Showing results by narrator "Joe Thomas" in All Categories

It wasn't the most hospitable invitation she'd ever received. Archaeologist Annja Creed is being rushed to Massachusetts, abducted by a famous environmental terrorist - a zealot willing to kill anyone who gets in his or the planet's way. He has taken the book dealer hostage in order to steal a rare and very valuable treatise called the Tome of Prossos. Annja is the key to retrieving the ancient manuscript hidden somewhere deep within the mansion.

A vacation spot picked at random, Thailand is intended to provide relaxation time for globe-trotting archaeologist Annja Creed. Yet the irresistible pull of the country's legendary Spirit Cave lures Annja and her companions deep within a network of underground chambers — nearly to their deaths. The ancient burial sites have slumbered through the ages. Yet no rest is found there — just the voices of the dead. When the dead speak, will they help Annja uncover the perplexing past of a remarkable find or will they call her to join them?

When her longtime friend claims to have evidence of Big Foot's existence, archaeologist Annja Creed can't resist checking it out for herself - she's been debating the subject for years. Annja's curiosity leads her deep into the woods of the Pacific Northwest, to meet Jenny where the supposed trail has been left by the one and only Sasquatch.

Enlisted by the Japan Buddhist Federation to catalog a number of ancient shrines dotted across Nepal, archaeologist Annja Creed is honored to help. Political violence has prompted the Federation to protect holy sites from desecration and vandalism, and Annja is their last hope to properly conserve these sites. Where there's vandalism, there's plundering, and local police soon become suspicious of Annja's presence. But she is more concerned about the antiques smugglers and Maoist guerrillas trying to kill her.

On assignment in the Philippines, archaeologist Annja Creed meets with a contact to verify some information. Easy enough. But when the man doesn't turn out to be whom he said he was, Annja finds herself handcuffed, blindfolded and kidnapped. And to make matters worse, she's a prisoner of the dreaded Abu Sayyaf, a notorious terrorist group. Desperate to escape, Annja is able to flee after slaying one of her captors. But she soon gets lost in the hostile jungle, which is rumored to be haunted by the spirits of Moro warriors who fought off conquistadors with their blades.

Luke’s dad has bought a lot of gadgets recently, and not one of them works as it’s supposed to. Maybe it’s because a machine-from-the-future is stalking Bromley, playing havoc with all the tech and trying to stop Star Lad going on a date. Could this be the Rise of the Machines? Luke knows what he must do - he just needs his fellow SCARF members to help, or it will be the end of everything....

A gunshot wound has robbed Audubon, Texas, of its top lawman at the worst possible time. Clete Lanagan and his band of outlaws have hatched a scheme to plunder the town bank of a small fortune in railroad money. When the acting sheriff, Dalton Conyers - half-brother of Smoke’s niece Rebecca - is unable to raise a posse to hunt down Lanagan’s gang, he calls on Smoke for help. But with so much cash at stake, Lanagan won’t go down without a fight.

They will clean out the demons and the suicides and move on. As long as they stay within the rules, Jill Kismet can't deny them entry. But she can watch - and if they step out of line, she'll send them packing. When Cirque performers start dying grotesquely, Kismet has to find out why, or the fragile truce won't hold and her entire city will become a carnival of horror. She also has to play the resident hellbreed power against the Cirque to keep them in line and find out why ordinary people are needing exorcisms. And then there's the murdered voodoo practitioners and the zombies.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

The war continues, and the undead ravage the land. Jirom, Horace, and Emanon begin to hope they might free the empire. But can they manage to do so before the dark king conquers the world? Horace has come a long way from his days of slavery. Now he, Jirom, and their companions think they just might glimpse victory ahead, and the triumphant end to what began as a mere slave rebellion. But first Horace must recover from the loss of his beloved Alyra. And Jirom finds himself asking if even victory will be worth the cost.

It's 1999. Martin Hill is ten years old, crazy about Arsenal and has a minor crush on a girl named Betty. Then he makes it to the final two in the casting for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In the end, the other boy is picked for the role of a lifetime. A devastated Martin tries to move on with his life. But how can he escape his failure, especially when it's the most famous film series in the world?

Gavin’s got a new neighbour and she’s really annoying. Niki follows him everywhere, bosses him about and doesn’t care that her parents will obliterate Earth with their galactic warships if she doesn’t stop running away from them. Can Niki and Gavin sort out the alien despots (aka Mum and Dad) and save the planet? Possibly. Will they become friends along the way? Doubtful.

The war continues, and the undead ravage the land. Jirom, Horace, and Emanon begin to hope they might free the empire. But can they manage to do so before the dark king conquers the world?

Michael is branded a traitor as a child because of the murder of the king’s 9-year-old son, by his father David Kingman. Ten years later on Michael lives a hardscrabble life, with his sister Gwen, performing crimes with his friends against minor royals in a weak attempt at striking back at the world that rejects him and his family. In a world where memory is the coin that pays for magic, Michael knows something is there in the hot white emptiness of his mind.

Jane Candia Coleman is a natural storyteller whose characters come from the lands between the southwestern valleys of Arizona and the Gila Mountains of New Mexico. The night Billy the Kid died is hauntingly depicted in "Corrido for Billy". "Lady Flo" is a memoir, based on historical fact, of the black wife of an Irish nobleman. "Moving On" depicts a young girl abandoned by her family who finds her way with an itinerant Jewish peddler. And "Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?" is the winner of the 1995 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction.

Shaw's forte was her ability to create interesting casts of characters through whom and between whom she was able to develop a suspenseful and unpredictable interplay. This story is a good example of her character driven Western fiction.

Two young men in the gold fields of California spend a last evening together as one of them, very sick, confronts his own imminent death. The tenderness between them may seem idealized, but you understand by listening to this story how premature death from accident and disease haunted the lives of far more westerners than death by violence.

Bill Ash, an escaped convict returns to find his father murdered.

A quick-draw tale from the wild west. T. T. Flynn has long been popular with listeners as a master of the Western story.

Haseloff's characters embody the fundamental values - honor, duty, courage, and family - that prevailed on the American frontier and were instilled in the young Haseloff by her own "heroes", her mother and her grandmother. Her stories, in a sense, dramatize how these values endure when challenged by the adversities and cruelties of frontier existence.