Showing results by narrator "Mel Foster" in All Categories

Jay has never forgotten the photo once sent to him of his young fiancée - naked in the arms of another man. Now on his deathbed and convinced the photo was a fake, the hunt is on for a modern-day witchfinder. And Amos Walker is the man for the job.

Tracking down a runaway wife is run of the mill. That's yesterday's blues. But finding the trombonist father of black, beautiful, reformed hooker Iris threatens to blow up into the case of a lifetime. The trail Amos Walker follows through Detroit's smoky music clubs leads him to dens of hard crime and harder drugs - where Iris and Amos will be lucky to escape with their lives, much less the truth about a past packed with menacing secrets. And that's no jazz.

The tabloids were full of it. Constance Thayer, after a night of clubbing, drinks, and drugs, had taken an automatic pistol from the collection of her industrialist husband Doyle Thayer Jr. and emptied it into his back, as he lay naked and unconscious in their Iroquois Heights home. The news of Constance Thayer's X-rated past breathed new life into the scandal for another month. Walker's job was to gather enough dirt on the late Mr. Thayer to make his widow look clean by comparison. What he found was a monstrous magnate, a dubious corpse, and a gang of country-style gunrunners.

Michael K. Simpson, a senior consultant to FranklinCovey, has spent more than twenty-five years training executives to become effective coaches, mentoring and guiding leaders and managers to encourage and develop the talent of their people - the most important asset in any organization. In this guide, you will acquire the skills to coach your personnel from the ground up, maximizing their potential on a personal level, as members of the team, and as contributors to the organization as a whole.

Countless tragedies occurred during the 1967 Detroit riots, and one of them belonged to Richard DeVries. A 22-year-old black man about to play for the Pistons, he was spotted tossing a Molotov cocktail at an abandoned building, arrested on the spot, and then charged with robbing an armored car. 20 years later he’s free, and the first man he calls on is Amos Walker. With 20 years of savings he buys a month of Walker’s time, asking for help finding the men who robbed the armored car. DeVries has already paid for stealing that $200,000, and now it’s time to collect it.

The Confessions of St. Augustine is one of the most moving diaries ever recorded of a man's journey to the fountain of God's grace. Writing as a sinner, not a saint, Augustine shares his innermost thoughts and conversion experiences, and wrestles with the spiritual questions that have stirred the hearts of the thoughtful since time began.

Listen to Bruce’s story about his own Jenner/Kardashian family, and then join him in listening about everyone else’s family! You’ll recognize your own relatives in these outrageous true stories about wacky but lovable in-laws, siblings, husbands and wives, children, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and families in general. You’ll laugh and marvel at stories of funerals, weddings, holidays, and all those other times when “everyone gets together.”

In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.

In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse wherein each side comes up with increasingly outlandish doomsday weapons - weapons that don’t work. But when aliens invade, the top designers of both sides have to come together to make a real doomsday device - if they don’t kill each other first. With its combination of romance, espionage, and alien invasion, The Zap Gun skewers the military-industrial complex in a way that’s as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it's the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring.

Even 150 years later, we are haunted by the Civil War---by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary W. Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

One of the largest, fastest, and most beautiful ships in the world, the Andrea Doria was en route to New York from Italy. Departing from the United States was the much smaller Stockholm. On the foggy night of July 25, 1956, 53 miles southeast of Nantucket, the Stockholm sliced through the Doria's steel hull. Within minutes, the sea was pouring into the Italian liner. Eleven hours later, she capsized and sank into the ocean.

Former reporter Scott Fleetwood and his family are still recovering after tangling with a notorious kidnapper, the Piper, when another kidnapper grips the city. The Shepherd has snatched a young girl from a vacationing family. Other than money, he has one demand: he'll talk only to Scott.

The struggle within American Christianity, Garry Wills argues, now and throughout our country's history, is between the head and the heart: between reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. Why has this been so? How has the tension between the two poles played out, and with what consequences, over the past 400 years? How "Christian" is America, after all? Wills brings a lifetime's worth of thought about these questions to bear on a magnificent historical reckoning.

In 1654, 23 Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

Houston homicide detective Roland March was once one of the best. Now he's disillusioned, cynical, and on his way out. His superiors farm him out on a variety of punishment details until an unexpected break gives March one last chance to save his career. And his humanity. All he has to do? Find the missing teenage daughter of a Houston evangelist that every cop in town is already looking for. But March has an inside track: a multiple murder nobody else thinks is connected. Battling a new partner, an old nemesis, and the demons of his past, getting to the truth could cost March everything.

When Anne McCaffrey passed in November 2011, it was not only those closest to her who mourned her death; legions of readers also felt the loss deeply. The pioneering science fiction author behind the Dragonriders of Pern series crafted intricate stories, enthralling worlds, and strong heroines that profoundly impacted the science fiction community and genre.

In Dragonwriter, Anne’s son and Pern writer Todd McCaffrey collects memories and stories about the beloved author, along with insights into her writing and legacy, from those who knew her best.

In today's fast-moving Information Age, traditional business-planning tools are rapidly becoming obsolete. Yet the competitive, ever-changing marketplace demands that executives move quickly or risk becoming relics. Here's how the world's top executives use chess tactics to thrive in the face of incalculable complexities and unexpected change.

This is the real story of the Beatles' harrowing rise to fame, focusing on that seven-year stretch from the time the boys met as teenagers in the 1950s to early 1964, when the Fab Four prepared to invade America. From the boys' humble beginnings in Liverpool, to the cellars of Hamburg, When They Were Boys includes stories never before told, including heartbreaks, lucky breaks, and dramatic twists of timing, fate, loyalty, and betrayal.

The past has a way of catching up with folks in Stone Creek, Arizona. Schoolmarm Lark Morgan and Marshal Rowdy Rhodes are determined to hide their secrets - and deny their instant attraction. That shouldn't be too hard, since each suspects the other of living a lie. But Rowdy and Lark have one truth in common: the very real dangers they face. Like the gang of robbers wreaking havoc on the railroad heading toward Stone Creek - the men Ranger Sam O'Ballivan expects Rowdy to nab.