Showing results by narrator "Kent Sheridan" in All Categories

Letters with Smokie captures an epistolic exchange between Dan Goodley and Rod Michalko, or rather, Rod Michalko's late guide dog, Smokie. A lively exploration of human-animal relationships and disability as disruption, disturbance, and art, the book offers a refreshing re-evaluation of cultural misunderstandings of disability.

Antonius Stradivari was the premiere maker of string instruments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only six hundred and fifty Stradivarius instruments still exist; each is worth millions of dollars. Like many historic masterpieces, these instruments, particularly the violins, have become the targets of thieves. Unfortunately for the thieves, Stradivarius violins are nearly impossible to fence. As such, only a handful have been stolen, usually by amateurs.

A new entry in the Deception series, Defection, details the kidnapping of Rita Daveed, a.k.a. Harriet. The MSS needs to retrieve an audio SD card that will reveal the identity of Dragonfly, a Chinese sleeper agent embedded high up in Vauxhall Cross. Before Rita is taken on orders from Yang Bo, the director of the UFWD, she manages to leave behind a clue, a postcard from the Bowley Gallery in London, with a cryptic message scrawled on the back, “Find Harry!"

Pregnancy can be 40 weeks of hell, and it is hard on women, too. Danny and Fred are two working stiffs who are tired of their dead-end jobs at the “Good Buy” store. They are captains of the prick squad. Their former coworker Dwayne has maneuvered and conned his way into a luxurious new lifestyle by impregnating a beautiful girl named Katie.

Harry is drawn back into the Quandary orbit when his restaurant partner goes missing, and a dead North Korean RGB agent is found murdered on Benten Island under the torii gate of the Itsukushima Shrine, near Matsumae Castle in Hokkaido, Japan. A Japanese Naicho CIRO agent, a Mossad Kidon agent, and twin brother casino operators join Harry and his Quandary colleagues to unravel the latest attempt by the Chinese and North Koreans to disrupt the financial institutions in the West.

The business of intelligence is often referred to as information gathering. A simple proposition: gather enough data so the politicians can make informed, rational decisions on things like national security, or on whether or not one of the several competing forces in the world is about to go all ballistic on your ass. But the problem is not too little information, but too much.

On a chilly November New York City morning in 1953, a scientist working for the CIA on psychotropic mind-control experiments walked off the 10th-floor balcony of the Statler Hotel. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the bizarre and incredibly dangerous work he had been doing in service to national security.

The world is a dangerous place, and every country has men and women tasked to protect it. These people go by many names: Secret agent, intelligence officer, and analyst are just a few. Harry is one such person. He is an analyst. He spends his time reading, researching, and analyzing, followed by writing reports that often never see the light of day. Harry is well educated with a seemingly important job, but Harry is bored. Bored, because analysts never get to be the hero, never get to order cocktails stirred not shaken, and, never, never, get the girl.

Horse trainers Davey and Pauly Cisco are looking for a fresh start in Southern California after wearing out their welcome in their native Australia. The Cisco twins are identical in looks but not personality. Pauly, like most horse trainers, pushes the envelope of acceptable practice, while his look-alike brother rips through regulations with regularity and abandon.

Internet gambling and expansion of casinos beyond the Nevada State Line have put a financial strain on racetracks. Johnny Luck, Hong Mian triad big shot, and Jesse James, his beautiful blonde ex-jockey protege, are always on the lookout for ways to expand the triad's gambling operation. Back in the '50s and '60s, Jai Alai was a big deal in Florida. Gamblers would fill the frontons and drop thousands of dollars betting on Basque athletics competing in a sport that was so dangerous it was referred to as the "Ballet of Bullets", and the game is dodging death.

What would you do to be rich? Not just rich, but fabulously rich. Perhaps you are that unique soul that has no dreams, no aspirations, no agenda…. Well, if you are, good luck. It must be a very dreary existence. But if you’re like the rest of us, you have a fantasy, a vision of what could be, of what you could be. Maybe that dream is selfish, or maybe it’s altruistic, or maybe...it’s extremist. What if there was a family jewel, an exquisite 133-carat pink piece of perfection, a diamond that historically belonged to you, and what if that gem was stolen?

Little Frankie Darling wants revenge, Asami Sato wants her inheritance, and Oyabun Kitsune wants the magic artifact hidden in the 150-year-old cherrywood box. They each pay investigator, Axel Webb, to find the box, but things are not always what they seem, and people always lie to conceal their secret agendas.

In my business, you meet all kinds of people; some, let’s call them civilians, are ordinary, what the politicians call “folks;” then there are the characters, the peculiar sorts, people with strange peccadilloes: what an old friend of mine might call, “people who scare the horses.” Some, let's call them “the desperate:” come to me because they find themselves in a situation, sometimes of their own making and other times… well… let’s just say, imposed upon them. In each case, they have secrets.

English artist Alice Bulbeck and her twin brother, Edward, approach Axel Webb to find a lost Shakespeare play entitled The History of Cardenio. The play, performed only once for James I, has been lost for 400 years. It wasn’t included in the 1623 First Folio published by Shakespeare’s friends after his death. It is the only known play credited to William Shakespeare that has never been published. The question is, why?

On Christmas Eve, 1984, two Mexican veterinarian dropouts broke into the Museo Nacional del Antropologia. They stole over one hundred ancient Mayan treasures found in the tomb of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, a discovery that rivals Tutankhamun in beauty, wealth, and cultural significance. The burglary became known as the El Robo del Siglo: The Theft of the Century.

Investigator Axel Webb is hired by a Japanese Naichō Agent on the recommendation of his Yakuza friend, Hibiki Sato, to find the Honjō Masamune katana that was last seen in 1945 when it was taken from a Mejiro Police Station by a US Army sergeant. The sergeant’s name was recorded by the police in Japanese.