Showing results by narrator "Keith Szarabajka" in All Categories

It all started with some businessmen bankrolling Richard Nixon to become a "salesman against socialization". But in this precursor to current campaign finance scandals, Nixon had some explaining to do to keep his place on Eisenhower’s Republican ticket, so he took to the airwaves. In making his speech, Nixon left behind lines about a "Republican cloth coat" and a black-and-white cocker spaniel named Checkers. The speech saved and bolstered Nixon’s political career and set the tone for the 1952 campaign. Just Plain Dick is political history and more.

Russell Mullins has left intelligence work. When his wife died of cancer, Rusty quit the Secret Service to repurpose his life. He joins a private protection company in Washington, DC, and is assigned to guard Paul Luguire, a Federal Reserve executive and chief liaison with the US Treasury. Mullins and Luguire form a strong friendship. So when a police detective calls in the middle of the night with word of Luguire’s suicide, Mullins doesn’t buy it.

His doubts are reinforced by Amanda Church, a former Secret Service colleague now in the Federal Reserve’s cybersecurity unit. She uncovered a suspicious financial transaction initiated by Luguire only days before his death.

Welterweight boxer Eddie Cero is out of the ring with an injury, but he still can’t bear to see an unfair fight. In a Philadelphia alley, he steps in on two punks beating up an older man—and the victim, a private detective, buys Eddie a round and offers him a parttime gig. After a few days on the job, Eddie stumbles on a cold case involving the frontman for the Excels, one of Philadelphia’s best soul acts.

Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, and screwball mutt Eddie Van Halen get blown off course by a dangerous gale. With damaged boat and frayed nerves, they limp into the closest harbor, which happens to be on Fishers Island, New York, a distant and altogether disassociated scrap of Long Island. A summer preserve for the oldest old money in America, it is defended by year-round denizens who safeguard their island’s insularity with xenophobic fervor. Sam and Amanda are hardly welcomed with open arms....

Generoso Pope, Sr., an Italian immigrant, arrived in New York in 1906 with only pennies in his pocket. He got a job shoveling sand, but through his intelligence, he worked his way up to become the biggest provider of cement, just as it was becoming the key material for building. Gene Pope, Jr., was his father’s choice to inherit and run the business, but Gene’s mother and two brothers forced him out, and he found himself penniless and on his own. With a loan from his godfather, mobster Frank Costello, Gene bought the New York Enquirer. He renamed it the National Enquirer.

When world-famous criminal law professor Eric Lipton is accused in the murder of his young student, he chooses one of his most promising and ambitious former law students, Casey Jordan, to represent him. Now somewhere between the legal maneuvers and the letter of the law, a terrible reversal will take place.

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of Dmitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different.

When newly divorced Sage arrives in Bali, his only plan is to drink on the beach until his money runs out and then return home to start over. So he's caught by surprise when he falls in love with the country and its people, particularly the attractive and considerate Ratri. Soon Sage can no longer see himself living anywhere else, even as his funds dwindle and his visa's expiration date nears. Increasingly desperate to stay with Ratri, Sage finds himself being recruited by a drug-smuggling ring - in a country where drug trafficking is punishable by death.

Zack is unemployed, overweight, recently divorced, and lives with his mother. Whilst a lesser man would wither away in emo-laden angst, Zack has found inspiration during this difficult stretch of life. A renaissance man, Zack conjures up brilliant ideas (soap on a rope, a Sammy Davis, Jr. biopic starring Tom Cruise, vases of flowers in Port-a-Potties nationwide), offers services (babysitter for Sophia Coppola, compiler and burner for a Beatles Best-of), and attempts to woo unsuspecting ladies with his lifelike sketches of firearms.

As part of their trafficking in counterfeit merch, they are looking to turn a few pallets of grade Z computer chips into some military hardware sure to interest dictators and despots and drug lords around the globe. Bankrolled by a greedy local crime boss, they hope to promote a half-genius, half-addlepated invention from a naive and principled inventor into a bonanza. But no one ever counts on complications arising.

1941. An hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour, a man from the future materializes in President Roosevelt's office. His offer of military aid may cut the war and its pending atrocities short and alter the course of the future. The future. Welcome to Mars, where the lives of three ordinary people become entwined in one dingy smokesbar the moment an assassin opens fire. The target: the mysterious Bill Glimmung. But is Glimmung even real?

Told through many notes in four books and an epilogue, Sherwood Anderson’s memoir of Midwestern life and culture journeys through the author’s own imaginative world and through the world of facts. From Anderson’s childhood to his attempt to ingratiate himself with New York’s literary elite, A Story Teller’s Story is a unique look into the psyche of an American icon.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others. With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.