Showing results by narrator "Joel Richards" in All Categories

On the day the first shots of the Civil War were fired, a mob in Richmond clambered on top of the Capitol to raise the Confederate flag. Four years later, another flag was raised in its place while the city burned below. A 13-year-old girl compared the stars and stripes to "so many bloody gashes". This richly detailed, absorbing book brings to life the years in which Richmond was the symbol of Southern independence and the theater for a drama as splendid, sordid, and tragic as the war itself.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, "it seems preordained", as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." But there was nothing predestined about the victory.

At the turn of the eighteenth century, John Morehead Tripoli is marooned on the unspoiled Caribbean island of St. Renard. There, he lives for an idyllic year in a community of Carawak Indians. Three hundred years later, the Carawak are gone, St. Renard is carpeted with banana plantations and sugarcane fields, and Tripoli himself is remembered only through his grandson, founder of New Hampshire’s Tripoli College, which maintains a branch campus on the island.

"...measured first person narrative is packed with interesting details about investigative work and about his home life with Sherry and their young daughters: a refreshing rarity in the genre." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Unlike her brother, Saracasi Ocaitchi has always known that her loyalties belong to the ideals of freedom and democracy, not the government of the Alliance, and that protecting those ideals would require a fight. But now that the rebellion she has dreamed about has finally begun, she must come to terms with what that truly means: for herself, for her brother, and for all of the people who will die in the coming war.

Chace, a teenage orphan with the power to see the future, saves people anonymously by leaving them a letter to find in their moment of crisis. When his friends are in danger, he is there. He saves them but cannot predict the consequences. He can see their future, but he cannot see his own. Chase is interrupted while writing to save his best friend, Sarah. With an incomplete letter, her rescue feels equally incomplete inside. Sarah cannot rest until she speaks to the one person who helped her want to go on living.

Best-selling author David Drake has been creating top-notch military science fiction, space opera, and fantasy novels and stories for decades. In this all-original collection, a stellar line-up of writers pays tribute to Drake with stories as broad in range as his own fiction. 

Late-1970s Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA's Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless skyline into their jackpot. After the promising team imploded, however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to treachery and secrets.

When his father leaves town, 12-year-old Rodney Culver's mother takes up with Otis Dell, a fry cook at the local diner - and a well-known petty thief. While Rodney resists the man's influence at first, Otis soon draws the boy into his small-time criminal world. After a simple heist goes violently wrong, Rodney becomes an unwitting fugitive, swept away from his mother to the primitive mountain sanctuary of the mysterious Lester Fanning. 

Wrought with warmth and wit, Jacobs's debut novel digs into Pasadena's most infamous structure and the city itself. In their journey to discover the source of the bridge's macabre alter ego, Nick Chance and his impish mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch. They cavort and often sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the Hotel Green, and even the Doo Dah Parade.

In Leading Through Uncertainty, Davis shares a concise set of smart, actionable leadership practices that leaders can use to navigate their businesses and teams through difficult times. These include focusing on honesty and transparency, motivating and inspiring employees, building an outstanding corporate reputation, paying attention to details, and more.

Original story published in Lariat story magazine - July 1947.

Julia's daddy was the judge in town. He used to be fair, but recently it seemed that had changed. What cost to regular folks would there be?

Wayne D. Overholser, winner of three Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, weaves a magic spell in this story with his consistent skill in presenting vibrant characters and his uncommon sensitivity to the depths of human personality.

Honest presentation is only one characteristic of Frazee’s well-crafted tales. He tells a convincing, satisfying, and unusual story even when employing stock Western situations. A major strength is his understanding of the nuances of character, of how people are motivated, of the good and bad within each person, and of the conflicts between man and his environment. Drawing upon his years in the mountains of Colorado, he can vividly and realistically depict a variety of Western settings and do so in such a way that the settings assume a character of their own.

A classic tale that features all the beloved subjects and icons - stagecoaches, gold rush towns, and whiskey bars - that represent the romance and excitement of America's frontier.

Caleb Doorn is better known by his Blackfoot name, Many Coups. Doorn is scouting for the US Army in the Mexican campaign when a small wagon train passes on its way to California. Their trek will take them into Indian country, and to protect the train from attack, the wagon master has foolishly taken a young Blackfoot woman hostage.

In 30 years of prospecting, old Jim had never discovered Amber's Mirage - a shining cliff above a spring that ran heavy with gold. But his young sidekick took up the search to find the gold - a search that would cost him two years away from wild Ruby, the woman he loved.

Nathan Stone was a living legend in the West as a lawman, as an outlaw, as a gambler, as a wanderer through the wildest towns and terrain. He blazed a vengeance trail, giving no quarter and asking for none. Fearlessly, he played his cards and used his Colt .45s as best he could in games of chance, skill, and savagery, for stakes of life or death. Now he was riding on a course that would test his rawhide nerve and lightning draw against the likes of Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the fleeing James brothers, and the incredible John Wesley Hardin....

In "Pecos Crossing", two young cowboys, Johnny Fristo and Speck Quitman, have been cheated of six months’ hard-earned pay by their rancher boss, Larramore and intend to get what is due to them. In "Shotgun", Two Forks, Texas, rancher Blair Bishop must contend with a mean customer named Macy Modock, who Bishop sent to prison 10 years past. Modock is out of the hoosegow and has returned to Two Forks determined to get even with the man who sent him up the river.