Showing results by narrator "Johnny Heller" in All Categories

From the award-winning author of Monster, this collection of powerful and poignant stories about 145th Street—an unforgettable block in the heart of Harlem—celebrates African-American life in all of its glory. “Myers is a master.” —The New York Times Book Review On Harlem’s 145th...

Radio star Nelle Brown is known coast-to-coast for her sweet and sultry voice. But her press agent and manager, Jake Justus, is familiar with another side of the darling of the airwaves: her crackpot marriage to a penniless tycoon, disastrous string of lovers, and propensity for flying into spectacular fits of rage. Now, it appears she’s being burned by an ex-flame who’s holding her scandalous love letters for ransom. The missives could ruin Nelle’s career, but so could the scoundrel’s murder.

The Roaring Twenties: America is dancing to jazz, gangsters are selling bootleg liquor, and the New York Yankees are building a baseball dynasty. In 1923, Yankee Stadium opens and Babe Ruth is about to lead the team to its first world's championship. But the promising season gets off to an ominous start when the body of a murdered bootlegger is found buried in the new ballpark.

Ground-breaking band Black & White was platinum before it imploded from an overdose of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll years ago. Now, the Las Vegas reunion show revives the old troubles between its two divas, and efforts to sabotage end in murder. Petite PR powerhouse Temple Barr and her faithful feline roommate Midnight Louie, assisted by the Vegas Cat Pack, must sniff out clues to save the Crystal Phoenix hotel's reputation and any at-risk lives, including their own.

On a break from the Windy City, aspiring crime novelist Jake Justus and his wife, Helene, are acquainting themselves with Manhattan’s finest cocktail lounges when they befriend Dennis Morrison, a blind-drunk groom. The handsome former male escort thought he’d found his bounty in homely heiress Bertha Lutts, but while their wedding night may have been a bust, the morning after turned out to be the real horror. It seems Bertha has vanished from their bridal suite and in her place is an unidentified beheaded woman.

The era of hope and change is dead...and it only took six months in office to kill it. Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others. With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

In "The Robot Who Looked Like Me," a busy man and a busy woman find a way to carve out time to romance each other—by having look-alike robots made to do the job—who then run away together.

Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein aren’t falling for any election-year claptrap—and they don’t want their readers to, either! In Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington, our two favorite philosopher-comedians return just in time to save us from the doublespeak and flimflam of politics in America.

One postman! Two postmen! Three postmen! All murdered! John J. Malone sticks his nose into the case of the dead postmen and picks up a crack on the head, an Australian beer hound, and six redheaded twins. It all begins when he takes on a new client, Rodney Fairfaxx. Rodney was tabbed for the postmen murders because he hadn’t received a letter from a dead girl for more than 30 years. Malone doesn’t think that this is enough reason to kill, but he can’t prove it.

In this 10-story collection of murder most offbeat, a wedding anniversary party turns deadly for an unlucky housewife, a client’s supposed innocence hangs by a thread after a suicide attempt, a forlorn ballad may contain the key to a mystery, a relatively harmless lady wrestler gets pinned for cracking her husband’s skull, an old flame’s diary reveals a poisonous past, and a surprising obituary forces Malone to investigate his own suspicious death.

No one thought that MacTrump - Lord of MacTrump Towers, Son of New York - would ascend to the highest position in the kingdom. Yet with the help of his unhappy but dutiful wife Lady MacTrump, his clever daughter Dame Desdivanka, and his coterie of advisers, MacTrump is comfortably ensconced in the White Hold as President of the United Fiefdoms, free to make proclamations to his subjects through his favorite messenger, McTweet. The Democrati, mourning the loss of their cherished leader O'Bama, won't give up without a fight.

The Odenburgh is an old red brick apartment building, the last of its kind in a swiftly gentrifying neighborhood. One of its tenants, the Laroe family, has suffered an unspeakable tragedy; the youngest sister, 11-year-old Prue, struggles to come to terms with the loss of her sister, Lina. But when the Odenburgh is sold and slated for demolition, Prue can’t bear the idea of losing the place where her sister remains such a presence. Prue launches a campaign to save the building, throwing herself into drawing up a petition and gathering signatures from the other tenants.

American Civil Wars takes listeners beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the US Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings - all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s.

Jeremy Jacob was sitting on the beach one fine day with his parents when he saw a pirate ship heading their way. He tried to warn his family, but it was already much too late. When the ship landed, the pirates welcomed Jeremy aboard. Jeremy thought that being a pirate would be fun, but it wasn't nearly as nice as he thought it would be. Late one night at sea, a gigantic storm struck, and the pirate ship was wrecked. With nowhere else to go, Jeremy and the pirates go back to his house!

Chris West’s deadly prowess with his weapon of choice had earned him the name Red Axe in the Stone Age world of Pellucidar at the Earth’s core. Sentenced to die along with the woman he loved by the merciless Mahars, West had fought his way free of the lethal laboratories and ghastly arenas of their underground city. Now he must carve a path for his small band of fugitives through a primordial landscape teeming with monstrous beasts and brutish men bent on their destruction.

In Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit, feline PI Midnight Louie's roommate, powerhouse PR freelancer Temple Barr, discovers a strip club opening in a nearby empty building threatens her elderly landlady's wedding chapel business. Electra Lark's troubles go supernova with a murder charge for a death that echoes a bizarre slaying decades earlier.

Bill Kimberlin may refer to himself as "one of those names on the endless list of credits at the close of blockbuster movies." In reality though, he's a true insider on some of the most celebrated and popular movies and franchises of the past century. Jurassic Park. Jumanji. Even Forrest Gump. And perhaps most notably, Star Wars. Inside the Star Wars Empire is the very funny and insightful tell-all about the two decades Kimberlin spent as a department director at LucasFilm Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the special effects studio founded by the legendary filmmaker George Lucas.

What can beer teach us about biology, history, and the natural world? From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, authors Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall peruse the historical record and traverse the globe for engaging and often surprising stories about beer. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavors, how beer's chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer. 

When the kids in Room 3B study their ancestors, they find out something amazing about Ida: Her great-great grandmother sailed on the Titanic! Now Harry and his friends wish they could go to sea, too, and a field trip to a real riverboat gives them the perfect chance. An elementary school teacher for 27 years, Suzy Kline uses her classroom experiences to create wonderfully original characters and situations for her engaging books about Horrible Harry, Song Lee, and the rest of the unforgettable kids in Room 3B.