Showing results by narrator "Steve Hendrickson" in All Categories

Fosse was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. His Septology sequence was a finalist for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. This slim volume would be an ideal entry point for new audiences of Fosse and an eagerly anticipated work for Fosse fans.

On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley? One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

St. Paul, Minnesota. October 1, 1917. High above the city, a renowned local financier named Artemis Dodge lies facedown on the floor of his armored penthouse sanctuary, a single bullet hole in his head. Thirty stories up, in the city’s tallest building, and not a shred of evidence or sign pointing to anyone having broken into the wealthy man’s fortress. It is - to all appearances - an impossible crime.

Like many mysteries, this one begins with a murder. But in this case, the victim happens to be the detective, on the verge of revealing the culprit in an earlier crime. Had Shadwell Rafferty identified his own murderer? When news of Rafferty’s death reaches Sherlock Holmes, in Chicago on the last leg of an American speaking tour, the world’s most famous detective and his redoubtable companion Watson rush to Minnesota to hunt for their friend’s killer.

Based on the source material for the Alec Guinness classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, Murder in the Title follows the exploits of Anton Gascoyne, a poor and distant heir to one of Britain’s great noble families, who decides to murder his way to the Gascoyne earldom. But the closer he gets to the coronet, the greater the suspicion he falls under. Will Anton get away with it? Murder in the Title will keep you guessing until the end!

As the city of Minneapolis prepares for a visit from President William McKinley, someone else prepares for murder. On the day before the visit, a union activist is found hanged, naked, outside a ruined mansion. A placard around his neck reads "THE SECRET ALLIANCE HAS SPOKEN." Who is the alliance? What does it want? How was the victim involved with the city's corrupt mayor? And why did he possess a photograph of a prominent citizen in a compromising position?

A letter, written in a secret cipher he recognizes all too well, reveals that an old foe of Holmes - a murderer he once captured after an incredible duel of wits - is back, has kidnapped his previous victim’s widow, and is now impersonating Holmes himself. Holmes must once again match wits with a particularly cunning adversary, one whose hatred of Holmes has seemingly become the killer’s single greatest obsession.

The year is 1896, and the magnificent winter carnival is under way in St. Paul, Minnesota, when Holmes and Watson are summoned by the city's most powerful man, railroad magnate James J. Hill. A wealthy young man has disappeared on the eve of his wedding - and his fiancée suspiciously discards her wedding dress. After a grisly discovery in the carnival's ice palace leads to a flurry of clues, Holmes is on the case.

Dogged by depression, doubt, and - as a trip to the Mayo Clinic has revealed - emphysema, 66-year-old Sherlock Holmes is preparing to return to England when he receives a shock: a note slipped under his hotel room door, from a vicious murderer he'd nearly captured in Munich in 1892. The murderer, known as the Monster of Munich, announces that he has relocated to Eisendorf, a tiny village near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Sherlock Holmes is bored between cases at 221B Baker Street. So when King Oskar II of Sweden - who has heard of the discovery of the Kensington Runestone by a farmer in Minnesota - asks to engage his services, Holmes jumps at the chance to decipher the runes and determine whether the find is real or a hoax. With Dr. John H. Watson by his side, faithfully recording every detail, Holmes makes his way to Minnesota for a third time.

What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels?  That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution.

In a world seemingly set up for distraction, life can often feel like it’s dividing you not only from others but also from yourself. Yet even within the cacophony of life, deep down you can intuit your own soul, that part of you that knows you better than you know yourself, and that offers direction and moments of solace, even amid uncertainty.

Steeped in the mystery and history of nineteenth-century St. Paul, these interlocking detective stories feature the characters—and the local character—that have made the Shadwell Rafferty series irresistible. Spellbinding as ever, these stories also afford the curious pleasure of watching Rafferty find his footing on his way to becoming the consummate detective whose exploits have delighted readers again and again.

Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery was a master swordsman who participated in more than fifty duels, fought under twelve flags, battled gangsters, and was constantly involved in the great conflicts and upheavals of his time. In the 1870s, he began writing his magnum opus - a series of newspaper articles that are now collected here for the first time in Self-Defense for Gentleman and Ladies.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, MD. The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist - known only as the Red Demon - who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway.

When Solace Island gallery owner Zelia Thompson's close friend Alexus Feinstein of the prestigious art gallery Feinstein & Co. dies of a "drug overdose," Zelia's intuition sounds an alarm. The Alexus she knew didn't do drugs and had everything to live for. As she begins looking into the circumstances of her friend's death, what she uncovers will put her life in imminent danger. Will Zelia - aided by reclusive crime fiction novelist Gabe Conaghan - be able to unravel the mysterious happenings surrounding Alexus' untimely death? Or will she become the bloodthirsty artist's next victim?

The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, the classic baseball fable that became the hit movie and musical Damn Yankees. Now a new generation is ready to discover this delightful book, restored to its original title. Baseball lovers everywhere can identify with Joe Boyd, a die-hard Washington Senators fan who puts his soul in hock to help them wrest the pennant away from the hated, all-conquering Yankees.

Moose? Yes, Moose! When a movie director tries to capture the life of a moose on film, he's in for a big surprise. It turns out the moose has a dream bigger then just being a moose - he wants to be an astronaut and go to the moon. His forest friends step in to help him, and action ensues. Lots of action. Like a lacrosse-playing grandma, a gigantic slingshot into space, and a flying, superhero chipmunk.

When a copycat serial killer begins recreating Jack the Ripper’s 1888 murder spree, two competing experts are forced to work together to stop him. Despite their well-documented antagonism, famous mystery novelist Barbara Thomas is paired with legendary Ripperologist Henry McHugh as they race against time to try to get one step ahead of the crazed killer. What they don’t understand - until it’s almost too late - is that his murderous spree is far more personal than either of them ever suspected.