Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Crime Fiction

Twelve-year-old Peter Waring is an orphan with an assortment of relatives who don't quite know what to do with him. But Peter's concern is for Rose Ellen, the little girl his mother took in before she died, and for whom none of his relations feel any responsibility. They are however intrigued by Peter's legacy. His father had hidden The Annam Jewel, a mysterious and priceless object that Peter will inherit on his 25th birthday. But Peter's first task is to rescue Rose Ellen from the wretched institution where she has been sent.

Los Angeles burglar Junior Bender has a rule about never taking a job that pays too well: In the criminal underworld, if you’re offered more money than a job is worth, someone is going to end up dead. But he’s bending his rule this one time because he and his girlfriend, Ronnie, are in desperate need of cash to hire a kidnapper to snatch Ronnie’s two-year-old son back from her ex. The whole thing is pretty complicated and has Junior on edge.

Tal Howard is trying to adjust to life after being held prisoner by the Chinese during the Korean War. During his time in camp, he befriended a dying soldier who confessed a secret about a small fortune he had stolen from his brother and hidden somewhere in his hometown. After repatriation, Tal finds it hard to settle down in his old life. He decides to visit the dying prisoner's hometown and retrieve the money, which he hopes will change his life for the better.

Stevenson's brilliantly macabre yet profound story of a man seemingly trapped in evil.

The dark strains of madness that permeate many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe make their way through this macabre story. This memorable short story bears a resemblance to Poe's Tell Tale Heart. In both stories guilt leaves a murderer with a singular choice.

Friend to those who have no friend! Enemy to those who would make him an enemy! It's Boston Blackie, safecracker supreme and inspiration for countless Hollywood films as well as radio and TV shows. Jack Boyle's crime fiction short stories and novellas, set in San Francisco, featuring this timeless character were originally published in magazines in 1915 then compiled into this suspense collection in 1919. The stories, however, link from one to the next, so there is continuity throughout the audiobook.

Before she joined the Indestructibles, Kate Miller haunted the streets of her hometown, a hero trying to drive away the ghosts of her own losses and failures. Masked and alone against the dark elements of her city, Kate became known as the Dancer, the ballerina vigilante, fighting street-level crime and trying to make the world a better place, one fight at a time. But when an early mistake leads her back to her roots, will Kate have the strength to fight on?

Narrated by award-winning audiobook narrator Mike Vendetti, The House of the Vampire (1907) by George Sylvester Vierick is not only one of the first known gay vampire stories, but it is also one of the first psychic vampire stories - where a vampire feeds off of more than just blood.

Abraham Snow is back in action and this one starts off with a bang. It started out as a routine security job. Then, a blast from the past walked out of the shadows. When Thomas Hunt, an old friend from his Army days asks for his help in stopping a bomber from attacking a conference, Snow finds himself caught between an obligation to family, duty, and country. Which will he choose? And who is Charles Pope and what does he have planned for everyone’s favorite former undercover operative turned p.i.? The hunt is on in SNOW HUNT.

When private investigator Cole Harper is approached by Maria Moretti, a woman he barely remembers from 1943, she's holding two things he can't ignore—one of his old business cards and a postcard pulled from her mailbox. The message on the postcard is written in code...but the handwriting is unmistakable. It belongs to her son, Navy Yeoman Third Class Frank Moretti, who the Navy says vanished four years earlier and was officially declared "missing at sea."

"I have two proposals to make, sir, and either is fair. Take your choice. I will give you twenty-five thousand when you deliver the falcon, and another twenty-five thousand as soon as I get to New York; or I will give you one quarter—twenty-five percent—of what I realize on the falcon. There you are, sir: an almost immediate fifty thousand dollars or a vastly greater sum within, say, a couple of months."

Young Dr Oldfield is puzzled by the strangely intractable illness of his recently acquired patient, the Modernist potter Peter Gannet, and he calls upon his old teacher, Dr Thorndyke, to consult. Thorndyke quickly identifies the true cause of the illness as arsenic poisoning, and there seems little doubt that the poison has been administered by someone in Gannet's household. After his discharge from the hospital, what will be the result when Gannet returns to his home?

A handsome TV Repairman's truck is often parked in front of the home of one of the hottest chicks in the neighborhood. It's parked there when her husband comes home unexpectedly for lunch. Then the police arrive, and the woman has been murdered. Who did the murder? You will be surprised.

Prison inmates have a lot of time on their hands. Some use this time to plan an escape. Break-Out written by Donald E. Westlake is an audiobook narrated by Mike Vendetti that recounts the planning and eventual escape from some highly secure prisons such as Alcatraz. Unfortunately for the perpetrators, they didn't put enough planning into how to stay out of prison.

Travel into the world of a pickpocket who has turned a new leaf. He has put his skills and fast hands to productive work and now is happily married. Everything is wonderful until he is the only witness to a murder. The murderer recognizes him immediately. Why not another Murder?

Running away from an abusive stepmother, a little girl scrambles across London rooftops, a favorite hiding place. She peers through a window and sees a man apparently burglarizing a studio, but quickly realizes that she has witnessed the aftermath of a murder when the man puts a gun in the hand of a body on the floor. When she cries out he glimpses her and she escapes in terror. Very soon after, she is sent to live with her deceased mother’s aristocratic family and her secret is kept from the police.

According to legend, in 1910, Marie Belloc Lowndes attended a London dinner party where a guest told her that his mother’s butler and cook claimed they had once rented rooms to Jack the Ripper, the notorious mass murderer. The idea for “The Lodger” was born. Mr. and Mrs. Bunting have sunk their savings into their house with plans to let rooms. But no lodgers have materialized, and they are on the verge of penury when, one foggy night, a knock on the door brings Mr. Sleuth, an unassuming gentleman whose needs are perfectly suited to the suite of rooms the Buntings have to rent.

William Hope Hodgson wrote "The Terror of the Water-Tank" in 1907 and the story has been published in several pulp magazines since then. Mike Vendetti has taken this story and turned it into an engrossing audiobook. The story takes place in England where crowning the heights on the outskirts of a certain town on the east coast is a large, iron water-tank from which an isolated row of small villas obtains its supply. The top of this tank has been cemented, and around it have been placed railings, thus making it a splendid "look-out" for townspeople who may choose to promenade upon it.

Dive into Marco Polo, a heart-pounding psychological thriller set in 1940s Pittsburgh, where shadows whisper secrets and heroes skirmish with personal demons. Follow Captain Wendell Lee, a dashing African American war hero turned attorney, as he battles alcoholism and the damage caused to his family and his life while racing against time to rescue his kidnapped daughter. With hard-drinking private investigator Declan “Dekker” O’Shea by his side, they face the chilling underbelly of a city entangled in racism, addiction, pedophilia, suicide, murder, and shocking betrayals.

Bound by the Mafia’s code of honor, loyalty, and silence, Maria Lombardo has always dreamed of another life. But when her father dies, she must take over from him as head of the Lombardo clan, the most powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia, La Cosa Nostra. On the other side of Palermo, the Amato family’s growing lust for power presents a dangerous problem. Maria is forced to take action that goes against every fiber of her being, or she will lose the respect of her clan. Falling for Simone complicates an already complex situation.