Showing results by narrator "Dick Hill" in All Categories

Victor Frankenstein learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger and more powerful than the average man. Frankenstein rejects the creature, and lives to regret his desire to create life, after it kills his brother William. Frankenstein is a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus.

At a Mexican roadblock, a U.S. Embassy SUV is stopped at gunpoint, three of its passengers murdered, and a fourth kidnapped. Everything points to the drug cartels, especially when the kidnappers say they will return the hostage if a cartel kingpin is released from U.S. federal prison.But when word gets to Charley Castillo and his group of “retired” spies and special operators, they have their doubts.

The red letter A on her dress marks young mother Hester Prynne among her Puritan neighbors, who demand to know who fathered her child. Rumors swirl, but the shunned and shamed Hester keeps her secret - and his - for years, until a guilt-ridden confession reveals the truth, with unexpected consequences.

When a Muslim cleric predicts planes will fall from the sky, America braces for a terrorist attack. But when the prediction proves true, the real cause is far more terrifying: a microbe that eats oil, effectively destroying all gas-operated mechanisms. Gillette, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control, understands the devastation that the microbe could wreak. But his far-more-chilling theory is that the microbe is synthetic and the work of terrorists.

Meet Linda Breland, single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, who always held her younger sister in check, is leaving for college. And Gracie, her Tasmanian devil, is giving her nightmares. Linda's personal life? Well, between the married men, the cold New Jersey winters, her pinched wallet and her ex-husband who marries a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is - let's just say, Linda has seen enough to fill 1000 pages.

In the windswept sands of the Middle East, Paul Chardy fought side by side with Ulu Beg: one, a charismatic, high-strung CIA covert warrior, the other a ferocious freedom fighter. Then Chardy fell into the hands of the enemy, and Beg was betrayed. Now the two men are about to meet again. Beg has come over the Mexican border under a hail of bullets - determined to assassinate a leading American political figure and avenge his people's betrayal. The CIA wants Chardy to stop the hit. Chardy wants to save Beg's life. A terrible truth begins to emerge: somewhere, someone wants both men to die.

Whether he's sneaking doughnuts, mooning over a pretty girl, or snookering the local boys to do his work for him, Tom Sawyer is the consummate schemer - but his charm and easygoing nature keep him from being in anyone's bad graces for long. However, when Tom teams up with his friend Huck Finn, their sleepy Missouri town had better watch out.

After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers’ Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world. Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate.

When we first met "the pariah of the village... the son of the drunkard" in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom was "under strict orders not to play with him," so he played with him every time he got the chance. Twain took his most outrageous and outcast character (and perhaps the one he loved the most), Huckleberry Finn, from that timeless tale and wrote his own adventures.

Amory Blaine has been brought up by a wealthy, idiosyncratic, and alcoholic mother. Snobbish because he knows no better, he is uncomfortable with others and must learn the proper social etiquette and values embraced by his peers. As he progresses to Princeton University from the Midwest, he flirts with some predatory young women and chances friendship with some intellectual young men. Will he find happiness, or will his life be forever burdened by his ineptitude this side of paradise?

Attorney Paul Riley has built a lucrative career on his famous prosecution of Terry Burgos, a serial killer who emulated the lyrics of a violent song to gruesomely murder six girls, including the daughter of billionaires Harland and Natalia Bentley. Now, fifteen years later, the police are confronted with a new series of murders - and the grisly second verse to the song. Riley is the first to realize that the two cases are connected and that the line between copycat and cover-up has been blurred.

From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly. In this fresh and revealing biography of Bernstein's political life, Barry Seldes examines Bernstein's career against the backdrop of cold war America - blacklisting by the State Department in 1950, voluntary exile from the New York Philharmonic in 1951 for fear that he might be blacklisted, and the factors that by the mid-1950s allowed his triumphant return to the New York Philharmonic.

Book 3 in the Assassin Series, Return of the Assassin is the shocking continuation of the saga of El Rey, the notorious Mexican cartel super-assassin whose legacy of impossible kills has earned him the reputation as the most lethally effective hit man in the world.

The Trial and Death of Socrates presents the trial and subsequent execution of Socrates in 399 BCE. Socrates was tried on the basis of two ambiguous charges: corrupting the youth and impiety. “Euthyphro”, one of Plato's early dialogues, takes place during the weeks leading up to Socrates' trial. “Apology” is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he defends himself against the charges of being a man "who corrupted the young, refused to worship the gods, and created new deities".

It begins when the strangely marked body of a young prostitute is found just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. A similarly disfigured corpse of an American nun turns up. Then an Arab boy. As the list of victims grows, their only apparent connection is the bizarre markings on their bodies, it appears that Israel is facing its first serial murder case.

Alex LaDuca travels to Miami to continue her investigations into the murder-and-money-laundering activities of the Dosi cartel, an intrigue set in motion in Hostage in Havana. Sent there by the U.S. Treasury Department to speak with a recent Cuban defector, she soon realizes this key player may be no help at all. Alex attempts to navigate a Miami underworld that encompasses elements of the surreal and supernatural. But can Alex emerge from this world with her life - and her faith - intact?

Eight years ago, Mary and Freddy Gale's young daughter was killed by a drunk driver on her way home from school. The driver, a young man named John Booth, was sentenced to eight years in prison. Unable to absolve their own guilt, the Gale's marriage dissolves and Mary takes their two remaining children away from Freddy. Quenching his thirst for vengeance with alcohol, Freddy Gale waits for John Booth's release, planning his revenge. He becomes a man obsessed.

Jesus of Galilee taught through stories, which even today contain the power to startle us out of our prejudices and preconceptions. Now Father Andrew M. Greeley, one of America's most beloved storytellers, examines the parables told by Jesus in search of a fuller understanding of the man and his message. This engaging and informal collection of homilies reveals a Jesus whose simple parables carry profound lessons about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Six years ago, witness protection marshal Roland Larson did the unthinkable: he fell in love with a protected witness, Hope Stevens, whose testimony was to put away prominent members of the Romero crime family. When Hope's plan to "cut and run" is interrupted by both the government and the mob, she disappears into a new identity.

Jaden Toussaint is a five-year-old who knows it all. I mean, really knows it all. Animal Science. Great Debater. Master of the art of ninja dancing. There's nothing Jaden Toussaint can't do. The only problem is that grown-ups keep trying to convince him that, even though he's really smart, he doesn't know everything. The thing is...he kind of does.