Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

A young engineer loves his steam locomotive, Number Eighty-Seven. It is new and being broken in; it is just coming to life when a highwayman robs the gold being carried in one of her cars. When he recklessly attempts to use Number Eighty-Seven in his escape, the locomotive becomes almost human.

This short story remains an enigma, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once again takes on the aristocracy. The heroine, Ardita, beautiful, rich, and spoiled rotten lounges on her uncle's yacht until she is carried away by an offshore pirate, Curtis Carlyle. Carlyle tells her of his upbringing as poor white trash in a Tennessee town, and his rise to become a successful musician - but one who has never been able to dance with the aristocracy. Until that is, the beautiful, spoiled-rotten Ardita falls in love with him, as much as she is capable of falling in love with anyone other than herself, on the deserted tropical island.

A student needs to find a quiet place to study for his exams. He wants to be totally alone. He goes to the train station and picks a destination he has never heard of. He finds the ideal house. It hasn't been lived in for years. There is legend that surrounds this abode, and explains why it is unlived in. He of course ignores this, and since the rats don't bother him he takes up residence. Unfortunately by the time he realizes his mistake, it is too late to escape.

The world has turned. Plague-infected, flesh-eating zombies now infest the earth. Black ops agent Chad Halverson of the CIA's top secret National Clandestine Service and a motley band of survivors must do everything they can to survive one more day, even as they try to find out what caused the pandemic.

Commissioners fed up - players angry at mandated educational seminar attendance! But that's what happened, and the commissioners aren't backing down. All pro athletes have to attend a course or seminar unrelated to sports every year. Dark days for the athletes until one of them sees an ad for the upcoming S.E.S. "Trash Talk" symposium. How perfect is that? None of the athletes knew, or even cared, what S.E.S. was, but trash talk was their specialty. Word of the meeting spread among the athletes like wildfire....

Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, this is one of three documents published by the South Carolina Secession Convention, detailing the decision to secede.

It is the turn of the last century, and Alaska is a mysterious wilderness. At the suggestion of several hundred thousand ladies desiring to revel and possibly riot in the saturnalia of equal franchise, the unnamed lakes in that vast and little known region in Alaska bounded by the Ylanqui River and the Thunder Mountains were now being inexorably named after women.

William Hope Hodgson began his working career as a seaman, where he learned to fear and hate the sea. This short story takes place in the laboratory of a scientist who is in contact by one-way wireless telegraph with an unnamed friend who is on a ship trapped in a terrible storm. The sea becomes an evil thing, and the entity is determined to destroy the living, and the ship they came on. But before death comes to those aboard the doomed vessel, it brings out the very worst in the passengers.

A Christmas Present, a gift from an aunt to a niece, Narrated by Mike Vendetti. And we always thought it was a guy thing.

Mild mannered Catholic priest Fr. Brown solves another mysterious mystery. How did the dead man get into the garden of Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police. There was no way in and no way out other than past a well guarded door. Also you may ask how did he end up dead, and who killed him. There are plenty of suspects, but Fr. Brown sorts it all out without relying on the confessional, therefore remaining true to his vows.

A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens. From the author's preface: "I have endeavored in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put any readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly." First published in December 1843, the story has been in continuous print ever since. A true treasure that never grows old.

Brian Dalrymple returns home after three weeks of pursuing the retreating Germans at the end of World War I. His hometown considers him a hero, and gives him a hero’s welcome. After basking in his quickly disappearing notoriety, he goes looking for job. Seems all those wonderful offers have gone away, and Brian takes a job as a stock clerk in Mr. Macy’s wholesale grocery. It doesn’t take Brian long to find that advancement is going to be difficult, and he is stuck in a no-win job with few prospects.

The small farming town of Hypothermia, Minnesota makes world news when a '62 Chevy Implala is discovered in a trailer full of grain. Government agents quickly impound the Chevy, down playing the incident. Yet when agricultural cooperative photographer Bob Putnam attempts to follow up with a story about the elevator manager who found it, he and his writer/partner uncover an unbelievable plot.

Can you tolerate the suspense? When a kid commits a crime in Pittsburgh, the trouble is just beginning. That's because teenage criminals end up doing time in the River County Reform Camp for Boys. Rehabilitation isn't what the manipulative colonel running the military-style boot camp has in mind for some. He sees his chance to control a lethal and fearless force - teen criminals.

A master hustler and bank robber befriends a starving gentleman on Market Street in San Francisco. He engages the man, who hasn't eaten for three days, in a game of dice over a bottle of absinthe. The starving man plays amazingly well as he warms his empty stomach with the liquor - so well in fact that the last hand has $148,000 on the table.

Did he drown? Is he dreaming? Did he almost drown? Only Lord Dunsany, aka Edward Plunkett, the eighteenth baron of Dunsany, knows for sure.

An upper-middle class peasant inherits his father's farm, which he hopes to pass on to his children. When the twin boys are born, there is joy in the family until they realize that they are severely retarded - to use the term of the day, idiots. And then another son is born, also an idiot. In desperation, Jean Pierre joins the church, which he has no use for, and a daughter is born. Another idiot. Jean Pierre becomes even more angry and abusive to his wife, whom he blames for producing four idiots.

Did you ever wonder at the lonely life the bird in a cuckoo clock has to lead--that it might possibly love and hate just as easily as a real animal of flesh and blood? Philip Dick used that idea for this brief fantasy tale. We're sure that after reading it you'll give cuckoo clocks more respect.

It's the 1920s, and Bernice, a teenager, visits her cousin, also a teenager, but far more wise in the ways of the world. It's summer, with dances at the country club, and Bernice is a bit of a burden to her cousin Marjorie, until Marjorie shares a few secrets with Bernice. With Bernice as the belle of the ball, Marjorie takes a few steps of her own.

Grave robbing as an art form never really caught on. H.P. Lovecraft takes us into the last moments of a robber of graves who found far more than he bargained for. It is definitely best to let some sleeping dogs lie....