Stuart Fiction

Berlin, 1945: Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the camp, Ester gave birth to a tiny fair-haired infant, only for her precious baby to be snatched from her and taken to a German family. Now the war is over, Ester longs to find her little girl.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Never before in audio, these vintage stories are the darkest of the dark, and the best of the best.

Crime fiction fans old and new will delight in rediscovering these taut, character-rich, heart-stopping tales, now on audio for the first time.

Having assumed the identity of a young D’Artagnan, Greg Rich is beginning to get the hang of things in 1615 Paris. But he hasn’t figured out how to get home yet. Or how to defeat the dangerous Michel Dinicoeur, who has made it his mission to destroy Greg, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. When Dinicoeur escapes the Bastille and flees to Spain, the Musketeers charge after him, only to be ambushed. Someone is anticipating their every move. Could there be a traitor in their midst?

Eager, burning, and young, Alexander has come of age to take vengeance on the treacherous King of Cornwall who murdered his father. He sets off toward Camelot to seek justice from King Arthur, only to be diverted by the beautiful and sensual Morgan le Fay, Arthur's sister. Using her wiles and her enchantments, Morgan persuades the young prince to attempt a theft of the Holy Grail. He is unaware her motives are of the darkest nature.

1945, Auschwitz: I stumble out of the gates, tightly grasping the hands of two smaller children. Hunger swirls in my stomach and the barren landscape swims before my eyes. I can barely believe it. We’re free. We survived. But what happens now… Sixteen-year-old Tasha Ancel turns to take one last look at the imposing place that stole her freedom and her childhood. She has no idea how she continued to live when so many others did not. For the first time in months, her heart beats with hope for her future and that of the smaller children who cling to her now.

Some of Lucy Sinclair's best days were those spent growing up in small town St. Dennis - working at the family inn and enjoying summers filled with swimming, sailing, tennis, and the company of Clay Madison, her best friend. But Lucy's darkest day, the one that shattered her innocence with violence and fear, also happened in St. Dennis. And the town she once loved became the place she gladly left behind-along with the terrible secret she's kept for 20 years

The last reward Kira Demirci expected for heroism in a time of war was to spend the rest of her life dodging assassins - but when her government betrays her as part of their surrender, she and her comrades flee the star system of Apollo to the edge of civilized space. The Syntactic Cluster is disorganized, disunified, and in desperate need of the nova fighters Kira smuggled out of Apollo with her. With an entire squadron supposed to follow in her wake, it falls to her to build a new home for her comrades.

Teddy Fay, a rogue agent last seen escaping an imploding building in Iron Orchid, has been considered dead for some time now. But President Will Lee thinks Teddy may still be alive. In a top-secret Oval Office meeting, Stone learns that he and his cohorts, Holly Barker and Dino Baldachetti, are being sent to the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Marks, courtesy of the CIA, to track down Teddy once and for all.

For two years, the Castle Federation and the Alliance of Free Stars have stood against Marshal James Walkingstick of the Terran Commonwealth and his mission of conquest. Battles have been won and lost, worlds have died, and soldiers like Admiral Kyle Roberts have been forged on the anvil of war. But the Alliance cannot win. The Commonwealth has more worlds, more ships, more soldiers. They claim their victory is inevitable. That history is on their side. Refusing to accept the Commonwealth's future, the Alliance embarks on a do-or-die mission to end the war in one strike.

Teddy Fitzroy, his family, and some other FunJungle employees have been invited to visit a bison ranch just outside Yellowstone National Park that FunJungle’s owner, J.J. McCracken, is considering purchasing. But as usual, trouble isn’t far behind. The ranch’s endangered bison have been mysteriously disappearing. Then a massive local grizzly bear named Sasquatch breaks into the house, causing chaos. In the aftermath, Kandace McCracken discovers that her exceptionally expensive sapphire necklace has vanished.

As the only child of a wealthy investment manager, Ellie Chapman has never known anything other than a life of perfect privilege. But her years of good fortune come to an abrupt end when her father is exposed for swindling billions of dollars from innocent investors in a massive Ponzi scheme. And just like that, Ellie loses everything: money, job, home - even her fiancé, who's jailed as her father's partner in crime. With no job prospects on the horizon, no cash, and her family name in tatters, Ellie has only one place to go.

Sandy Kinsolving's once-glittering life hangs by a thread; his future depends on his wife's inheritance and whether or not she's about to throw him out on his ear. What he wouldn't give for a solution to his money and marriage problems. If this were an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the solution would be obvious. Enter a stranger with wife problems of his own, who offers a violent - and mutually advantageous - proposal. Then, in the time it takes to whisper a word, Kinsolving's normal life ends.

Shatina is a young woman with a troubled past and present. She lives in the shadows of her fraternal twin sister, who sucked up all the beauty genes, her best friend, whose seductive charm will sway any boy who listens, and her cousin, who is more than a knockout, but a force to be reckoned with. Shatina feels like she has nothing going for her but her grades and her full scholarship to a four year institution of her choice…until someone comes along to threaten that.

As Molly Dark knows all too well, the problem with being able to see ghosts is that they never tell you what you wish to know. For instance, how a proper young lady like Miss Dark is supposed to support an impoverished family after her father has died a ruined man. Or how she is going to impersonate a missing princess long enough to steal a fortune out from under the collective noses of a whole family of royal monsters. Or exactly why the charming imposter claims to be none other than Grand Duke Vasily Nikolaevich, when he certainly isn’t a prince…or a vampire.

My sister Juliet has always gotten everything she wants. It's fine though. I never wanted the spotlight. And now that she's America's most popular starlet? She can have it. But when Gran - the feisty woman who raised us - has a huge party to celebrate her 90th birthday, Juliet brings the Hollywood madness straight to Maryland. In the form of my ultimate movie-star crush, Ryan McDonnell. I can barely form a sentence around the guy. And I definitely can't get over the fact that he's Juliet's new boyfriend. Because I almost believe him when he tells me we have a chance together.

Stone Barrington hasn’t heard from his cousin, Dick Stone, in years. Then, an otherwise pleasant meal at Elaine’s is interrupted by the CIA with news of Dick’s death—apparently by his own hand. It seems that Dick Stone, a quiet family man who doubled as a CIA agent, methodically executed his wife, daughter, and then himself...or did he? Appointed executor of Dick’s will, Stone must settle the estate and—with the help of his ex-partner Dino and friend Holly Barker—piece together the elusive facts of his cousin’s life and death as a CIA operative.

Wrongly imprisoned in the Tower of London and with her execution imminent, Henrietta, great grandniece of Queen Elizabeth and secret scion of King Henry's line, has entrusted her last hope – King Henry’s ruby cross - to the guard with kindness in his eyes. Will this mysterious stranger prove worthy of such blind trust? Will word reach the queen before the executioner's axe ends her life? All things hang in the balance for the de Greys, even the fate of Coudenoure itself as the Tudor line yields to the Stuarts, a family with no ancestral gratitude for everything the de Greys have ...

Feared and disliked for both her poison pen and her ice queen persona, bicoastal gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. The unwitting victim of an anonymous gossipmonger who is faxing to national opinion makers an outrageous scandal sheet revealing the details of her ongoing indiscretions with a nationally known takeover artist, Amanda enlists the help of New York lawyer and investigator Stone Barrington to learn the identity of the faxer. Everybody is a suspect in the world of tabloid journalism.

When she was young, Steffie Wyler always knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life: 1. Make ice cream. 2. Marry the coolest boy in town. 3. Live happily ever after. These days, Steffie is the proud owner of One Scoop or Two, a wildly popular ice cream parlor. But the cool guy left town right after high school, before they could scratch the surface of their mutual attraction to see what, if anything, lay beneath.

After the government publicly praise Dedsec for their role in the Zero Day affair, there is a resetting of relations between the surveillance state and the public. However, the reality is that a brand new clampdown on civil freedom is underway. Responding to an increase in activism and disruptive protest that’s seen mass strikes and huge cost implications to the treasury, SIRS have been directed by the Department of Culture and Media to orchestrate a system of message manipulation, fake news generation and discrediting dissenting voices.