Showing results by narrator "Carol Monda" in All Categories

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by the magazine.

After the death of her rock star husband, Richard, Leigh swore off musicians. When Derek, her husband’s best friend, summons her to his Star Island estate in the Florida Keys, it is with trepidation that she makes the trip. Leigh and Derek never got along, and their bitterness toward each other has lasted beyond her husband’s death.

Mystery sensation Pelecanos pens the lead story and edits this groundbreaking collection of stories detailing the seedy underside of the nation's capital. This is not an anthology of ill-conceived and inauthentic political thrillers. Instead, in D.C. Noir, pimps, whores, gangsters, and con-men run rampant in zones of this city that most never hear about.

Princess Samarah Al-Azem knows revenge cannot be rushed. Having bided her time, she’s finally ready to bring down Sheikh Ferran - her kingdom’s enemy and the man who took everything from her. In the still of night, she lies in wait in his bedchamber.... Soon Ferran has the beautiful assassin at his mercy - now Samarah must decide: imprisonment in a cell...or in diamond shackles as his wife.

Jill Breck was just doing her job as a river guide when she saved the life of Lane Faroe, son of two of St. Kilda Consulting's premier operators. But when a string of ominous events - including a mysterious fire that kills her great-aunt and a furor in the Western art world raised by a dozen Breck family paintings - culminates in a threat to her life, Jill reluctantly calls in a favor.

Cat is out running in a neighborhood park when she crashes over the faceless body of Bernie Love. Bernie was the finance guy for the scary Provenza family and a friend to Cat's shady uncle Joey, a Ferrari-wheeling cop. As she hauls out her phone, Cat is assaulted by someone with a Rolex, a stun gun, and a wheelbarrow. When the cops show up, the killer is gone—and so is the body.

Kayla Shaw is a private banker in Arizona, smart and capable but underpaid and underappreciated. Rand McCree is a haunted man who paints landscapes in the Pacific Northwest, burning with a need for answers about the terrible event that shattered his world. They are two strangers with nothing in common, until their lives entwine and explode.

This multi-voice production of The Tragedy of Macbeth features an all-star cast under the direction of acclaimed producer Paul Alan Ruben, a Grammy Award-winning veteran of the audiobook industry. With five AudioFile magazine Golden Voice recipients, multiple Grammy and SOVAS nominations, and countless Earphones and Audie Awards, this phenomenal cast brings Shakespeare's work to life.

CBA best-selling author Delia Parr, acclaimed for her award-winning historical romances, concludes her Candlewood trilogy with this stirring sequel to Refining Emma. In a quaint 1840s village in Upstate New York, the genteel proprietress of a bustling boarding house must rely on her wisdom, determination, and faith to reconcile the conflicting demands of family, friendship, and love.

With each sensational chapter, A Dangerous Woman documents the life of Florence Gould, a fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid her dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940s Paris. Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris, aged 11. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould.

In the 1970s, New York City hit rock bottom. Crime was at its highest, the middle class exodus was in high gear, and bankruptcy loomed. Many people credit New York’s master builder Robert Moses with turning Gotham around, despite his brutal, undemocratic. and demolition-heavy ways. Urban critic and journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz contradicts this conventional view. New York City, Gratz argues, recovered precisely because of the waning power of Moses.

In the middle of the night on March eleventh, 1980, the phone rang in Julia Reed’s Georgetown dorm. It was her boss at Newsweek, where she was an intern. He told her to get in her car and drive to her alma mater, the Madeira School. Her former headmistress, Jean Harris, had just shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, The Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Julia didn’t flinch. She dressed, drove to Madeira, got the story—and her first byline—and the new American Gilded Age was off and running.

Jonathan Shaw's Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist is a surreal, multigenerational roller-coaster ride through the underbelly of modern culture, charting the course of a life measured by extremes and all the people, places, and events that shaped that life into a survivor's tale of epic proportions. In it, Shaw takes the listener deep, not only into the recesses of his extraordinary mind and adventures but also into the strange and magical process of memoir-writing itself.

After a routine pap smear in 2009, Angela Schmidt Fishbaugh discovered that she had tested positive for BRCA1, a genetic trait that predisposed her to breast and ovarian cancer. After her initial shock - and subsequent to consulting with medical professionals, friends, and family - the proactive mother and teacher embarked on a mission to nip the issue in the bud.

A friendly, rotund cat visits six diverse people in an busy urban neighborhood, receiving snacks and love. When a near-accident threatens the cat, the neighbors pull together as a community. Told from the point of view of each of the neighbors, this heartfelt story reflects the universal desire for connection and companionship.

New York Times best-selling author Carla Neggers has amassed legions of fans for her engaging blend of romance and suspense. Saint’s Gate features Colin Donovan, a deep-cover FBI agent who usually works alone - and likes it that way. When he tackles a case involving art heists and a convent’s long-held secrets, however, he finds himself more and more interested in the beguiling Emma Sharpe.

Margaret "Peggy" Thomas and her husband, James, lead a simple and peaceful life; she tends to the farm while he works as sheriff in the nearby town of Bleak Knob. Their evenings are spent doing the thing they love most - being together. One afternoon, after picking up fabric at the general store, Margaret watches helplessly as James is gunned down on the sidewalk in front of her. Days of mourning turn into weeks and then years, filled with little more than grief and alcohol.

Samantha Johnston, a reporter for the LA Beat, is determined to attend the wedding of one of America’s hottest actors in hopes of learning the identity of his mystery bride. But, not only does Samantha sneak into the church, she ends up saying, “I do.”

Speed: the most demonized - and misunderstood - drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet speed - crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, spizz, chickenscratch, oblivious marching powder, the go-fast - is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all.

The 19th addition of this annual anthology exhibits a collection of short fiction from award-winning Southern authors and rising stars including Edward P. Jones and Silas House. Each story’s derivation is explained in an illuminating note from the author following the rich and entertaining tales.