Showing results by narrator "Jim Meskimen" in All Categories

What defines Boston? Its history? Its landmarks? Its sports teams and shrines? Perhaps the question should be, who defines Boston? From Henry David Thoreau to Dennis Lehane, Boston has been beloved by many of America's greatest writers, and there is no better group of men and women to capture the heart and soul of the Hub. In Our Boston, editor Andrew Blauner has collected both original and reprinted essays from Boston-area writers past and present, all celebrating the city they love.

Being a hefty, deaf newcomer almost makes Will Halpin the least popular guy at Coaler High. But when he befriends the only guy less popular than him, the dork-namic duo has the smarts and guts to figure out who knocked off the star quarterback. Will can’t hear what’s going on, but he’s a great observer. So, who did it? And why does that guy talk to his fingers? And will the beautiful girl ever notice him? (Okay, so Will’s interested in more than just murder...).

When Susan Ershler and John Waechter each made the grueling journey to the top of Mount Everest, they were motivated by the desire to join the elite group of climbers that had conquered the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each of the seven continents. It was this same determination that made them star performers in corporate sales, one of the toughest jobs in global business.

Richard Brautigan was an original - brilliant and wickedly funny. His books resonated with the 1960s, making him an overnight counterculture hero. Dark, funny, and exquisitely haunting, his final book-length fiction explores the fragile, mysterious shadowland surrounding death. Told with classic Brautigan wit, poetic style, and mordant irony, An Unfortunate Woman assumes the form of a peripatetic journal chronicling the protagonist's travels and oblique ruminations on the suicide of one woman and the death of a close friend from cancer.

Gabriel Du Pré, the old Montana fiddler at the center of Peter Bowen's atmospheric, engrossing series set in the dirty, dusty Montana that's rarely featured in travel brochures, has a knack for finding trouble. Or rather, trouble has a knack for finding him. There's a rumor going around that Du Pré and his old sorceror friend Benetsee have come across a parcel containing the lost journals of Lewis and Clark, and outsiders, drawn by the spirit of the legendary explorers, are beginning to invade Toussaint.

Lieutenant Bill Mahone of Naval Intelligence is on a mission to find The Green God ... and it’s life or death. Along the way, he’s tortured with knives, threatened with a slow, painful death and buried alive. And then things get really nasty. The entire Chinese city of Tientsin is under siege from within - the streets filled with rioting, arson, mass looting, and murder. And all because the city's sacred idol, the Green God, has gone missing.

Brash and bold and daring, Lieutenant Lee Briscoe will never back away from a good cause or a good fight. Briscoe’s gone undercover to infiltrate a slave-labor camp on an island in Southeast Asia, knowing full well that once he goes in, he may never get out. Posing as a man on the run for murder, he may soon wish he had run in the opposite direction. His adversary on the island is Schwenk - a man who is not only a connoisseur of cruelty, but an expert at delivering it.

Tom Christian is on the trail of revenge and a fortune in gold. Square-jawed and rugged, Tom is headed deep into the jungles of the Solomon Islands to find Punjo Charlie—the ruthless criminal who killed his partner. But these jungles are thick with danger ... as greed, temptation and sudden violence threaten to draw Tom into the heart of darkness. There’s a pile of gold.... There’s a beautiful blonde.... And there’s a bloodthirsty tribe of headhunters who have fallen under the spell of Punjo Charlie. The trap has been set.

One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he begins to publish novels and becomes an internationally renowned author.

No matter how President Obama spins his proposed government policies, it amounts to the same thing: a power grab. In his new book, best-selling author Christopher Horner reveals an out-of-control administration that wants to impose mandates, raise taxes, and even subjugate our authority to international organizations such as the United Nations.

Labor Day, 1969: Two recent college graduates move to New York to edit a new magazine called the National Lampoon. Over the next decade, Henry Beard and Doug Kenney, along with a loose amalgamation of fellow satirists such as Michael O’Donoghue and P. J. O’Rourke, popularized a smart, caustic, ironic brand of humor that has become the dominant voice of American comedy. Ranging from sophisticated political satire to broad raunchy jokes, the National Lampoon introduced iconoclasm to the mainstream, selling millions of copies to an audience both large and devoted.

November is for night...It's November, and there's a new mystery to solve. "The twins' new neighbors are up to something! It's Thanksgiving, and a mysterious couple has moved in next door. Bradley, Brian, Nate, and Lucy must work out the clues: The neighbors have built a tall wooden fence. They've bought some strange parts for making...something. They've even put up a suspicious tent in their backyard, with a big, scary dog to guard it. What could they possibly be hiding?

Green Lawn, we have a problem! When Bradley Pinto wakes up in the night to strange lights in his backyard, he thinks there are aliens in town. When he sees three-toed footprints in the snow, he’s sure of it. His twin, Brian, and friends Lucy and Nate aren’t so certain. But then Lucy’s cousin Dink, the twins’ brother, Josh, and Nate’s sister, Ruth Rose, all disappear. Are there really aliens in Green Lawn? And where could they be taking Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose?

The ancient jungles of the Yucatan hide a world of secrets ... the secrets of wealth, love, and fate. Now daredevil pilot Kurt Reid is about to tempt fate and fly into the heart of that jungle in search of his destiny—an adventure as daring and dangerous as any undertaken by Indiana Jones. He’s looking for gold, but not just any. He’s after one particular nugget—flying blind into a tropical haystack in search of a very valuable needle.

Running off to join the French Foreign Legion used to be every boy's dream of action and adventure. But for Lieutenant Bill Reilly - half Irish, half American, and like Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, a Westerner at war in the desert - the dream has turned into a nightmare. And it all begins with the gruesome delivery of a severed hand…

When it comes to boiling up a pot of coffee or stirring up a pot of stew, Old Laramie’s about as good a man as you’re going to find. But other than cooking three squares a day for the cowpunchers over at the Lazy G ranch, Laramie’s not good for much. But Laramie’s luck - and life - are about to take an amazing turn. Quite by accident, he somehow manages to save a family of Mexicans from bandits, and as a token of their gratitude they give him The Magic Quirt - a horsewhip that he’s told will turn him into a new man.

The world is divided between Asia and the United Continents - two great super powers locked in eternal warfare. But the balance of power is about to shift in Asia’s favor. They have developed a top-secret weapon - the cohesion projector-that could lead to annihilation on an unprecedented scale.... But as far as Lorrilard is concerned, the number one problem with the projector is that it stands in the way of his profits. Can he find a way to subvert the powerful weapon and resume his enterprising exploits?

Sam Cassidy comes home to find himself in a series of tense confrontations. His father expects Sam to work for him at the local bank, and Sheriff Ben Faraday, for whom Sam worked the previous summer as deputy, is suffering from a terminal disease and wants Sam to become a deputy again. "Black Mike" Nickels wants to expand his use of public land and bring in more sheep, backed by guns.

It’s Christmas in Parkland, North Carolina, but PI David Randall is not partaking in the holiday cheer. Years ago, Randall and his psychic friend, Camden, found Jared Hunter stabbed to death. Now Camden is being haunted by flashbacks of the crime. Do the flashbacks suggest that Camden is somehow linked with his friend’s killer?

Insurance investigator Brent Calloway may be too hard-boiled to crack a smile, but he’ll go to any length to crack a case. Calloway’s about to go to extremes to see to it that one ship makes it safely from Hawaii to the mainland. Going undercover and posing as ruthless killer Spike O’Brien Calloway quickly discovers that on this ship nothing is what it seems, and no one can be trusted. With so much insurance money at stake, and the whole crew apparently in on the scam, this could end up being a voyage to the bottom of the sea....