Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy.

The private detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case involved the suspicious death of a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter’s death a suicide, but the client doesn’t buy it. He’s her brother - or is he? After his murder, police find multiple driver’s licenses, and his real identity is a mystery.

Deke and his colleagues—co-counsel Michael Carey and investigators Carol Morris and Jake Rutledge—set out to uncover the deceit and bring the white collar criminals to justice. With the help of Michael’s friend and war veteran, Joel Hartbeck—who first blows the whistle against the bank—the Deketomis team quickly discovers that they may have tackled more than they bargained for.

Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis and his law firm take on America’s Big Pharma when Deke’s college pal, Matt Redmond, presents him with a case of possible fraud involving EirePharma, the Redmond family business and a powerful Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). PBMs serve as the “middlemen” between drug manufacturers and insurance companies, working in cryptic ways to determine not only the cost of drugs but also placing them on insurers’ preferred formularies.

For Nick “Deke” Deketomis, going where angels fear to tread in waging legal battles has long been a way of life. As managing partner for one of the nation’s largest plaintiffs’ law firms, Deke has gone toe to toe with some of the largest corporations in the world. His firm specializes in the tough, even quixotic, cases that few lawyers would dare to take on. Like human trafficking.

Orphaned at fourteen, Hector “Heck” Martin heads west, determined to see the far country and make a man of himself. Along the way, he falls in love with bold and beautiful Hope Mullen. But Heck is too young and poor to marry, so he heads west again. During a three-year journey, Heck crosses thousands of miles, becomes a bareknuckle boxer, a mountain man, and an Indian fighter, and meets the likes of Kit Carson and Jim Bridger as he explores the gorgeous and deadly frontier.

Heck Martin battled Indians, bandits, and grizzly bears to make his valley the gem of the frontier. He overcame big obstacles to buy the land, build a town, and bring in a herd of longhorns. Now, ruthless San Francisco gold baron Percival Dumay threatens everything Heck worked so hard to accomplish. With the help of crooked politicians and an army of tough prospectors, he aims to take Heck's gold, his land, and his life. This time, Dumay is fighting dirty against the wrong man.

Both an all-inclusive, how-to guide to navigating cancer and a grieving husband's elegy for his lost love, We Were Better Together is an essential resource for couples facing a cancer diagnosis as well as a much-needed beacon of resilience and hope.

For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history. Now that story is finally being told.

Ten years after an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, cries of "Benghazi!" still echo across America. But instead of a landmark event to be taken seriously, it has become a punchline, an empty word, or a code for controversy and political theatre. In this thrilling retelling, Ethan Chorin reveals Benghazi as a watershed moment in American history, one that helped create the world America lives in today: polarized, fearful, and dangerously unstable.

Following the worst terrorist attacks in American history on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush pledged to bring those responsible to justice, especially the mastermind, Osama bin Laden. After failing to capture Bin Laden in Afghanistan, George W. Bush shifted his attention and that of his country to Saddam Hussein and Iraq, neither of which had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks (as history has proven).

On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick's studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword.

Beep! Beep! Squish can't get enough of his awesome new video game Mitosis! (Mitosis is what happens when cells divide. Who says video games can't be educational?) In fact, he may even be obsessed! He plays at home...at school...even in his sleep! Are video games taking over Squish's life?! And can Squish's favorite comic book hero, Super Amoeba, stop the Creeping Black Mold that's taking over Small Pond?

Uh-oh! Squish’s friend Pod just hasn’t been himself lately. One minute he’s happy-dancing; the next he’s sobbing in his soup. What’s going on? (Hint: “mitosis” is the process that splits single-celled organisms. That’s right, splits.) It is truly Pod vs. Pod - and may the best Pod, umm, win?

Winchester Remington Smith is a crack shot. Problem is, surrounded by roller coasters and merry-go-rounds, his talent is going to waste, knocking down ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. Win wants some real action, and he’s running off to join the US Marines to fight a guerilla insurgency south of the border. In the jungles of Central America, Win takes a different kind of roller-coaster ride. Quick and quiet, he’s now a runner. It’s a vital role, but he feels like a messenger boy, unable to put his rifle to good use.

Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliff-hanger....

Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars in banks across the country during his vaudeville days - before he became one of the silver screen's most recognizable funnymen. But it's no laughing matter when a burglar has the audacity to rob him blind, stealing his bankbooks and cleaning out his accounts. Steaming, the comedian hires Hollywood private investigator Toby Peters to track down the missing dough and protect what remains of his nest egg.

Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed "Fingers" (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer - and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna's throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can't refuse: Find the killer - or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave.

Working in Hollywood, Private Eye Toby Peters has met a lot of phonies. But his newest case concerns a four-legged faker who threatens the fate of the free world. A few classy dames have crossed the detective's doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the first lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who's come to him on a matter of top-secret national security.

In February 1942, Californians may be living in fear of a Japanese attack, but the show must go on. The circus is in town - unfortunately so is a killer saboteur who's targeting the star attractions. Private detective Toby Peters is no stranger to going undercover, but this is the first time his disguise will include a red nose.