Showing results by narrator "Tom Taverna" in All Categories

Honor, courage and a profound sense of right and wrong! These are the character traits Marshal Wallace McKenney lives by. His reputation is known far and wide in Kansas and neighboring states. Those on the other side of the law usually give him and his pearl-handled Colt a wide berth. Those that don’t...well, they pay the price.

Kevin J. Kennedy has put together some of the horror world’s best-selling anthologies over recent years. Now, for the first time, he has collected some of his own short stories in one place. Dark Thoughts features a brand new, 8,000 word tribute story to Richard Laymon's Dark Mountain.

Something doesn't want the inhabitants of an isolated mountain town to leave. When local hermit Maul Thorndean disappears, Sheriff Joe Moorefield finds his cabin in a bewildering state. All of the surrounding trees have turned white and brittle and are leaning towards the cabin. There is blood on the floor but no sign of Maul. The dying of the trees spreads and soon the townspeople are encircled by ash grey trees with limbs that wont allow them to leave. That's when the people begin to disappear.

Dr. CC Peladora never expected to ask a stranger to father her child, but neither did she think she’d be diagnosed with a chronic disease. With a failed marriage and a busy career, love is the last thing on her priority list, but she wants more than anything to experience motherhood before it’s too late. When she hears through the grapevine that Adam Colt, the sexy, mysterious son of Buzz Colt, must marry to meet the stipulations of his father’s will, she sees an opportunity that won’t come along again.

A missing student. A gunned-down detective. A woman in fear for her life. All three are connected somehow. Detective Inspector Carl Sant and his fellow officers get on the case. But what links the disappearance of a university student, the death of an off-duty police sergeant, and a professor reluctant to help them solve the case?

Hailey is a palm reader and a fortune teller, complete with crystal balls and tarot cards in her little shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans. She is a throwback to the '60s, with her boho style and long, blonde hair. Joshua is a marketing guy - a handsome business type - who has been seeing Hailey professionally for over a year. She predicted his promotion, that he'd find the perfect condo, and just about everything that's happened in his life recently.

Former homicide detective Brandon Mattson takes command of his hometown police force just one year after his brother was killed in the line of duty. Still haunted by his brother’s unsolved murder, he struggles to rein in the fledgling department while learning the ropes as a newly divorced single parent. Brandon’s respite from homicide is short-lived when a missing woman’s body washes ashore on the nearby Quileute Reservation. Savage fang marks and a series of ominous vampire-related graffiti point to a member of a secret blood-sucking cult.

He is known as the "Master". Spy, double agent, freelance assassin. He has been at the top of his game for 30 years and worked for Nazis, Communists, intelligence agencies, and terrorists alike. No one knows his true identity. Now, the world’s most secretive assassin has disappeared, and several intelligence networks want him captured, interrogated, and "redacted".

An off-duty detective gunned down. A dead woman. A student missing, feared dead. And now, a former policeman in search of his past. All these people, dead or alive, have one thing in common. D.I. Carl Sant must discover what it is. A series of cold-case enquiries leads D.I. Sant and his colleagues to investigate a botched assassination plot dating back to the 1980s. The deeper they dig into the case, the more secrets are revealed, including shocking connections to the infamous National Front.

After the 1986 tragedy of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the technicians of NASA hoped to create a failsafe shuttle, incapable of malfunctioning. With the space shuttle Lightning, all systems were go.... Then lightning struck twice. America’s greatest technological achievement has been sabotaged. First an engine malfunctions. Then, another. Now Lightning is desperately trying to land, racing against time - and a powerful and unseen enemy will do anything to make the first flight of Lightning its last....

Sheriff Seth Reed believes in justice and seeks vengeance on the lawless folks who dare corrupt tranquil Ruby Creek. But when the mayor mysteriously dies and Sherman takes over, corruption begins, especially when a mysterious gunslinger comes to town. As the mysterious stranger disrupts the town, a body of a young woman is discovered. As Seth tries to unravel the mystery, he becomes the next target. When Sherman's wife desperately begs Seth for help, Seth realizes that peaceful Ruby Creek life is all a sham, and no one can be trusted.

Whatever happened to Jane Roe's baby? Norma McCorvey, of Caddo-Comanche heritage, did not terminate the pregnancy that led her to become the anonymous plaintiff of the landmark U.S. supreme court women's rights case Roe v Wade because in 1971, when the motion was first argued, abortion in the U.S. was illegal. The Jane Roe real-life child would now be a woman in her late 40s, the potential of her polarizing celebrity unknown to her. A religious rights splinter group has blackmailed its way into learning the identity of the Roe baby, the product of a closed adoption.

Tales from the Beach House is a satiric work of fiction that sharply captures the "man-bites-dog" world of contemporary South Florida. The Beach House, a crumbling old motel, is home to a collection of eccentric residents. Amongst their ranks: a tennis pro at the end of his game, a mortuary scientist whose love life has flat-lined, a paparazzo photographer searching for scoops, and more. Each member of this cohort is in search of something - fast money, an easy hustle, fleeting romance, enduring love, fame, power, dignity, happiness...a place they can call home.

A prison yard becomes the place where a “lifer" inmate attempts his last stand against the gun tower. An ICU nurse attending to an inmate meets the man that tormented his daughter. A rogue correctional officer receives a body receipt from the county coroner for a man he killed. A prison psychiatrist meets his maker by getting bludgeoned to death by the bust of Freud. The infamous serial killer Ed Kemper finally receives the punishment he told the judge he deserves for his crimes - death by torture.

Alice Comyn was a student of piano performance getting by on an insufficient grant from her college and the kindness of two men: one, a distinguished descendant of European nobility who was too good at playing bridge, and the other, an obscure automobile mechanic who was too good at fixing wrecks. Although Alice’s chief business was communing with long-dead composers, she was still young enough to believe that she would live forever and that her knotted fingers and hunched back could be redeemed by fame.

A collection of stories about how and where the author found heaven in his travels across the lands.

Journey through the minds of 22 horror authors who have teamed up to reveal the most terrifying aspects of the forest. These original supernatural and psychological horror stories include: ghosts, demons, serial killers, true stories and unsolved mysteries, unique monsters, classic myths and legends, and above all else, a profound respect for the terror hidden within the mysterious trees.

A routine Coast Guard inspection of a cargo ship in the Caribbean turns into a vicious firefight with unidentified Asian commandos. The second attempt to board the vessel ends with a nuclear detonation. North Korea has been smuggling short- and intermediate-range missiles into Cuba. An unknown number of nuclear warheads are hidden less than 100 miles from the tip of Florida. Every American city east of San Antonio is in the target zone.

Taking on a case that sounded simple, Morgan Stark and Felicity O’Brien are tasked to retrieve two high-value paintings, but it quickly becomes more complicated. Using past connections, the ex-mercenary and the former jewel thief go undercover as part of J.J. Slash's growing crime empire.

Cam Derringer is Key West's wildest PI. While trying to find the men responsible for his wife's disappearance five years earlier, he unexpectantly stumbles across a much deadlier case. It appears his wife was caught in the middle of a drug ring used to fund international terrorism. Cam is soon pulled into a world of uncertainty and deceit as he digs deeper into the underworld. Giving his heart to a woman once more, he soon realizes she has lied about everything from her name to her game.