Showing results by narrator "Patrick Lawlor" in All Categories

On the beach near his home, private investigator Wil Hardesty is approached by a Vietnamese fisherman. Vinh Tien is not convinced that the disappearance at sea of his only son was the accident it was ruled. Wil, a Vietnam vet, resisting the ghosts of a past war, decides to help Vinh Tien because Wil, too, lost a son to the ocean.

On a sweltering September night, Long Beach Homicide Detective Danny Beckett is called to a grisly crime scene at the mouth of the Los Angeles River. A defenseless homeless man has been burned to death by three teenagers with gang ties. The suspects are already in custody, and the evidence is overwhelming - but when one suspect’s brother is targeted for murder, Danny starts to think there may be more to this seemingly clear-cut case.

A disturbing missing-person case reunites ex-Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster and FBI Agent Beth Daniels. Skye is just one of a dozen young women who have disappeared from Florida without a trace. Beth can do more than just imagine their fear. She was a victim herself - a trauma that’s strengthened her fight for justice.

In 1931, San Diego's idyllic image as a beach town with peaceful suburbs concealed a harrowing reality: a series of unsolved crimes targeting women, fueling fear and vulnerability. Monsters on the Loose tells the tragic and true stories of three women murdered early that year: Virginia Brooks, Louise Teuber, and Hazel Bradshaw. Local law enforcement, out-of-town criminologists, and investigators from what would become the FBI pursued hundreds of leads. Yet, the killer(s) were never identified and brought to justice.

Award-winning author and journalist Benyamin Cohen has a bizarre side hustle as the manager of Einstein's official social media accounts, which have 20 million followers—more than most living celebrities. In The Einstein Effect, Cohen embarks on a global quest to unearth Einstein's ongoing relevance today. Along the way, he meets scientists and celebrities, speaks to dozens with the last name Einstein (including two rabbis), and even tracks down the brain of Einstein, stolen from his body during the autopsy

It's a great time to be a beer drinker, but also the most confusing, thanks to the dizzying array of available draft beers. Expert Joshua M. Bernstein comes to the rescue with The Complete Beer Course, demystifying brews and breaking down the elements that make beer's flavor spin into distinctively different and delicious directions. Structured around a series of easy-to-follow classes, his course hops from lagers and pilsners to hazy wheat beers, Belgian-style abbey and Trappist ales, aromatic pale ales and bitter IPAs, roasty stouts, and mouth-puckering sour ales.

In 1958 a young Bible scholar stumbles upon a version of the Gospel of Mark far older than that recorded in the New Testament. Unfortunately, his discovery brings him nothing but vilification and accusations of forgery. Eventually, the secret gospel simply disappears. Fifty-one years later, the scholar is dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack. However, evidence found in his room, coupled with a letter to Cairo-based journalist Alex Fisher, suggests murder.

I’ve got plenty of reasons to hate Sebastian Monroe, the sexy lead singer of Heat Lightning: 1.) He doesn’t remember our soul-scorching kiss 10 years ago. 2.) He very rudely refused to play at my hometown’s 300th-anniversary celebration. And 3.) He’s a hotel trashing, arrogant, hot mess. Really hot. Sooo hot....

Lawyer David Hamill is ready to start over. Fresh off of a divorce, he plans to recharge in Lake Tahoe on his way to his new job at a prestigious law firm in San Francisco. When David’s new sports car—an indulgence he barely could afford but couldn’t resist—runs dangerously low on gas on his late-night road trip, the sign for the truck route offers hope for a place to fill up. Then his car loses speed and power on the winding isolated highway, leaving David stranded with few options in high desert country.

The shocking suicide of Beth Daniels' father - a prominent surgeon - has thrown the FBI agent into a tailspin. But when Beth heads to Saint Augustine, Florida, for the funeral, she'll need more than the emotional support of her boyfriend, retired detective Jon Lancaster. She'll need his gut instinct for solving a mystery. No sooner do they arrive than suspicions are aroused. There's the pair of Russians who seem to be watching every move the family makes

When Tasha’s Uncle Alan asks Thomas for a favor - to help keep his niece safe as she travels to a remote ski lodge with her wealthy boyfriend’s royal family - Thomas grimly accepts his role as Tasha’s bodyguard. But things go horribly, terribly wrong, and Thomas and Tasha find themselves alone together in the freezing wilderness, on the run from the dangerous men who want her dead. Thomas knows only one thing for sure: He will sacrifice everything and anything to keep Tasha safe.

Laurence A. Johnson, a supermarket chain owner in Syracuse, New York, wasn't just passionate about fresh produce; he was equally fervent about purging communism from America's airwaves in the early 1950s. Teamed with like-minded anti-communists, Johnson targeted food giants like Borden and Kraft. He threatened to hurt sales of their products if they sponsored TV and radio shows employing anyone blacklisted for alleged communist ties. The Grocer Who Sold McCarthyism explores Johnson's ascent from small-time grocery operator to kingmaker wielding Red Scare hysteria.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the High Sierras. But Smoke Jensen and his children, Louis and Denise, won't let a little snow stop them from heading to Reno for the holidays. There are two ways for them to get there: the long way, going around the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or the short way, going right through them. Smoke decides to take a gamble. They'll follow the trail that, decades earlier, brought the legendary Donner Party to a gruesome, tragic end....

An eclectic collection of many of the spookiest classic tales of horror, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The New Catacomb"; Edgar Allan Poe's "Masque of the Red Death", "Hop-Frog", and "The Cask of Amontillado"; W. W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw"; Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and Algernon Backwood's "The Willows".

The story of fatherlessness is being written into the heart of this generation. It can be heard in our songs, seen in our movies, read in our blogs. It is a story of grief, pain, and loss. A story of shame, loneliness, and rejection. A story of missed potential and wasted opportunity. A story that desperately needs to be heard. But fatherlessness is more than a personal tragedy. It is a growing epidemic affecting more than the single life of an individual. Fatherless youth are the driving force behind our society’s biggest problems such as: gangs, drug abuse, and suicide.

Marriage equality has surged across the country. Closet doors have burst open in business, entertainment, and even major-league sports. But as longtime advocate Michelangelo Signorile argues in his most provocative book yet, the excitement of such breathless change makes this moment more dangerous than ever.

In this original short story, Brockmann returns with some of her most beloved characters from the Troubleshooters world: Izzy Zanella and his friends in US Navy SEAL Team Sixteen. What should be an easy training jump for SEAL Team Sixteen goes horribly wrong, forcing Izzy Zanella to do what he does best: improvise - at 30,000 feet.

This book is about the power of communication to do great harm and how civic leaders and engaged citizens can hold other leaders accountable to prevent it. Author Helio Fred Garcia focuses on the language President Trump uses that conditions an audience to accept, condone, and commit violence against a targeted group, rival, or critic. Including a history of such rhetoric, this book identifies a playbook consisting of 12 forms of communication that typically precede genocides and other acts of mass violence. The Rwandan Hutu used 10, the Nazis used all 12, and Trump uses all 12, too.

Spitcat, a raging forest fire in the Sierra Nevada of California, had a lifespan of merely eleven days, "yet its effects could be reckoned ahead in centuries." So writes George R. Stewart in this engrossing novel of a fire started by lightning in the dry heat of September, and fanned out of control by unexpected winds. The book begins with the origins of the fire - smoldering quietly at first, unnoticed, then suddenly bursting into a terrifying inferno, devouring trees and animals over acre after acre and leaving nothing but desolation in its wake.

The first rule of warfare is to know one's enemy. The second is to know thyself. More than 15 years and three quarters of a trillion dollars after the US invasion of Afghanistan, it's clear that the United States followed neither rule well. America's goals in Afghanistan were lofty to begin with: dismantle al Qaeda, remove the Taliban from power, and remake the country into a democracy.