Scott William Carter has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is The Gray and Guilty Sea.
The Gray and Guilty Sea
Summary
A battered detective. A dead girl on the beach. A small town on edge. A curmudgeon. An iconoclast. A loner. That's how people describe Garrison Gage, and that's when they're being charitable. After his wife's brutal murder in New York, and Gage himself is beaten nearly to death, the crippled private investigator retreats 3,000 miles to the quaint coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon. He spends the next five years in a convalescent stupor, content to bide his time filling out crossword puzzles and trying to forget that his wife's death is his fault. But all that changes when he discovers the body of a young woman washed up on the beach, and his conscience draws him back into his old occupation - forcing him to confront the demons of his own guilt before he can hope to solve the girl's murder.
©2010 Jack Nolte (P)2012 Jack Nolte
Bury the Dead in Driftwood (An Oregon Coast Mystery)
Summary
They find her buried in driftwood. Harriet Abel never shows up for her appointment. Irritating as hell? Sure. It's hard enough to work as a private investigator without potential clients standing you up. Of course, it's difficult to show up when you're dead. A revered community figure in the Oregon coast town of Barnacle Bluffs, the teacher extraordinaire never gets a chance to explain why she wants to hire Garrison Gage before her body turns up in a sandy grave. Seldom deterred by the lack of a client, Gage barrels forward intent on discovering the woman's killer. Unfortunately, the professional curmudgeon stirs up a lot more trouble than he expects, putting innocent people in imminent danger. In the past, Gage always triumphed over whatever dark forces stood in his way, but this time he may have gone too far - and he won't be the only one paying the price.
©2019 Scott William Carter (P)2019 Scott William Carter
A Deep and Deadly Undertow
Summary
Years after his wife dies in a mafia hit gone wrong, Garrison Gage finally pieces together a life for himself in the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs. Some days the cranky private investigator with the bum knee and the caustic wit could even call himself content. Maybe even happy. But marrying again? Never. Yet not long after quirky Rita Rodriguez enters the scene, Gage can’t imagine life without her. Unfortunately, when dark secrets violently emerge - involving first loves, tragic loss, and, strangest of all, a Spanish galleon that sunk in 1642 loaded with treasure - their relationship enters turbulent waters. Worse, the same deadly undertow that drags Gage into the darkness also threatens everyone around him. His friends. His enemies. Even the town itself....
©2020 Scott William Carter (P)2020 Scott William Carter
A Desperate Place for Dying
Summary
An old flame. A killer on the loose. A crazy cult on the rise. Nearly a year has passed since Garrison Gage became the reluctant guardian of a troubled teenage girl, but neither fatherhood nor the intervening months have improved his mood. His right knee is still mostly worthless. He still prefers to drink his bourbon alone. And even with a certain blonde bombshell a persistent part of his life, he still can't be bothered to buy a cell phone. Or any phone, for that matter. Why? Then somebody might call him. But grumpy as Gage can be, he still finds that life on the Oregon Coast has settled into a comfortable if not happy routine - until the man who murdered his wife shows up in town. That's just for starters. A desperate plea from an old flame - his first love, in fact - soon entangles Gage in a high profile case involving a famous and brazenly outspoken lecturer on evolution and atheism, a crazy fundamentalist cult that uses all means necessary to silence its critics, and a brutal local murder of a far more personal nature. Before the mystery can be unraveled, Gage's abilities and beliefs will be put to the ultimate test. And the man who claims he doesn't need anyone will discover he may just lose everything.
©2012 Jack Nolte (P)2012 Jack Nolte
The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold
Summary
The dead do not dream. A week before Christmas, John and Laura Ray storm into Myron's office, desperate to find their missing daughter. Money? They don't have any. Clues? They have few. Plagued by mounting bills and a skull-crushing migraine, Portland's only ghost detective wants nothing more than to show them the door. But defying his conscience always proves tougher to Myron Vale than saying no, and he soon finds himself embroiled in one of the strangest cases of his career. The more he learns about this unique little girl and all of her extraordinary abilities, the more he feels a kinship to her. Who took Olivia Ray? And why? The answers propel him toward a tantalizing solution to all of his problems - and a violent clash with a powerful personality, one who can cause irreparable harm to not just Myron, but everyone he loves.
©2016 Scott William Carter (P)2017 Scott William Carter
Fiction River
Summary
We all look up at the moon and wonder. And maybe dream. For centuries, the moon filled our imaginations. Eleven professional writers took those dreams and set original stories on moons scattered all over the galaxy. Yet, as the dreams of centuries, every story holds a human touch. From a mythical man fulfilling a childhood wish to a fantastic addition to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's best-selling Retrieval Artist series, this volume of Fiction River allows you to travel to 11 different moons without leaving the comfort of home.
©2014 WMG Publishing (P)2014 WMG Publishing
The Ghost Who Said Goodbye
Summary
Even the dead can die...the second in the riveting series about the private investigator who bridges both sides of the great divide. Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Known for their cunning and savagery. In the late eighties, another infamous serial killer sent 17 innocent people to early graves. Then, suddenly, the murders in the panicked city of Portland, Oregon, stopped - and the Goodbye Killer got away. Myron Vale remembers it well. Long before a fateful bullet cursed him with the ability to see ghosts, he was the young son of the city's most esteemed detective. The case changed Hank Vale, haunting him with a single glimpse of the killer's otherworldly face. He was never the same man again. Or the same father. Now a new victim points to the Goodbye Killer's return. And when the most powerful forces on the other side of the great divide approach Myron desperate for help, he uncovers a terrifying truth. It's not just the living who should fear for their immortal souls...even the dead can die.
©2016 Scott William Carter (P)2017 Scott William Carter
Ghost Detective
Summary
Everybody dies. Nobody leaves.... After narrowly surviving a near-fatal shooting, Portland detective Myron Vale wakes with a bullet still lodged in his brain, a headache to end all headaches, and a terrible side effect that radically transforms his world for the worse: he sees ghosts. Lots of them. By some estimates, 100 billion people lived and died before anyone alive today was even born. For Myron, they're all still here. That's not even his biggest problem. No matter how hard he tries, he can't tell the living from the dead. Despite this, Myron manages to piece together something of a life as a private investigator specializing in helping people on both sides of the great divide - until a stunning blonde beauty walks into his office needing help finding her husband. Myron wants no part of the case until he sees the man's picture...and instantly his carefully reconstructed life begins to unravel.
©2016 Scott William Carter (P)2017 Scott William Carter
The Lovely Wicked Rain
Summary
A troubled young man. A murder that shocks the town. Buried secrets exposed to the world. They find him on the beach, shooting bullets into the sand. His name? Jeremiah Cooper, the son of the bullheaded high school football coach. Slight of build, soft of voice, he's got all kinds of torment lurking behind his eyes. But despite Garrison Gage's best efforts, he can't pull the kid out of his shell. Then someone turns up dead at the local community college, and Jeremiah's fragile world shatters. Add a crisis in Gage's good friend's life, an ongoing feud with his adopted daughter about her life choices, and a hauntingly beautiful FBI agent with secrets of her own, and it's a lot more drama than a half-retired private investigator with a bum knee wanted. Whatever happened to quiet rainy nights sipping bourbon, watching the sun sink beneath the waves on the Oregon coast, and trying to think of a ten-letter word that means grumpy and glad about it? But before Gage can even write the word curmudgeon, he's pulled deeper into Jeremiah's world - a world of sex, secrets, and a sadistic evil that preys on human weakness.
©2014 Scott William Carter (P)2014 Scott William Carter
A Shroud of Tattered Sails
Summary
A beached sailboat. A missing man. A distraught woman staggering ashore. There to greet her - Garrison Gage, full-time curmudgeon and part-time private investigator, who quickly finds himself thrust into his familiar role of crusader for the desperate and downtrodden. The woman claims to have no memory, but is she lying? When a body later washes ashore, the mystery deepens and the stakes ratchet up another notch. Dark money and even darker intentions. Violence both threatened and real. The woman may be at the heart of it all, or merely an innocent interloper who chose the wrong boat at the wrong time. Only Gage can discover the truth.
©2016 Scott William Carter (P)2016 Scott William Carter
The Care and Feeding of Rubber Chickens
Summary
Seventeen-year-old Trevor can't catch a break. Just when he finds out that Janna, the girl of his dreams, is finally available, his mom tells him he's being shipped off to a boarding school because of his awful grades. A desperate call to his dad, who owns a rubber chicken factory in Las Vegas, gets him nowhere. His father is more interested in enlisting Trevor's aid writing what he sees as the perfect gag gift - a how-to manual about rubber chickens. That's Trevor's life for you. Everyone around him is totally and utterly insane. But there's still Janna. He's had a crush on her since sixth grade. Can he get himself to say the words to her that he's been rehearsing for years? He finally musters the courage to visit her house and find out. That's when everything goes crazy.
©2012 Scott William Carter (P)2012 Scott William Carter
A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart
Summary
They find his body at the bottom of Heceta Head Lighthouse - Ed Boone, a longtime volunteer who commits suicide rather than see his grim diagnosis to its bitter end. The strangeness of the old man's death makes the local news, but Garrison Gage thinks little of it until the famous Nora West sneaks into town with a strange letter in hand.
Professing he wants to go to his grave with a clear conscience, Ed claims to be Nora's biological father. But the revelation stirs up all kinds of complicated emotions for the talented but troubled musician, who hires Gage to find out the truth.
Yet the truth may be a lot more disturbing - and dangerous - than either of them are prepared to believe.
©2017 Scott William Carter (P)2017 Scott William Carter
Lincoln and the Dragon
Summary
The fateful first of January. That's how Abraham Lincoln described New Year's Day in 1841, the day he temporarily broke off his engagement with Mary Todd. Although this fact is well known among historians, what is not known is what else happened that day - when a deranged, dimension-hopping descendant of a Confederate general attempted to assassinate Lincoln long before he became the 16th President of the United States. When the madman's plan goes awry, Lincoln finds himself stranded in the land of Howander, a world populated by brave knights, drafty castles, and a princess terribly scarred by a one-eyed dragon who's promised to return for her on her upcoming birthday. As he finds himself falling for the princess, Lincoln must make a choice: stay and fight the dragon, or heed the call of his dark dreams, which offer him tantalizing glimpses of his native country's future - a country which may need a hero even more than this one. Scott William Carter's first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a "touching and impressive debut." His short stories have appeared in dozens of popular magazines and anthologies, including Asimov's, Analog, Ellery Queen, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. He lives in Oregon with his wife, two children, and thousands of imaginary friends.
©2010 Scott William Carter (P)2011 Scott William Carter