BDSM-lite games to the next level. Unsure if he can fully unleash his inner sadist without losing complete control, he seeks out a professional Dom to teach him the literal and figurative ropes.

Weddings are stressful under the best of circumstances, which this certainly isn't. Following the release of his debut movie, No Apologies, Greg Falkner is working hard to be a better man to fiancé Aaron Blake despite his baser instincts. When their alma mater contacts Greg and asks him to serve as their celebrity master of ceremonies for an upcoming charity event, he grudgingly accepts at Aaron's urging.

After actor Kit Harris tells the world he's gay, life isn't all cupcakes and rainbow flags. It's decidedly less tasty and a lot less colorful. Coming out might not have been the best thing for a Hollywood career or a high-profile love life.

How does a maximum-security inmate commit a murder on the outside? The answer is more terrifying than you think. Mark my words.... Derek Warren is smooth, charming, and a master manipulator. But is he a killer?

Belle Graham hears it first from the gossip columnist for the Evening Crier, where Belle is resident crossword editor. Fire has destroyed one of the stables at King Wenstarin Farms - the multimillion-dollar corporation owned by the notorious Collins clan - and the barn manager lies in a coma. Did someone torch the place? That's what Belle's PI husband Rosco Polycrates has been hired to find out.

A homeless man has been found in an alley, clobbered to death. The crime seems pretty cut and dried - vagrants fighting over turf - until the Newcastle Police Department uncovers a connection to a local shelter in danger of being taken over by greedy developers. Is the dead John Doe a victim of some sinister plot? And what became of the scruffy mutt he had recently adopted?

The husband-and-wife sleuth team is back in five tales of holiday mystery and mayhem. "Holly, Jolly Roger" takes Belle and Rosco to sunny St. Lucia in the Caribbean as they try to decipher the clues to a legendary buried treasure. "The Mystery of Wordsworth House" may remain just that unless Belle and Rosco can turn their stay at a snowy Montreal inn into a chance for a family to solve the riddle of their past... with the help of a ghost.

Newlyweds Rosco Polycrates and Belle Graham are settling into life with a new puppy in their charming New England townhouse when Belle's estranged father sets out to visit them. Except renowned anthropologist Theodore A. Graham never makes it off the train. According to the coroner, he died of a heart attack aboard the Amtrak to Newcastle. Now Belle is flying down to Florida to dispose of the effects of a man she barely knew.

Belle Graham is mired in New England's snowy, late-January gloom when Hollywood comes calling. Seduced by visions of relaxing poolside in sunny Los Angeles, she heads to Hollywood to create a puzzle for a TV movie based on a crime she and her husband Rosco Polycrates recently cracked. The hook is that the show is interactive - viewers get to solve the crime on air with Belle.

With Christmas approaching, Belle Graham and her husband, Rosco Polycrates, are getting into the holiday spirit. While Belle does her part creating a Noel crossword contest, Rosco dons red suit and snowy beard to collect toys for the town's annual children's drive. But his good will starts to dim when he and two Newcastle Police Department colleagues are mistaken for escaped convicts masquerading as small-town Santas.

Belle Graham and her canine bodyguards, Kit and Gabby, are enjoying their daily outing in the local dog park with new friends Karen Tacete; her daughter, Lily; and their dog, Bear. But Karen's picture-perfect life shatters when her husband, Dan, fails to return home. He's barely been declared officially missing when Karen receives a ransom note that includes a dire warning: If she contacts the police or the FBI, Dan dies.