Showing results by narrator "Johnny Heller" in All Categories

Starting for the first-place Cubs and hitting a career high of .274, for the first time in his life, Mickey Rawlings is feeling comfortable enough to buy furniture. But it is a time of mixed blessings; ominous battles are brewing at home and abroad. On the homefront, Major League baseball may be suspended for the duration of the war, anti-German sentiment is running high, and Mickey's best friend - a rookie named Willie Kaiser - has just been shot right on the diamond.

After crash landing on the planet Mongo, Flash, Dale, and the eminent scientist, Dr. Zarkov, fight against the evil forces of Emperor Ming, who seeks to perpetuate his rule by ruthless and savage methods.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

In the fall of 1969, a public execution in an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn earned Joey a mention in the New York Daily News and a twenty-grand payout from the mob. On the surface, his next job seemed just as routine: The bosses suspected their trusted numbers controller, Joe Squillante, was skimming the nightly bets to settle personal debts. Joey gave Squillante two weeks to live.

Virgil Erath is on death row for a crime he didn't commit. But he gets a new beginning when he is mystically transported to a planet of hallucinatory landscapes, warring humanoid races, and a cloud-filled sky that has never seen the sun. Its inhabitants of this world call it Amtor—others have called it “Venus.” Captured by a clan of winged warriors, Virgil is brought before the great Jong Kum Kloojong. But this “king of kings” is under attack by a deadly terrorist sect, and Virgil may be his only hope of saving Amtor from an apocalyptic war.

Aside from the eccentric Professor Childermass, young sleuth Johnny Dixon’s best friend may be Father Higgins, the kindly priest at the local church. When Higgins is transferred to the congregation in the tiny town of Rocks Village, Johnny and the professor are afraid they won’t see their old friend ever again. But they’ll be reuniting with Father Higgins sooner than they think—and the thing that brings them together will be positively out of this world.

Johnny Dixon is worried about Professor Childermass. The professor has always been an odd duck, but lately his behavior has been positively bizarre. He’s been talking to himself and stalking down the street with his collar turned up and his hat over his eyes, and now he won’t return Johnny’s calls. Johnny’s afraid that the professor’s old age is starting to get to him, but he will soon find it’s something far more amazing—and far more dangerous.

When feared Yankees slugger Cliff Bullard goes barnstorming around the northeast, offering $10,000 to any local pitcher who can strike him out, Professor Childermass and Johnny Dixon get a sneaky idea. There’s a local legend about a crackpot inventor who once built a robot capable of throwing a baseball 110 MPH, and the professor thinks that if they find the machine, they can win Bullard’s prize. They discover the rusted old monstrosity in an abandoned workshop and put it back together, piece by piece.

The abandoned schoolhouse sits just outside the town of Duston Heights, Massachusetts, and Johnny Dixon is not sure what called him there. Inside the darkened building, he finds three chilling stained glass windows which show a hooded monster, a vengeful angel, and the hateful, staring face of Zebulon Windrow. Impossibly, the old man speaks to Johnny, threatening revenge on behalf of one of his descendants—and then the room is filled with horrible insects. As they cover Johnny’s body, moving closer toward his mouth, he awakes and escapes the nightmare.

Professor Roderick Childermass may be the strangest person Johnny Dixon has ever met, but compared to his brother Peregrine, the professor is practically normal. Peregrine is a born trickster, and when he knows his death is near, he sends a letter promising the professor his entire $10,000,000 estate—assuming he can solve one final riddle. The professor feels that his brother is mocking him from beyond the grave. If Peregrine were alive, he says, he’d kill him. To crack the puzzle and claim the fortune, Johnny and the professor head north to the wild countryside of far-off Maine.

In yet another collection of essays, investigative journalist Dave Barry is on the job, hard at work between lunch and naps researching and compiling out-of-the-ordinary news stories from his legion of loyal followers all across the country. Reported as only Dave's wit and wisdom can accomplish, Barry covers everything from exploding municipal toilets to spontaneous human combustion (over 200 cases) to humor impairment—citing Exhibit A, former President Richard Nixon. No one is exempt: Barry lambasts traffic cops, dentists, doctors, Congress, and his very dumb dogs.

On a country lane in snowbound 1950s New Hampshire, a car goes skidding off the road. Professor Childermass and Johnny Dixon escape unscathed, but their car is stuck, and they are forced to walk into town. Johnny doesn’t mind. A curious young man, he has fun anytime the professor takes him out, because he’s treated like an adult. Together they’ve gotten into all sorts of supernatural scrapes, and this winter night they’ll face their toughest challenge yet. When Childermass suddenly vanishes, Johnny is the only one who can find him.

H. Bagwell Glomus built an empire out of cereal. In the 1920s, his Oaty Crisps were the most popular breakfast in the United States, and Mr. Glomus was the wealthiest man in the little town of Gildersleeve, Massachusetts. But he was not a happy man. In 1936, he took his own life and his will was never found. Legend has it that his last will and testament is hidden somewhere in his office, but so far, no one has been able to find it and claim the ten thousand dollar reward. Yet, no one has looked as hard as Johnny Dixon.

It’s the 1950s when Johnny Dixon’s mother dies, his father goes to fight in the Korean War, and he goes to live with his grandparents. Although life in a new house is strange, Johnny’s “Grampa” listens to his favorite ballgames, takes him on long walks, and tells him stories of the strange mysteries that lurk in the shadows. Best of all, he’s friends with Professor Childermass, an eccentric academic who’s about to take Johnny on the adventure of a lifetime.

It’s 1974, and Adventure Command International is still on the job in hotspots at the four corners of the wide world! After a harrowing year, Adventure Command’s members have taken their knocks and licked their wounds and now stand ready to plunge into a new set of three amazing adventures designed to thrill boys and girls of all ages! Rev up the Mobile Command Vehicle and set up the Flying Recon! Give them both the gas for tales of action and suspense with the team in the frozen Arctic, along Florida’s space coast, and up the sides of one of Japan’s most active volcanos!

Prohibition, with all its crime, corruption, and cultural upheaval, ran its course after 13 years in most of the rest of the country - but not in Memphis, where it lasted 30 years. Patrick O'Daniel takes a fresh look at those responsible for the rise and fall of Prohibition, its effect on Memphis, and the impact events in the city made on the rest of the state and country.

Kaytek, a mischievous schoolboy who wants to become a wizard, is surprised to discover that he is able to perform magic spells and change reality. He begins to lead a double life: a powerful wizard in the dress of an ordinary boy. It's all great fun using magic to cause strange incidents in his school and neighborhood, but soon Kaytek's increasing powers cause major chaos around the city of Warsaw.

Listeners will laugh themselves silly as they learn to find their inner calm and settle for sleep—even when they wake in the night—as they also discover the difference between nocturnal and diurnal animals.

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast. Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals.

This reissue of Willeford's 1963 pulp classic is a timely reminder that madness is truly the dark heart of politics. Written at a time when people still had faith in their elected leaders, Willeford's book laid bare the American dream. There is an almost Chekhovian wistfulness in the treatment of his stories, which belies their considerable - and still relevant - impact.