Posts

The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (Stewart Hoag & Lulu #7) (audiobook) by David Handler

Published in 1996 by Sunset Productions Read by Gene Corbin Duration: Approximately 3 hours (abridged). Stewart "Hoagy" Hoag is a retired novelist and semi-retired ghost writer who, like the novelist Jessica  Fletcher in the old TV show Murder She Wrote , has a remarkable ability to be around when someone gets killed. In The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy  we find Stewart and his on again / off again relationship with his celebrity ex-wife in an on again phase. They have a baby and Hoagy is still adjusting to this reality. His basset hound Lulu is not happy having been removed from her position as the de facto child of the couple to being merely the family dog. But, this small family's routine is thrown into an uproar when Hoagy's old literary mentor Thor Gibbs arrives on his motorcycle with his 18 year old stepdaughter on the back. Thor Gibbs is a an Ernest Hemingway-type  character that is really into the mythopoetic men's movement -type stuff, except h

The Templar Chronicles: This Cleansing Fire (audiobook) by Joseph Nassise

Published December 2011 by GraphicAudio Multicast Performance Length: about 47 minutes. This short audiobook was originally a short story in a larger collection but author Joseph Nassise has expanded on this story with several other books. GraphicAudio has adapted it to a radio drama format with multiple cast members and plenty of special effects. The story features Captain Cade Williams, a member of the hidden Catholic order the Knights Templar. They are charged with fighting supernatural forces. One would think they might be a bunch of priests, but they are an elite commando unit carrying modern combat weapons and special swords. In this story, the team is sent out to find and destroy a group of Asian vampires. They are not Asians, per se, but this type of vampire originated in Asia. Another team was already sent in but they are not reporting back and Captain Williams and his team fear the worst. GraphicAudio's high production qualities make short stories like this

The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Image
Written in 1919 and first published in All-Story Weekly magazine in 1921, The Efficiency Expert is a rare non-science fiction book for Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. I read it on my kindle but if it were a paper book it is estimated to have been about 130 pages. The Efficiency Expert features Jimmy Torrance, a talented young college student who is a great athlete and natural leader and all around great guy to have at a party but  does not take his studies seriously. When he is almost tossed out of college during his senior year for having no apparent hope of completing the curriculum in four years, Torrance buckles down and somehow passes. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) Having turned over a new leaf, he turns down the opportunity to manage the family factory and decides that he will move to Chicago and make it on his own. Jimmy's expectation that the world will come knocking at his door because he has a college degree is h

Adam by Ted Dekker

Image
Published in 2008 by Thomas Nelson Ted Dekker is a stalwart member of the Christian publishing world. He usually offers up a large helping of action, mystery and suspense with a Christian flavor. Dekker's strengths are maintaining a quick pace and the creation and development of interesting characters. In Adam  an FBI psychology expert named Daniel Clark is on the trail of a serial killer nicknamed "Eve" (he writes "Eve" on the walls above each of his victims) who kills twenty-something women every dark of the moon. He leaves no clues behind except that he drives a stolen white van, eats candy bars, drinks cherry Cokes, kidnaps his victims with an ether-like medicine that knocks them out. he kills with a form of meningitis and his rituals have strong religious overtones. He always leaves those clues and no others. Clark is obsessed by this case and it has wrecked his marriage and threatens his career. One night his team almost catches "Eve"

Empire by Orson Scott Card

Image
Published in 2006 by Tor Danger: Spoilers follow. I am torn when it comes to this book. It starts out with a clever premise: What if the super-heated political debate of the last few years was actually being created by a third party that was trying to get red-staters and blue-staters to start fighting. Once the bullets start flying a seemingly disinterested third party might be able to step in and assume the powers of government in the form of a dictatorship that promises to stop the insanity. So, when the President, Vice-President and most of the cabinet are killed by commando terrorists of unknown origin the country gets very unstable very fast as the finger pointing and the political spin machines start to crank up. Great premise. Strong start. But, when the mechanized walking tanks and the hoverbikes, led by a George Soros-type character (who has unlimited funds, apparently) start to attack New York City the action is first-rate and gripping but the believability fa

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (abridged) by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Image
Published by Simon and Schuster in 2005 Read by Richard Thomas Duration: 9 hours, 29 minutes Abridged This is technically a re-read of Team of Rivals for me. I read the original 944 page hardcover book (see my review by clicking here ) and I have marveled when I have seen the 41+ hour unabridged version at the library. I love audiobooks but that is a commitment that I am not prepared to make. William Seward (1801-1872), Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State But, this abridgment is a very reasonable length and gives the listener a solid grasp of the political talents of Lincoln and some of what he faced. While the book does not cover all of his difficulties, it does a solid job of  presenting the relationship between William Seward and Lincoln, George McClellan and Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Lincoln and Salmon P. Chase and Lincoln. Those were his most important relationships in the cabinet and they were all very different. Two became great allies (one after a bit of