Showing results by narrator "James Christopher" in All Categories

"The Purloined Letter" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rog." These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.

Ian Black's commitment to safeguarding Earth has come at a price. His career as an illusionist is at a standstill and attending to the planet's needs has distanced him from his best friend, his guardians, and the woman he loves. When presented with an opportunity to perform, Ian seizes the chance. But moments before he takes the stage, Ian encounters the mysterious Jaered and a rebel force fighting to protect Earth alongside the Weir.

Two boy kings are a world apart, both in grave danger by forces out of their control. Held captive by their fate, they must find any means to survive. The mysterious distant leader called the father finally steps out of the shadows to threaten every kingdom with his deadly new weapon. Can his true plans be discovered before the destruction begins?

Ian Black is an illusionist with a talent for keeping secrets. College student Rayne Bevan has a gift for uncovering them. She suspects that the popular performer's skills extend beyond the stage and that he's the area's mysterious and elusive defender of the innocent. In her efforts to uncover the truth, Rayne is swept into the hidden world of the Weir, a magical race who struggle to prevent Earth from self-destructing.

In need of a new king, the choosing tower fills with names, and Gordon is relieved he has no chance at the crown. He hopes his sweetblood illness takes him out of the running; making it all the more shocking when he's chosen. The beginning of a nightmare that forces Gordon to flee his own kingdom.

You Never Can Tell was originally born out of a bet that Shaw couldn't write a "seaside comedy" (a popular theatrical genre at that time). The result is perhaps the most surprising of Shaw's plays, complete with marital mayhem, tangled romance, and even doubtful dentistry. Despite the play's lighthearted tone, it's really another of Shaw's brilliantly observed social treatises, this time in the guise of a light comedy.

Nature is out of balance. Two years after moving his family to an oak in a Tennessee suburb, Silas Oaktree is a robin still trying to settle in. Silas battles to support his growing family, struggles between hate and love for his junkie brother, helps a human hospice worker with his inability to let go, and rushes to end a deadly game with a serial killer before others get hurt. Springtime has never before been such a trying season as Silas is pushed to the limits of who he is as a bird, and what he's willing to become to save his new home.

Four short stories of four different women from various backgrounds who use their relationships as a means of satisfying their devious desires. One persuaded her sister that they had no choice but to have children with their father. One called Athena will murder to have control. Dakota will make the biggest mistake of her life, and Greer just did not know when to stop, and start to love!

He could see his wife eyes wide and her face etched with confusion, worry and fright while her hair resembled a tumbleweed. Her knuckles had gone white from clutching a small parcel of clothes and other belongings to her chest. She sat very still in the passenger seat with her knees so close to her body that she was almost curled into the fetal position. If it wasn't for the dire nature of the situation, he could find her disposition laughable. Max glanced into the rear-view mirror to check on the children.

Josh awoke something buried deep inside his sweet wife, a good girl he had married, and now she was growing into something more than a innocent young lady. Josh doesn't know if he loves her more as a whore or as a virgin - or maybe she is the perfect combination of both. Get your copy of His Wife and enjoy!

After decades apart, the five siblings find themselves together again at their ailing mother’s bedside, caught in a deadlocked feud over her hospice care. Into the morass steps Murron Teinetoa, one of their bastard children, who carries an idealistic hope of finally fitting in among her estranged relatives.In an interweaving narrative, Malae portrays the Felices in their formative years of the fifties; he excavates the personal lives of the siblings in the eighties and nineties; and he follows Murron in the present as she raises her son as a single mother.

In her first-ever solo anthology, New York Times best-selling author Rebecca Cantrell demonstrates her award-winning skill with four wonderful stories - including the prequel to her Hannah Vogel series where Ernst Vogel explores the shadowy world of Weimar-era Berlin as he investigates the murder of a young cigarette boy at his cabaret. The collection also includes a journey through the wreckage of postwar Berlin in a search for hope, a fated meeting on a train to a concentration camp, and a supernatural warrior protecting a shtetl in wartime Czechoslovakia.

Abandoned as infants, twins Peter and Rory have never known a real family. While Peter wants nothing more than to escape his abusive adoptive father, Rory struggles to not get kicked out of her twelfth foster home since she was separated from Peter seven years ago. All that changes when magical birds appear offering to help them reunite...and return them to the home they never knew. But fate is cruel. They arrive on the planet Inara, on opposing sides of a brutal war. It is up to them to uncover the real enemy if they ever want to see each other again.

The Paris police prefect approaches amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin with a puzzle: a cabinet minister has stolen a letter from a woman of royalty whom he is now blackmailing. Despite a painstaking search of the minister’s rooms, the police find nothing. When the prefect returns a month later and mentions a large reward for the letter, Dupin casually produces the document. Dupin later explains to his assistant, the story’s narrator, that by analyzing the personality and behaviour of the minister, he correctly had concluded that the letter would be hidden in plain sight.

Joey Wells has a score to settle in Pueblo: Find Jacob Murdock and the band of vaqueros who attacked his wife and drown them in their own stinking blood. Smoke Jensen, the trigger-ready legend of the "High Lonesome," is more than willing to strap on a brace of 45's to help out Wells - especially if it involves nailing some dirty renegades to the wall. But things are tougher than Jensen imagined. Murdock and his men aren't just hiding out in Pueblo - they've taken it over.

Keeping the peace in a West Texas town like Buffalo Peak should be easy for a legendary frontiersman like Marshal Elwood "Firestick" McQueen. He’s got his longtime buddies "Beartooth" Skinner and "Moosejaw" Hendricks as his deputies—not to mention the famous rifle that earned him his nickname. But when Firestick learns that their ornery old friend “Rip” Ripley just rode into town, all bets are off. It’s darn near impossible to keep the peace when Rip’s specialty is disturbing it. Firestick finds a decade-old wanted poster for Rip—the reward is one dollar.

He calls himself The King. Once a respected professor, he was ruined by scandal. Now, he rules his own “country”—an area of western territory where an army of outlaws enforce his laws. Any town he claims as his own must pay “taxes,” collected from bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. When he learns that President Rutherford B. Hayes and General William Tecumseh Sherman are venturing into the far west on a tour of the nation, The King devises a plan to kidnap America’s leaders and expand his empire.

There’s nothing particularly unusual for a legendary gunman to be summoned to the lawless, bullet-riddled territory of Arizona. But when Frank Morgan, a.k.a. the Last Gunfighter, rides into Tucson, he finds himself ambushed and kidnapped by ruthless Mexican bandit Ramirez’s army of thugs. The only way out is for Frank’s son, Conrad Browning, heir to the vast Browning fortune, to ransom his father free. But Conrad isn’t giving up one cent. He’s got a far deadlier currency in mind.

Resurgence is hiding a secret. It’s taken Alex months to find it…but find it he has! There is only one problem: It might just be an unbeatable force that he can’t defeat on his own. Luckily, Alex has never been without his group of friends, ready to join him for any challenge.

Old ways and new clash in head-on confrontation: When journeyman hit man Ray Dylan agrees to look in on Sami Bloom, former mistress of a deceased Canadian crime financier, he realizes he must keep his profession a secret. What he doesn’t realize is how difficult that is now that he has fallen for this warm-hearted beauty. While he struggles with the idea of confiding to her about his secret past, Dylan learns that Sami Bloom has some secrets of her own—and her secrets reach into the upper echelons of the very organization he works for.