Showing results by narrator "John McLain" in All Categories

"Three years ago, when my son was still in college and my daughter lived across the Bay, my wife packed her car with her clothes and things, discussed with me her reasons for taking half the savings and, after a farewell which I cannot recall verbatim, she left..." In this short story, which won a Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, a retired schoolteacher in his sunset years, gets his first glimpse at the failures in his life, cracking a window open to everything and everyone outside.

It's about as noir as you can get. In a bleak Texas prison, Franklin Royce, an alcoholic doctor, is given the odious task of administering inmate Bobby Mencken's last "high." The young black man on the other end of the needle seems remarkably indifferent to his fate - but Royce is convinced that the convicted killer was innocent. When Royce's marriage crumbles, he takes off for Dallas to search for the real killer.

In this critically acclaimed novel, Harry Rent finds himself young and single and lost after the passing of his wife. Although numbed by his life's unexpected turn, Harry becomes fixated on Molly, an obsidian-haired, 22-year-old waitress. Meanwhile, Harry is forced to fend off Clare, his sister-in-law, who is convinced that Harry is somehow responsible for her sister's untimely death. At once deeply moving and darkly comedic, Harry, Revised is an extraordinary novel about the measure of a man's worth by a wonderful, emerging talent.

Is the five-second rule for real? Will eating carrots improve your eyesight? Is your cookware a health hazard? Do spicy foods cool you down? Has your grandmother been lying to you all these years? No, no, no, no, and...probably. In this entertaining and informative reference guide, award-winning cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough take on more than 100 popular kitchen myths and dish up answers to all your burning questions about food science and lore.

Heather and Mack McKay seem to have it all: wealth, a dream house in the suburbs, and two adorable children along with the nannies to raise them. But their marriage has lost its savor: She is a frustrated writer and he longs for a cultural trophy to hang on his belt. During a chance encounter in LA, Mack invites exiled writer Zoltan Barbu - once lionized as a political hero, now becoming a has-been - to live with him and his wife in their luxurious home. The plan should provide Heather with literary companionship, Mack with cultural cachet, and Zoltan himself with a pastoral environment in which to overcome his writer’s block and produce a masterpiece.

>Blood, Steel & Canvas: The Asian Odyssey of a Fighter is a story about fighting on two levels: the American lawyer author’s improbable career as Asia’s oldest amateur boxer and his fight to overcome colon cancer and its consequences. Through his friendships with boxers in the Philippines and Thailand, his efforts (not always successful) to learn the languages and his delight in experiencing local cultures, he sets an example for other expatriates who have the great fortune to live and work overseas.

Mason Dupre has resigned himself to never being loved. Silver Whitney has fallen under a spell - the spell of graceful, antebellum Rosewood Plantation. But it is the spell cast long ago over Mason Dupre that prevents Silver from writing the book she has traveled hundreds of miles to complete. Mardi Gras, the interference of a ghost, and the heavy New Orleans air swirl around Silver and Mason as they struggle to solve and understand the mystery that keeps them both bound to the plantation and a vengeful curse.

Manfred, a surly mountaineer recently abandoned by his wife, rents the upstairs apartment in his home in the Dolomites to Marina, a woman from the city, and her difficult young son. Deeply suspicious by nature, especially of women, Manfred spies obsessively on Marina, in whose shortcomings as a mother he finds resonances of his own mother’s desertion of him in childhood. When Marina’s frustration over her son’s refusal to eat or sleep leads her to harm the child, Manfred steps in, and the silent power struggle between them escalates. Yet Manfred’s attraction to Marina is as powerful as his distrust.

Annie Hamilton and Major David Grainger had a conflicted past as mis-matched spouses, and a conflicted present as separated parents. David saw the problem as her drive to be successful, and not fitting into the mold of an Air Force officer’s wife. Annie blamed their breakup on his unfortunate habit of bringing his dictatorial nature into their relationship as if she were in his squadron.... Can they ever learn to accept the other as they are? Will Annie let stubborn pride cause her to lose the only man she has ever loved? The real question for Annie is: does she take this man…again?

Tom Judah, a former Marine recently discharged from the military after serving three tours of combat in the killing zones of Iraq. Jessica Spire, a young woman trying to reinvent her life after fleeing a callous and loveless marriage. Scars of the Prophet is a dynamic story of what happens when fate and destiny collide in an aggressive world of pawns and broken kings. Tom Judah wanted to fit back into society and forget the horrific necessities of a war his conscious was still fighting.

Baseball star Cory Brand knows how to win. But off the field, he’s spiraling out of control. Haunted by old wounds and regrets, his future seems as hopeless as his past. Until one moment - one mistake - changes everything. To save his career, Cory must go back to the town where it all began. His plan is simple: coach the local Little League team, complete a recovery program, and get out as fast as possible. Instead, he runs headfirst into memories he can’t escape…and the love he left behind.

Renowned philanthropist and billionaire Paul Parnell had reached the pinnacle of monetary success, but not without cost. Had he put too much emphasis on work and spent too little time with his family? Determined to leave something far more valuable than money to his six children, Paul instructs his lawyers to create an unusual last will and testament. This unorthodox will, which stipulates that the lion's share of Paul's two-billion-dollar estate be given to the heirs who pass "the test", was Paul's last hope of creating a lasting legacy by inspiring his children to give back to society and embrace a code of moral values.

It's official: stumbling, bumbling James Lessor and Skip Moore are licensed private investigators. Now, that's some scary stuff.

It could take time to get Moore or Less investigations off the ground, so James takes a job with a traveling carnival show.But this show has a dubious reputation, having had a string of accidents and at least one death in the past year.When they're hired to investigate what's caused the carnival chaos, James and Skip set into motion a dizzying, roller coaster chain of events.

A 1935 hurricane in the Florida Keys destroyed the East Coast Railway, killed five-hundred people and blew away the town of Islamorada. Lost in that storm was Mathew Kriegel, a finance director for the railroad, and one and a quarter million dollars in gold. Now newly minted private investigators Skip More and James Lessor, of More Or Less Investigations have been hired to find that lost treasure. Fighting off competitors, scuba diving, digging in a spooky cemetery and almost getting killed is only part of their job. Skip and James have stumbled onto the biggest most dangerous adventure of their lives.

Leading a small army of slaves, Nat Turner was a man born with a mission: to set the captives free. When words failed, he ignited an uprising that left over 50 whites dead. In the predawn hours of August 22, 1831, Nat Turner stormed into history with a Bible in one hand, brandishing a sword in the other. His rebellion shined a spotlight on slavery and the state of Virginia and divided a nation's trust. Turner himself became a lightning rod for abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe and a terror and secret shame for slave owners.

When Vernia, empress of Reabon, mightiest land of all Venus, was kidnapped by the strange marauders of the sea, it presented the Earthman, Robert Grandon, with his greatest challenge. On a world replete with terrifying beasts and unearthly antagonists, Grandon had already achieved fame for his swordplay and courage - but the search for Vernia would take him against foes beyond all he had previously encountered. The Port of Peril, Otis Adelbert Kline's concluding novel of Venusian adventure, amply demonstrates his high skill with fast-action science-fiction.

The Prince of Peril – Using his secret method Dr. Morgan projects a young Martian's astral body into a certain Harry Thorne on Earth, who then gets transported to an ancient Venus. He arrives there in the body of Prince Zinlo of Olba, and he is soon forced to escape assassination, since an ambitious noble is killing off the Royals in a bid to seize the throne. With the help of the fellow interplanetary traveler Vorn Vangal he gets to know the planet and the rules of it.

When Robert Grandon swapped bodies with a prince of the planet Venus, he was concerned only with the thrill and interest of living on a different world. But the situation he found himself in was hardly that of a leisurely sightseer. Instead he found himself smack in the center of a whirlwind of intrigue, danger and desperation. Planet of Peril is a science-fiction adventure on a world of semi-barbaric nations, ferocious beasts, gigantic reptiles and maidens in distress.

When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written - the one that had established a federal government manned by the people's own elected representatives, charged with protecting citizens' inborn rights while leaving them free to work out their individual happiness themselves, in their families, communities, and states.

Phillip E. Johnson pries the lid off public debate about questions of ultimate concern - questions often suppressed by our society’s intellectual elite. Moving far beyond matters of creation and evolution, Johnson outlines the questions we all ought to be asking about the meaning of human history, the limits of scientific inquiry, religion and education in a pluralistic society, truth, liberty and moral choices, and God and his word, Jesus Christ.