Showing results by narrator "Tom Taverna" in All Categories

Honor, courage and a profound sense of right and wrong! These are the character traits Marshal Wallace McKenney lives by. His reputation is known far and wide in Kansas and neighboring states. Those on the other side of the law usually give him and his pearl-handled Colt a wide berth. Those that don’t...well, they pay the price.

Kevin J. Kennedy has put together some of the horror world’s best-selling anthologies over recent years. Now, for the first time, he has collected some of his own short stories in one place. Dark Thoughts features a brand new, 8,000 word tribute story to Richard Laymon's Dark Mountain.

Hailey is a palm reader and a fortune teller, complete with crystal balls and tarot cards in her little shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She is a throwback to the '60s, with her boho style and long, blonde hair. Joshua is a marketing guy - a handsome business type - who has been seeing Hailey professionally for over a year. She predicted his promotion, that he'd find the perfect condo, and just about everything that's happened in his life recently.

Residents of Santa Clarita, one of the nation's safest cities, are jolted when a decapitated woman is discovered in the car of a missing realtor. When detectives home in on her wealthy husband, a mystery begins to unravel, and the investigation heats up. Los Angeles homicide detective Dickie Jones has returned to work after recovering from gunshot wounds. His wife has left him, and his partner, Matt “Pretty Boy Floyd” Tyler, has been assigned a new partner.

After the 1986 tragedy of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the technicians of NASA hoped to create a failsafe shuttle, incapable of malfunctioning. With the space shuttle Lightning, all systems were go.... Then lightning struck twice. America’s greatest technological achievement has been sabotaged. First an engine malfunctions. Then, another. Now Lightning is desperately trying to land, racing against time - and a powerful and unseen enemy will do anything to make the first flight of Lightning its last....

Sheriff Seth Reed believes in justice and seeks vengeance on the lawless folks who dare corrupt tranquil Ruby Creek. But when the mayor mysteriously dies and Sherman takes over, corruption begins, especially when a mysterious gunslinger comes to town. As the mysterious stranger disrupts the town, a body of a young woman is discovered. As Seth tries to unravel the mystery, he becomes the next target. When Sherman's wife desperately begs Seth for help, Seth realizes that peaceful Ruby Creek life is all a sham, and no one can be trusted.

Whatever happened to Jane Roe's baby? Norma McCorvey, of Caddo-Comanche heritage, did not terminate the pregnancy that led her to become the anonymous plaintiff of the landmark U.S. supreme court women's rights case Roe v Wade because in 1971, when the motion was first argued, abortion in the U.S. was illegal. The Jane Roe real-life child would now be a woman in her late 40s, the potential of her polarizing celebrity unknown to her. A religious rights splinter group has blackmailed its way into learning the identity of the Roe baby, the product of a closed adoption.

Tales from the Beach House is a satiric work of fiction that sharply captures the "man-bites-dog" world of contemporary South Florida. The Beach House, a crumbling old motel, is home to a collection of eccentric residents. Amongst their ranks: a tennis pro at the end of his game, a mortuary scientist whose love life has flat-lined, a paparazzo photographer searching for scoops, and more. Each member of this cohort is in search of something - fast money, an easy hustle, fleeting romance, enduring love, fame, power, dignity, happiness...a place they can call home.

What happened to the girls? Overnight, hundreds of teenage girls disappear from the streets of America. Off the coast of Florida, a virtual reality theme park opens for the super-rich. Are the two connected? When two assailants accost 23-year-old Kaden Baker at an awards gala, she enters a maelstrom of high-tech international intrigue that pits her against a mysterious foe.

A prison yard becomes the place where a “lifer" inmate attempts his last stand against the gun tower. An ICU nurse attending to an inmate meets the man that tormented his daughter. A rogue correctional officer receives a body receipt from the county coroner for a man he killed. A prison psychiatrist meets his maker by getting bludgeoned to death by the bust of Freud. The infamous serial killer Ed Kemper finally receives the punishment he told the judge he deserves for his crimes - death by torture.

Alice Comyn was a student of piano performance getting by on an insufficient grant from her college and the kindness of two men: one, a distinguished descendant of European nobility who was too good at playing bridge, and the other, an obscure automobile mechanic who was too good at fixing wrecks. Although Alice’s chief business was communing with long-dead composers, she was still young enough to believe that she would live forever and that her knotted fingers and hunched back could be redeemed by fame.

A collection of stories about how and where the author found heaven in his travels across the lands.

Richie Krebbs is an ex-cop, a walking encyclopedia of crime and criminals who chafes at bureaucracy. Frank Robey quit the FBI and joined the Detroit PD, obsessed with the case of a missing child and unwilling to leave the city before she was found. When Richie unearths a possible clue in one of Detroit’s many abandoned homes, it puts him on a collision course with Frank - and with depths of depravity that neither man could have imagined.

Journey through the minds of 22 horror authors who have teamed up to reveal the most terrifying aspects of the forest. These original supernatural and psychological horror stories include: ghosts, demons, serial killers, true stories and unsolved mysteries, unique monsters, classic myths and legends, and above all else, a profound respect for the terror hidden within the mysterious trees.

Taking on a case that sounded simple, Morgan Stark and Felicity O’Brien are tasked to retrieve two high-value paintings, but it quickly becomes more complicated. Using past connections, the ex-mercenary and the former jewel thief go undercover as part of J.J. Slash's growing crime empire.

Cam Derringer is Key West's wildest PI. While trying to find the men responsible for his wife's disappearance five years earlier, he unexpectantly stumbles across a much deadlier case. It appears his wife was caught in the middle of a drug ring used to fund international terrorism. Cam is soon pulled into a world of uncertainty and deceit as he digs deeper into the underworld. Giving his heart to a woman once more, he soon realizes she has lied about everything from her name to her game.

Some secrets should stay buried. That's nearly impossible when a Golden Retriever named Fred, with a knack for digging up the truth, shows up with his owner to investigate an accidental drowning. When Jake realizes the drowning is no accident, his new girlfriend starts avoiding him. She's a sheriff deputy and says she doesn't want or need his help, but could she have another motive for keeping him quiet?

It's 2029, and the United States has fallen under the sway of an oppressive government where all citizens' rights have been stripped, Red Shirt platoons patrol the streets, and people die for voicing opinions. Into this chaos step Sid and Annie Winthrop. The elderly couple sets out on a deadly journey of revenge against the Red Shirts who murdered their son. Red Shirt members Victor and Brooklyn have devoted their young lives to the cause of the president in protecting the nation. When attacks on their home town leave dozens of Red Shirts dead, Victor must help his superiors find the vigilante.

When newly licensed Honolulu private eye Nate Savidge hits the streets to track down the killer of a local college student, he soon discovers there's a dark side to paradise. With the help of criminal lawyer Jake Harper, Nate takes on a city teeming with violence and corruption to keep an innocent 17-year-old from a life behind bars.

Willie Walker was a famous saxophonist in the Jazz world. He had played all around the world. But now he was retiring to Key West to open up a Jazz Club at the End of the Road. But people around him start dying, and pretty soon Willie gets the idea that somebody doesn’t want his club to open. His granddaughter Ruby is getting the same idea and hires Marlow to find out who is out to kill her grandfather and why. Willie has secrets he plans on taking to the grave. Secrets he promised never to reveal. But in order to keep Willie alive, Marlow has to uncover those secrets or they both might end up singing the Midnight Blues.