Showing results by narrator "William Dufris" in All Categories

It's the score of a lifetime: easy access to a lavish New York City apartment, hordes of valuables, and an absentee owner avoiding the lawyers of his unhappy ex-wives. But before they pull the job, Dortmunder's crew is startled to find their beloved gin joint, the OJ, in the clutches of the Mafia--who consider it perfect for a little fraud, courtesy of a nice big fire. For tactical and highly superstitious reasons, the fate of the OJ is even more important to the crew than the enormous score.

With the death of his heroic father, bomber and space warfare veteran Patrick McLanahan, Bradley McLanahan must now fly solo, leading a team of young engineers designing Starfire, the world’s first orbiting solar power plant. Starfire will not only deliver unlimited and inexpensive electricity anywhere on planet Earth, it can also transmit power to the moon, and even to spacecraft and asteroids. It’s a crucial first step in the exploration of the solar system, and Bradley and his team are on the cutting edge.

Joe Grey, Feline P.I., has called Molena Point home since he was a kitten, and he doesn't take well to marauding strangers. Joe even wonders whether the blonde who's moved in next to his human companion Clyde could be a part of the gang - she's been acting pretty suspicious lately. But when the strangers start trapping and caging feral cats it proves too much for Grey. And when one of the gang is murdered, and a second mysterious death comes to light, he has no choice but to try and stop the crimes.

Pay It Forward, is the moving story of Trevor McKinney, a 12-year-old boy who accepts his social studies teacher’s challenge to come up with a plan to change the world. Trevor’s idea is simple: Do a good deed for three people and ask them to "pay it forward" to three others who need help. He envisions a vast movement of kindness and goodwill spreading beyond his small California town and across the world.

Warlock Marcus Shifter has been sent on the most dangerous mission of his career: travel to the remote Minotaur nation and convince them not to abandon the tenuous peace agreement between the humans and the paranormals. But securing that peace requires his best friend, Steve the Minotaur, to help him find a way into the isolated homeland. A homeland Steve left behind long ago, intending to bury his complicated past.

What do you get when you mix beautiful people, family secrets, and a yacht washed up on Sunset Key with a hundred grand in cash and a dying man? Steve Solomon sees a case that can get Solomon & Lord off the ground. But Victoria Lord spies a golden opportunity to go out on her own.

Nestled quietly on the Pacific Coast below San Francisco, Molena Point is a quaint hamlet - not the kind of place an escaped convict would choose for a hideout. But it just happens to be the home of a state's witness who put a thief named Cage Jones behind bars - until he broke out, that is. With danger closing in, the feline detective Joe Grey, his girlfriend Dulcie, and their tattercoat friend Kit must put paws and whiskers together to capture a very nasty criminal before he strikes again.

United States Diplomat Danielle Lowen was there when one of her fellow diplomats committed an unthinkable act that had consequences for the entire planet. Now she’s trying to figure out how it happened before it can happen again. Putting the puzzle pieces together could solve the mystery - or it could threaten her own life. "The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

It is nine months after the end of the previous book. Many noble allies have come to the Ninefold Forest for a Feast in honor of General Rudolfo's first-born child. Jin Li Tam, his wife and mother of his heir, lies in childbed. As the feast begins, the doors of the hall fly open and invisible assassins begin attacking. All of Rudolfo's noble guests are slain, including Hanric, the Marsh Queen's Shadow. And on the Keeper's Gate, which guards the Named Lands from the Churning Waste, a strange figure appears, with a message for Petronus, the Hidden Pope.

Tack Gentry has been away for a year when he returns to the familiar buildings of his uncle John Gentry's G Bar ranch. To his amazement, the ranch has a new owner, who is unimpressed when Tack explains that his uncle was a Quaker, didn't believe in violence, and never carried a gun. His advice to Tack is to make tracks. But Tack has other plans.

Gustavo Arellano has compiled the best questions about Mexican Americans from readers of his ¡Ask a Mexican!column in California's OC Weekly and uses them to explore the clichés of lowriders, busboys, and housekeepers; drunks and scoundrels; heroes and celebrities; and most important, millions upon millions of law-abiding, patriotic American citizens and their illegal-immigrant cousins who represent some $600 billion in economic power.

The story went something like this: Troy Jensen, who sailed solo around the world and conquered the seven summits, fell off a crab boat called Arctic Fire and drowned in the Bering Sea. Troy’s brother Jack, who doesn’t buy the story for a minute, heads to Alaska to uncover the truth. Jack discovers a connection between Troy and a secret intelligence organization known as Red Cell Seven (RCS) that will stop at nothing to protect America from threat (even if they have to kill thousands of Americans to do it). The problem is, the more Jack learns about Troy’s involvement with RCS, the more RCS learns about Jack.

In Lamentation, the first entry in the Psalm of Isaak series, an ancient weapon has completely destroyed the city of Windwir. From many miles away, Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses, sees the horrifying column of smoke rising. He knows that war is coming to the Named Lands. Nearer to the Devastation, a young apprentice is the only survivor of the city—he sat waiting for his father outside the walls, and was transformed as he watched everyone he knew die in an instant. Soon all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will be at each others' throats.

All it takes is a few underhanded moves by a tough ex-cop named Eppick to pull thief John Dortmunder into a game he never wanted to play. With no choice, he sets out on a perilous treasure hunt for a long-lost gold and jewel-studded chess set once intended as a birthday gift for the last Romanov czar. Success is not inevitable with Dortmunder leading the attack, but he's nothing if not persistent, and some gambit or other might just stumble into a winning move.

Meet Cole: hapless space rogue, part-time smuggler, on a path to being full-time dead. His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxy's most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out of be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans.

The colony world of Stittara is no ordinary planet. For the interstellar Unity of the Ceylesian Arm, Stittara is the primary source of anagathics: drugs that have more than doubled the human life span. But the ecological balance that makes anagathics possible on Stittara is fragile, and the Unity government has a vital interest in making sure the flow of longevity drugs remains uninterrupted, even if it means uprooting the human settlements.

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze? Major Keir Roget's mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets. For all his effectiveness as a security agent, Roget is troubled by memories of an earlier mission.

Humanity has just won a major victory against the invading Sythians - the first victory in the history of the war. The savage Gors have joined forces with Dark Space, and now for the first time since the invasion, it looks like the tide is turning. But the Sythians weren't defeated. Humanity just bloodied their noses. Now they know where Dark Space is, and they are coming back for revenge.

Colonial Union diplomat Hart Schmidt is back home for Harvest Day celebrations - to a family whose members wonder whether its youngest son isn’t wasting his life clinging to the lowest rung of the CU’s diplomatic ladder. When his father, a legendarily powerful politician, presents him with a compelling offer, Schmidt has to take stock of his life and career. "This Must Be the Place" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working for one of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist has been found dead, a suicide, in the Thai prison where she was serving a 50-year sentence for murder. Motivated first by simple curiosity, then by deeper and more mysterious feelings, Mischa searches relentlessly to discover the details of her crime.