Showing results by narrator "Mark Smith" in All Categories

When a hardened criminal kills guards and breaks out of prison, Steve Fraser, a lieutenant in the Texas Rangers, is tasked with bringing him to justice. From the bowels of a mine, deep underground, to the stone labyrinths of the mountains of Wyoming, Steve follows his quarry. But his chase requires him to befriend people who turn out to be wanted in another killing. How can he justify his actions with his innate sense of honesty, his new friends, and the bewitching woman he meets in their midst?

Criminals should not return to the scene of their crime. Sometimes, it's just too horrible to bear!

Madame Charmaine chronicles the adventure one summer of four close friends, three boys and a girl, all 12 years old, who discover a locked “treasure chest” half buried in the sandy shore of the Missouri River following a spring flood. As they play detective and try to find out who buried the chest and what its strange content means, they meet up with a tall, mysterious woman in a turban and soon find out that they are playing a dangerous game, one that threatens to bury them alive in a grave of their own digging.

Was Auntie Maim an axe murderer? Well, you might have thought so! Auntie Mame, on the other hand, can teach you and all of us an important lesson. The little things in life sometimes aren’t so little. Sheldon Beasley, 13, learned that lesson when his attempt to audition for a role in the wildly popular play Auntie Mame went horribly awry. In a letter to the play’s director, Sheldon made several references to "Auntie Maim". Oops. That’s no way to impress the boss, who politely notified Sheldon he would not be invited to tryouts.

Bret Harte paints a timeless portrait of undesirables who are forced to leave a self-righteous town, and who, in the face of oncoming winter and in the company of a pair of innocents, learn to become bigger than themselves.

At fifty degrees below zero, your spit freezes instantly upon hitting the ground. At seventy-five below zero, it freezes in mid-air. If you get wet at that temperature you need to know one thing, and know it very well - how to build a fire.

Someone is killing women in the Chelsea district of Manhattan - but, who? The only clues: a signature heart carved into each victim's breast (inside, the initials "J.C." and those of the deceased); copies of the New Testament (with underlined passages referring to infidelity); and fingerprints of a juvenile arrested in the 1960s. On the case is Matt Davis, a plodding but effective NYPD homicide detective who is addicted to fly fishing - and chocolate.

Inconvenient owners of thrones in the kingdoms of the Islands of Sunshine have a habit of attracting the attention of an Evil Magician - and then disappearing! Prince Daimur, who, fortunately, has a helpful and caring disposition, receives some special gifts from a dying fairy. So when he, too, becomes inconvenient and is "disappeared", he possesses some potent defenses against spells. On the Island of Despair, his natural curiosity and good nature wins him allies as he attempts to solve the puzzles that await him.

The 1980s opened with the prime interest rate at an astonishing 21.5 percent, leading to a severe recession with unemployment reaching nearly 11 percent. Depression-like conditions befell the agricultural sector, a bubble burst in the energy sector, a rolling real estate recession swept the country, the entire thrift industry was badly insolvent and the major money center banks were loaded with third world debt.

Only two people were in a position to experience all the events leading up to the first flight of a viable airplane, and here in three short essays they report how it came about.The idea of powered flight was so new that there were not even accepted methods of measuring the forces at play on a machine in-flight.

The Communists never have a chance. They are prepared to fight with atomic weapons. The U.S. instead uses... Dolliver Wims, history's first recorded person capable of turning other people accident-prone. Wims is a walking disaster who never gets caught in the shambles he creates! With great good humor, Sabia turns his lens on what might have happened had the Cold War gone hot!

Abner Doubleday began the Civil War as a Union officer and aimed the first cannon shot in response to the bombardment opened on Ft. Sumter in 1861. Two years later, after a series of battles (including Antietam, where he was wounded), Doubleday took over a division in the Army of the Potomac's First Corps. These are his memoirs of service in two of the War's great campaigns.

He is brave, tough as leather, and has left behind a trail of deadly enemies - outlaws he's hunted down or killed with the cold heart of a man used to violence. A feared bounty hunter and the scourge of bad men everywhere, Flintlock carries an ancient Hawken muzzle-loader, handed down to him from the mountain man who raised him. He stands as the towering hero of a new Johnstone saga.

The remarkable stories in Born Into This are eye-opening, razor-sharp and entertaining, often all at once. From an Aboriginal ranger trying to instil some pride in wayward urban teens on the harsh islands off the coast of Tasmania, to those scraping by on the margins of White society railroaded into complex and compromised decisions, Adam Thompson presents a powerful indictment of colonialism and racism.

Robert Louis Stevenson's swashbuckling high-seas adventure! Now with waves crashing and swords clashing, a pirate tale like you've never heard before!

You have to live on twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. This timeless classic is one of the first self-help books ever written and was a best-seller in both England and America. It remains as useful today as when it was written, and offers fresh and practical advice on how to make the most of the daily miracle of life.

"The Battle of Life: A Love Story" is a novella by Charles Dickens, 1st published in 1846. It's the 4th of his five "Christmas Books", coming after "The Cricket on the Hearth", followed by "The Haunted Man & the Ghost's Bargain". The setting is an English village that stands on the site of a historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title.