Showing results by narrator "Barry Press" in All Categories

Dead men don't tell tales. Neither do dead women or children. And when their corpses have been dryin' out in the desert sun for fifty years, there's nary a whisper left of what happened. So when the six Mojave mummies are found near Esperanza, it's up to Stringer to get the story. But someone in Esperanza wants him to just plain git.... First there's that invite to butt out, signed with a skull. Then the town welcome wagon wants to give him a buckshot bouquet.

With the Confederate Army firing on Fort Sumter, the Civil War has begun - and an invasion of Washington, DC, from Secessionist Virginia seems imminent. As the population evacuates, the president is in desperate need of men to defend the capital. Lincoln's trusted aide, Adam Speed Quinn, and Senator Jim Lane hastily assemble a motley crew and garrison them in the East Room at the White House. As dawn breaks with no Rebel strike, a single act of violence intrudes within the White House. One of the Frontier Guard lies dead in the oval library, throat slit ear to ear. There is a murderer among them.

In the summer of 1869, John Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, joined a crew of shepherds in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada Mountains. The diary he kept while tending sheep formed the heart of this book, which was first published in 1911 and which eventually lured thousands of Americans to visit Yosemite country. My First Summer in the Sierra incorporates the lyrical accounts and sketches Muir produced during his four-month stay in the Yosemite River Valley and the High Sierra.

Murder is unthinkable to the People - a Paleolithic tribe migrating across Alaska and becoming some of the first undocumented immigrants to enter the Americas. For them, murder isn't merely tragic, it's forbidden. Murder poisons the entire tribe and puts it at odds with nature, the Spirits, and the mighty Earth Mother. A murderer must be found and removed in order to put the world back in balance.

This crime fiction novel from the author of the Bino Phillips series follows former Dallas police officer Frank White as he matches wits with an attractive ex-convict, who tries to entrap him in a kidnapping plot through which she hopes to beat the system. Facing a counterfeiting scheme, double crosses, and murder, White must summon all his skills as a detective to hunt down the conspirators and bring them to justice.

This hard-boiled tale from A. W. Gray takes its title from its hero, con artist and poker player Sizemore Brandon, a gentle if criminal giant and sidekick to Pecos Jimmy, a Dallas racketeer majoring in gambling. When Size is called to testify against his boss, Jimmy decides the time has come to dispense with his services permanently. The stakes are high, and Size will have to play his cards right if he is to come out on top in the seamy underbelly of Texas.

In a parallel near future, a ship named for a jellyfish sinks into the Caribbean with its captain chained to the mast. Left behind is a logbook missing ten pages, presidential DNA hidden in a brick of smuggled cocaine, and a nearly completed novel. Tipsy, the dead sailor's sister, and Red Means, his erstwhile employer, travel from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back as they attempt to unravel a mystery that rapidly widens from death at sea to international conspiracy.

History professor Robert Whittle believes the world is about to end, though his devoted wife Amanda and young daughter Lucinda don't share his opinion. Consumed by his depressing prophecy, Mr. Whittle is suddenly distracted by the alarmingly beautiful Penelope Andrews. Penelope enjoys the affections of her boyfriend, fellow student Marvin Greene, but it's apparent that Marvin is growing restless and contemplating other conquests. One evening the Whittles decide to entertain their good friends the Blaneys....

Usually it takes Stringer a little while to rile folks in a new town. But no sooner does he step off the train in Tulsa, than some sidewinder is doing his best to turn Stringer into yesterday's news. The hot story in Tulsa is the oil boom. It seems you can't dig a grave without hitting black gold. And Stringer's there to write the story. But MacKail's never seen such a sorry assortment of low-down, hornswoggling bushwhackers. Because, as Stringer well knows, where there's money, there's outlaws and lawyers....

When miners dig up the Yana Indians' sacred burial ground, the tribe goes on the warpath. And after a couple of deputy sheriffs are found with so many arrows sticking out of them they look like porcupines, the miners grab their guns and axes. Even a little Indian war is big news in the fading days of the Wild West, so Stringer rides out to investigate. But something just ain't right. For one thing, the arrows that killed the deputies are not Yana arrows. And the varmints who dug up the Indian graves aren't miners.