Showing results by narrator "Tom Fria" in All Categories

Back then, hot-headed gangsters, not-so-gentle dames and bullet-riddled corpses filled the newspaper headlines. And some of the stories below the headlines were even true. The 1920s was a period in American history when even the respectable were unwilling to stay sober. And not-so-fast cars carried assassins across Chicago, a city that for many captures the essence of the USA. In Tough Guys in the Room, the story of Al Capone and his rivals is told in separate and stand-alone topics that cover key figures and events.

Career criminals, Fred Ward and Fred Britten, plan a daring escape from the prison island. Major Logan Kidd, a veteran of the Afghan wars and commander of the prison garrison, is tormented by his part in the bloody Middle Eastern conflict. Suddenly, a new inmate is introduced to the island and all hell breaks loose. A deadly virus that turns the living into the hungry, flesh-eating undead sweeps the island. Soldiers and convicts must team up to fight this evil that has now invaded Cockatoo Island.

One day seven-year-old Ruby was walking in the woods and saw a glow. The glow was three eggs. After one of the eggs hatched, Ruby found himself with a pet Christmas dragon, which he named Reindeer. Can Ruby, his sister, and their five cousins take care of Reindeer and entertain him? What kind of magic does a Christmas dragon have during the holidays?

A small collection of six short stories, each with its own darkness, born of a desire of one kind or another. For some, it is the desire of the unknown; for others, it is desire through obsession. Each short story is its own volume in the twisted library of desire. Each story a gateway to their new reality.

Inspector Alastair Ransom, Chicago PD is back, pulled from a poker game when his snitch is found murdered in a back alley. The seemingly unimportant victim comes to full-blown life and recognition as Alastair uncovers the clues to his murder. With each new revelation, Henry Bosch, aka Dot'n'Carry (due to the sound of his wooden leg) becomes more real to Ransom than when he was alive. The old veteran of the Civil War, town drunk, gambler, hobo and storyteller, who'd become a staple of life on Chicago's streets, in death, becomes Inspector Ransom's latest obsession.

It is London in the early 1960s and Teddy Bean is making a name for himself as a private detective. However, his personal problems are taking over, with his brother, John, only slowly recovering from a heart attack and his wife, Pearl, dying in a car accident. Added to this, he takes on a difficult case involving a woman presumably drowned at sea by her husband. Teddy needs help while his brother is incapacitated and finds it in his friend, ex-Detective Inspector Tony Halliday. With the added support of their secretary Muriel, the Bean Detective Agency is open for business once more!

Hani doesn’t know what to make of it when the king starts honoring him, but he must still find the man who killed a foreign ambassador right under the roof of the Egyptian commissioner in Kumidi—a man whose past intersects bizarrely with Hani’s. And then, the queen of the new coregent has a special task for him which may involve dragging Hani’s 19-year-old daughter into court politics. He must find a way to see justice done and yet protect his family…and his conscience.

The body parts were first discovered in the bellies of sharks. Marine scientists in the Florida Keys insist sharks rarely dine on live humans, so there can be only one explanation: They were dead before they hit the water. Dr. Jessica Coran knows why. They call him the "Night Crawler". And he's out there, riding the tides with his victims, feeding the waves after his own perverse hungers are satisfied. But when similar murders surface in London on the Thames River, Jessica faces double jeopardy. One killer? Or two....

He felt most alive when he watched them die - writing, breathless, gasping for oxygen that wasn't there. But, he could only draw out the pleasure for so long before his victims expired. And, then it was time to choose another. Death by asphyxiation. That's what Chicago medical examiner Dr. Dean Grant was forced to conclude by the gruesome evidence before him. Recognizing the work of a serial killer, Grant knew he'd have to move fast.

Fabian Carlson wants nothing to do with Christmas. Having lost his fiancée two Christmases ago, his only wish is to skip the holidays altogether. Until he wakes up to his black Labrador’s loud, persistent barking. When he lets Felix out, he’s astonished to discover a reindeer on his front lawn, eating his neighbor’s prize-winning yews. Carlson’s Christmas Wish is a light-hearted and entertaining story about a man, a neighborhood, and a town whose lives are touched by the magic of Christmas. A truly heartwarming story about renewal and hope.

In this rousing 1852 romp through the eerie woods surrounding Hannibal, Missouri, and up and down the Mississippi River, 14-year-old Daniel Webster Jackson runs into a counterfeit Underground Railroad when he decides to run away from his foster home. At every turn, he musters courage to survive in a land where the law is at odds with the heart and soul of a people, where the Missouri Compromise forces everyone into a disguise or a secret identity.

This fast-moving and sometimes disturbing book starts at the point where Brian is about to be arrested for smuggling a kilogram of cocaine into the UK in 1995, earning him a prison sentence of 12 years. The book explores his disadvantaged life growing up in Wales in impoverished circumstances with a number of brothers and sisters, all with the same mother but several different fathers. He tells of his first experience with drugs at the tender age of 16 and continues to chart his descent into drugs and drug dealing.

Just when Archeologist and Vampire Slayer, Dr. Abraham Stroud thinks he can take it easy, take a second seat on a dig in West Texas, he is wrong from the outset. Plagued by warnings he does not at first recognize, Abe soon finds himself in the thick of an attack on humankind by a pod of prehistoric, giant centipedes that have cultivated a taste beyond livestock to a taste for humans. The creatures are known to local Native Americans as "Burrowers" as they have seen them before, but for Abe and those around him, there is a brewing war anticipated and soon engaged.

During the Great Jubilee of the Aten, a mysterious series of tomb robberies takes place, and witnesses begin to die. With plague ravaging the palace, where Hani’s daughter is a physician, and Egypt’s ally, Naharin, collapsing into the hands of a usurper, Hani must make sense of what is happening - and who in high places is his real enemy.

When the Louisiana Bayou folks calling themselves members of the Bayou Wulf’s Clan turn out to be real werewolves, it’s a bit late in the day for archeologist Abraham Stroud, whose bayou dig puts him and his people directly in harm’s way. In fact, this wulf coven has created a safe haven for their kind - Oasis, Louisiana, an entire town filled with Bayou Wulves, many fathered by Bayou Wulf itself - their disputable and dubious leader.

When FBI psychic Dr. Aurelia Murphy Hiyakawa is asked in on a case in New Orleans, she soon learns that the missing Gone Girls may as yet be alive and that their abductor is a "collector" rather than a typical serial abductor/killer. With three missing and as yet no clue as to where they may be, the only saving grace is that no bodies have shown up. There is little about this case that resembles anything that "Rae" Hiyakawa has faced before in PSI Blue and DEJA Blue. But the case takes on a new wrinkle that no one could have predicted.

A spy working for religious organizations, Jere Wakely is summoned to Salem Village Parish, where it has become obvious to church authorities that there is serious trouble. He is reluctant to return to his hometown for many reasons, not the least being that his heart is broken, and he's worried about running into his former lover, Serena Nurse. During his investigation, he has no expectation that their love will be rekindled. But their renewed passion parallels a greater fire - one of terror amid the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

This is a short story dealing with an injustice, a town without patience or pity in 1912 for the last living slave woman in this town. Each of six scenes builds to a crescendo of action. It is an old story of injustice brought about by those in power toward the poorest and least powerful in the community. It is also a story of rage when the last straw is put on old, dear Aunt Tilley who has changed the diapers of those who want to remove her. Told in the best tradition of Mark Twain's more serious tales.

Off a near-death experience in chasing down one serial killer in Upstate, New York. Dr. Jessica Coran is back at her Quantico forensic labs, in safe confines. That is until she gets a call from Andover, Massachusetts Police Chief, Shamus Hale. Hale, a descendant of Rev. William Hale of Salem Witchcraft infamy, has a horrid, inconceivable, and huge problem on his hands - a serial killer murdering abducted children, infants in fact.

Step inside a dream which becomes reality. Venture off with Gary, a high school art teacher suffering from insomnia. For 10 years, he’s been keeping the struggle alive for his missing sister Kelly, who disappeared without a trace. When he attempts to get his life back with the help of an experimental pill, he soon finds a dangerous connection between the living and the dead. Now, caught in the clutches of his drug-induced dreams, corrupting him with visions of what really happened to Kelly.