John Straley has 10 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Woman Who Married a Bear.
The Woman Who Married a Bear
Summary
Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police's investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big-game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything new. But after a failed assassination attempt and the discovery of previously missed evidence, Younger finds himself traveling across Alaska to discover the truth in the midst of conspiracies, politics, and Tlingit mythology. High drama meets local color as Cecil Younger works to uncover the motive and identity of the killer.
©1992 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
The Curious Eat Themselves
Summary
When Louise Root, a new client of Cecil Younger, is found murdered, the private investigator finds himself in the middle of an environmental law violation that has deadly repercussions. Cecil finds he is unable to leave behind Root, especially after her ex-lover Hannah asks him for help. On top of it all, Global Mining, the company that runs the gold mine where Root's body was found, hires Younger to get the dirt on an environmentalist who has a connection to the victim. In the midst of all this, Cecil's personal life is fraying as he keeps secrets from his ward, Todd, and tries to keep his drinking under control. In the sequel to The Woman Who Married a Bear, Straley returns with his sensitive, if slightly unstable, investigator.
©1993 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
What Is Time to a Pig?
Summary
From the wild and wonderful mind of Shamus Award-winning author John Straley comes a poetic masterpiece that explores the ugly truths of the prison industrial complex, the crumbling state of humanity, the role memory plays in the formation of the self, and much more. It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden and demand to know where it is. The clock is ticking, and Gloomy knows he needs to find the missing warhead fast, or his wife, his friends, and the entire town of Cold Storage will be obliterated. The only problem is he has no idea where it is. As Gloomy struggles to escape, the memories he fought hard to repress begin to creep out from the strange corners of his mind, first in rivulets, then in waves. In a drug-induced haze, Gloomy makes a discovery that may just bring him the closure he desires - if it doesn’t kill him first.
©2020 John Straley (P)2020 Recorded Books
Cold Water Burning
Summary
The sixth novel in John Straley's Alaska PI series takes Cecil Younger into rough waters as he grapples with his new life and unsolved past murders. Three years ago, someone brutally killed four people on the scow Mygirl. In a crowded courtroom, Cecil Younger helped the accused go free. Now the man charged with the Mygirl murders has disappeared. As a new father, Cecil just wants to move on from the Mygirl killings, but finds he can't just walk away when more and more people associated with the case end up suddenly, separately, but most assuredly dead. Younger is certain someone is trying to finish the grisly job begun on the Mygirl. He must discover the truth behind what happened three years ago before he can settle what's happening now. With a storm headed straight for Sitka, he must chase down a wooden sloop on the wind-lashed sea. Out in the lethal storm, Younger will come face-to-face with the shocking truth that has already twisted so many lives - and now could end his own.
©2001 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
The Big Both Ways
Summary
John Straley brings his storytelling abilities to a new level in this completely original period crime story. It's 1935, and Slip Wilson, rattled by the gruesome accidental death of a coworker, has quit his job at a logging camp, hoping to make a clean start in Seattle. But along the way he rescues a woman and her young niece from their car in a ditch, and his life takes a hard turn. The woman, Ellie Hobbes, is an anarchist with big dreams - but first, she has to take care of that pesky dead body in the trunk of her car. So begins the action that will take Slip, Ellie, her niece, and her noisy yellow bird on a thrilling adventure up the Inside Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska.
©2014 John Straley (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
The Angels Will Not Care
Summary
John Straley's fifth entry to the Alaska P.I. series finds Cecil Younger tracking down a murderer on an Alaskan cruise ship - not quite the vacation he was anticipating. Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this: providing surveillance for a chicken coop being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan P.I. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation, of course. Well, it's not exactly a vacation. Younger has been paid to investigate a doctor aboard a luxurious first-class cruise ship up the Alaskan coast. Except passengers are dying. Now Younger finds himself trapped on a ship of fools with a murderer who is leaving a trail of well-to-do passengers in his wake...and leaving evidence pointing an accusing finger at Cecil! By the time the S.S. Westward makes landfall, Younger will be wishing he was back guarding chickens instead of sleeping with the fishes.
©1996 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
Death and the Language of Happiness
Summary
The fourth entry to John Straley's Alaska PI series finds Cecil Younger with a contract to kill. Cecil Younger is a man who takes comfort in the absurdity of the universe, and the universe is obliging him when he gets a call from his lawyer and psychiatrist, who offers him a job. A client wants to hire Younger to kill someone. Though common sense tells him murder just isn't a good career move, his finances tell him it can't hurt to meet his potential client, hoping he can succeed in appeasing him - without a dead body. Joined by the usual cast of misfits - his lawyer/psychiatrist, Dickie Stein, his girlfriend, Jane Marie, and his ward, Todd - Cecil investigates a murder that brings him back to the Centralia Massacre of 1919, an event in Alaskan history that seems to still be reaching into the present - and its dark, chilly grasp may extend to Cecil himself.
©2018 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
Baby's First Felony
Summary
Shamus Award-winner John Straley returns to his critically acclaimed Cecil Younger detective series, set in Sitka, Alaska, a land of perfect beauty and not-so-perfect locals. Criminal defense investigator Cecil Younger spends his days coaching would-be felons on how to avoid incriminating themselves. He even likes most of the rough characters who seek his services. So when Sherrie, a returning client with a good heart but a penchant for bad boys, asks him to track down some evidence that will help with her case, Cecil agrees. Maybe he'll find something that will get her abusive boyfriend locked up for good. Cecil treks out to the shady apartment complex she mentioned, only to find his teenage daughter, Blossom, inside. He manages to get both the box Sherrie wanted and his daughter safely home, and later discovers the "evidence" is a large pile of cash - fifty thousand dollars, to be exact. That is how Cecil finds himself in violation of one of his own maxims: Nothing good comes of walking around with a lot of someone else's money. In this case, "nothing good" turns out to be a deep freeze full of drug-stuffed fish, a murder witnessed at close range, and a kidnapping - Blossom is snatched as collateral for his cooperation. The reluctant, deeply unlucky investigator turns to an unlikely source for help: the misfit gang of clients he's helped to defend over the years. Together, they devise a plan to free Blossom and restore order to Sitka. But when your only hope for justice lies in the hands of a group of criminals, things don't always go according to plan.
©2018 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
The Music of What Happens
Summary
In the third entry to the series, Alaska P.I. Cecil Younger is fresh out of rehab, sporting a fresh head wound, with a child custody case from hell, and with the clients to match. Confrontational and obsessed, Priscilla DeAngelo is sure her ex is conspiring with a state senator to wrest her son from her, and thus, hires Cecil Younger to investigate.This is the first time Younger has to deal with lawyers in flashy suits and overused paper shredders. When she storms off to Juneau for a showdown, Younger's custody case swiftly turns into a murder. Younger is fired from the defense team, but he can't stop thinking about the case, and keeps on with the investigation alone. He's not sure what keeps him bulldogging the case - is it Priscilla's sister (his lost love)? His regard for truth as a rare commodity? Or the head injury Priscilla's ex gave him? One thing he knows: He won't let go until it's solved, even if it kills him.
©1996 John Straley (P)2018 Recorded Books
Cold Storage, Alaska
Summary
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're Zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-20th century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every day. Clive "the Milkman" McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother - and, really, all of Cold Storage. Miles is a physician's assistant and the closest thing to a doctor this side of Sitka. But Clive doesn't realize the trouble he's bringing home. He's reformed now, and his dream is to open a bar-slash-church (a Cold Storage ordinance requires there to be as many churches in town as there are bars). Clive's vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane - lately, he's been hearing animals talking to him. Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town? Or will it turn the whole place upside-down?
©2014 John Straley (P)2014 Blackstone Audio