Showing results by narrator "A A Maynard" in All Categories

Astronauts Jim Parker and Michael Murphy, aboard the space shuttle Charger II, were wrapping up a routine mission. Just prior to re-entry, they encountered a mysterious cloud bank in space and were never heard from again. Two years later, a metal box was unearthed at a construction site in St. Louis. In it was a previously unknown, yet apparently authentic, journal of the historic Lewis and Clark expedition: written by astronaut Jim Parker. Did Parker and Murphy alter history, or save it?

Along the harsh North California coast the otters swam, enough to fill the Russians' trading ships with valuable pelts. So there they raised an outpost. But inland lay another land, a river wilderness, where game and grizzly thrived. Into this wild land, stripped of his rank for marrying an Indian girl, Lieutenant Anton Rostov is cast. He is an man without a country, but still he is a man. He can hunt, trap, and conquer. And he discovers a power greater than his allegiance to a faraway Czar - the lure of a new world.

'The scarlet bikini which had covered a minimum of the eye-popping curves on the dead woman, lay at her feet, and my eyes focussed on her as glassily as did the dead man’s next to her. He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and strangled. Either somebody really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I’d ever heard of. Me? I’m Shell Scott, private detective and I’m wondering why anybody in his right mind would commit such a complicated murder....'

Shell Scott, the shamus who has Sherlock whirling in his grave...the wacky knight-errant of gorgeous gals who leaves a trail of beautiful bodies behind him (not all of em dead)...the private eye who's every killer's public enemy.... This is the first book in this action-packed mystery series. The Case of the Vanishing Beauty began when one beauty vanished from sight and another died in a hail of bullets. Next on the murder list was lovely Lina....

Hallettsville, Texas was overrun by Yankees and Northern corruption after the Civil War, and ex-Confederate officer Slate Creed lost everything when Yankees stole his home, named him an outlaw and condemned him to die as well... On the run since his home-coming after the Civil War, Slate Creed sees a chance to clear his name. To do so, he must find Quade, the man who helped frame him. The hard part will be getting him back to Texas to tell the tale...especially when a trumped-up charge of murder threatens to put both their necks in the noose.

Constanza Carmocha was unarmed - that is, she didn't have a gun. Well, she really didn't need one, either. Because she had all the weapons that have ruined men from time immemorial or better said - time immoral. One unlucky guy ended up with his throat slit because of her, and another was about to be bumped off. Shell Scott was sure to get to the bottom of this deadly dame....

“The strait jacket’s canvas held my arms tight. My six-two was horizontal on a stretcher and the two bruisers carried it and my 205 pounds easily down the long corridor. I was confused as modern art, and being in this stupid asylum didn’t help. I was dumped onto a bed, yelling like a fiend. A needle, a stinging sensation in my neck and it was lights out for me. I awoke with a light beaming upon my face. A blade moved upward through the beam of light. And suddenly I was wide awake, thinking: This idiot is about to stab me! Me? I’m Shell Scott private eye and I’m in a lot of trouble...”

When the Civil War ended, Confederate Captain Clete Slater was looking forward to going home to his family and enjoying a peaceful life on his family's plantation in Texas. He was greeted by the Union Army and Carpetbaggers taking over everything. When he resisted and fought for his home, they framed him and declared him an outlaw, forcing him to hit the trail. Now he has a crooked federal marshal with an itchy trigger finger dogging his trail.

Shell Scott is hired to help State Senator Paul Hershey gather information against Joe Blake, one of the biggest crooks Los Angeles has ever produced. Joe Blake is the kingpin behind the opposition party to Paul Hershey’s re-election. Blake is backing the candidate against Hershey, a Blake pawn, and using smear and innuendo in an increasingly vicious campaign. Hershey’s only defense against this onslaught is to get the information that will put Blake behind bars. That’s where Shell Scott comes in.

The Civil War was hell for Captain Clete Slater, a forgotten hero of the Confederacy, and the Texas Reconstruction's even worse. His Texas home-town is overrun with carpetbaggers and bluecoats. He's hunted by the law for a crime he didn't commit. He rides south to Mexico with a new name, Slate Creed, to hide his real identity. Riding across the Rio Grande, Creed expects to find frontier justice for the real culprits. Instead he finds another country torn apart by its own civil war.

On their way to Colorado, Ruff and Dixie Ballou drive their horses through New Mexico. Their intention to quietly drive the horses on through goes well until they find themselves inadvertently involved in a shootout with four outlaws who robbed the banks of a small town in New Mexico. An edgy sheriff and angry townspeople get the Ballou’s involved in a situation they would be more happy to do without. Even more so when they are arrested by the sheriff as robbery suspects.

Ruff Ballou and his sister Dixie journeyed west with trouble at their heels. But luck is on their side in Rum River, New Mexico, where they race one of their champion thoroughbreds to victory. A rich man’s greed pits their good fortune against Ruff's life and they must take up a money-making challenge to capture Blue Bullet, the legendary stallion that no man has yet tamed. But their worst enemy is time. A bounty has been placed on Blue Bullet, dead or alive, and savage killers are out to collect that reward.

A rash of hit and run deaths in Los Angeles has the press in an uproar. The police have no clue as to the primary cause and the deceased are all men who appear to have been brutalized prior to the time of the accident. But there are other aspects to the case and Shell Scott has been hired by a not so upstanding night club owner to investigate.

When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here.

In the cold, wet summer of 1960, 11-year-old Joy Henderson lives in constant fear of her father. She tries to make him happy but, as he keeps reminding her, she is nothing but a filthy sinner destined for Hell.... Yet, decades later, she returns to the family's farm to nurse him on his death bed. To her surprise, her 'perfect' sister, Ruth, is also there, whispering dark words, urging revenge. Then the day after their father finally confesses to a despicable crime, Joy finds him dead - with a belt pulled tight around his neck.

The Horseman, is the story of the Ballou family's brave struggle to fulfill a dream. The Ballous were the finest horsemen in the South, a courageous Tennessee family famous for the training and breeding of glorious thoroughbreds. When the Civil War devastated their home and their lives, they headed west into the heart of Indian territory. As horsemen, they triumphed. As a family, they endured. But as pioneers in a new land, they faced unimaginable hardship, danger, and ruthless enemies....

In the wake of disaster, the surviving members of the Ballou family sought a new beginning on the Texas Frontier. A minister and his family become their traveling companions. Tragedy strikes when the minister and his young daughter are attacked by rattlesnakes and severely bitten. Their lives depend on the only medical attention available, that of a Comanche medicine man. And it is up to Ruff to persuade the reluctant Comanches to give them aid.

On a cold January day in 2017, nearly two months before due date, Nile hippopotamus Bibi gave her keepers at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden a big surprise: a tiny newborn hippo, no bigger than a football. The first premature hippo born and raised in captivity, baby Fiona was an underdog from the start: She couldn't nurse, she couldn't stay hydrated, and she wasn't thriving. But the staff at the zoo knew they could save her.

Mando Killion's world was shattered by Santa Anna's brutal invasion of Texas. Scion of a wealthy ranching dynasty, he saw his father die at the Alamo, his mother and brothers murdered, and his beautiful sister taken hostage by a debauched Mexican General. Mando came of age during the most violent days of Texas history, as a hearty band of patriots led by Sam Houston fought a bloody revolution for freedom from tyranny.

His parents gave him the name Jed Thompson. But the Comanches who killed his parents and took him into their tribe as a boy gave him a different name. Golden Hawk. Trained by the fiercest of Indian warriors to fight, and now full grown, he was facing the choice of which world to live in, which path to take. Then his beautiful sister Annabelle, was sold into cruel captivity - and Golden Hawk's choice was made. No man will stand in his way. He will use all his strength and savage killing skills to save her.