James Daniels has narrated 25 audiobooks on Listento.it by 20 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 214 ratings. The most-rated is Midnight Bayou.
Midnight Bayou
Summary
Declan Fitzgerald had always been the family maverick, but even he couldn't understand his impulse to buy a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans. All he knew was that ever since he saw Manet Hall, he'd been enchanted - and obsessed - with it. So when the opportunity to buy the house comes up Declan jumps at the chance to live out a dream. Determined to restore Manet Hall to its former splendor, Declan begins the daunting renovation room by room, relying on his own labor and skills. But the days spent in total isolation in the empty house take a toll. He is seeing visions of days from a century past, and experiencing sensations of terror and nearly unbearable grief - sensations not his own, but those of a stranger. Local legend has it that the house is haunted, and with every passing day Declan's belief in the ghostly presence grows. Only the companionship of the alluring Angelina Simone can distract him from the mysterious happenings in the house, but Angelina too has her own surprising connection to Manet Hall - a connection that will help Declan uncover a secret that's been buried for a hundred years.
©2004 Nora Roberts (P)2004 Brilliance Audio
Evidence of the Affair
Summary
The repercussions of an illicit affair unfold in this short story by bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid. Dear stranger… A desperate young woman in Southern California sits down to write a letter to a man she’s never met - a choice that will forever change both their lives. My heart goes out to you, David. Even though I do not know you… The correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer reveals, piece by piece, the painful details of a devastating affair between their spouses. With each commiserating scratch of the pen, they confess their fears and bare their souls. They share the bewilderment over how things went so wrong and come to wonder where to go from here. Told entirely through the letters of two comforting strangers and those of two illicit lovers, Evidence of the Affair explores the complex nature of the heart. And ultimately, for one woman, how liberating it can be when it’s broken.
©2018 Rabbit Reid, Inc. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Chesapeake Blue
Summary
Seth Quinn is finally home.... It's been a long journey. After a harrowing boyhood with his drug-addicted mother, he'd been taken in by the Quinn family, growing up with three older brothers who'd watched over him with love. Now a grown man returning from Europe as a successful painter, Seth is settling down on Maryland's Eastern Shore, surrounded once again by Cam, Ethan, and Phillip, their wives and children - all the blessed chaos of the extended Quinn clan. Finally, he's back in the little blue-and-white house where there's always a boat at the dock, a rocker on the porch, and a dog in the yard. Still, a lot has changed in St. Christopher since he's been gone - and the most intriguing change of all is the presence of Dru Whitcomb Banks. A city girl who has opened a florist shop in this seaside town, she craves independence and the challenge of establishing herself without the influence of her wealthy connections. In Seth, she sees another kind of challenge - a challenge she can't resist. But storms are brewing that are about to put their relationship to the test. Dru's past has made her sensitive to deception and slow to trust. And Seth's past has made him a target of blackmail - as a secret he's kept hidden for years threatens to explode, destroying his new life and his new love.
©2004 Nora Roberts (P)2004 Brilliance Audio
Forty Words for Sorrow
Summary
When the badly decomposed body of 13-year-old Katie Pine is found in an abandoned mine shaft, John Cardinal is vindicated. It was Cardinal who'd kept the Pine case open - insisting she was no mere runaway - and Cardinal had been demoted to the burglary squad for his excessive zeal. But Katie Pine isn't the only youngster to have gone missing in the rural town of Algonquin Bay, and Cardinal is now given the go-ahead to reopen the files on three other lost kids. When another youth is reported missing, he begins to see a pattern that screams "serial killer."
Meanwhile, the brass have partnered him with Lisa Delorme, newly shifted to homicide from the Office of Special Investigations, and Cardinal can't help but wonder if she's been sent to keep tabs on him. A guilty conscience makes him think so.
Superbly paced, with fully-fleshed characters and utterly convincing police detail, Forty Words for Sorrow is also a novel of place that transcends the genre. Blunt puts us in a small Canadian town in the dead of winter and makes us feel the cold, then turns the cold into a metaphor for the destruction of young lives.
©2004 Giles Blunt (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Last Detective
Summary
Elvis Cole is back... With his acclaimed bestsellers, Hostage (a New York Times Notable Book) and Demolition Angel, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, in The Last Detective, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and the burdens of the past. Elvis Cole's relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. When she moved from Louisiana to join Elvis in Los Angeles, she never dreamed that violence would so easily touch her life - but then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, Ben disappears without a trace. Desperate to believe that the boy has run away, evidence soon mounts to suggest a much darker scenario. Joining forces with his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, Elvis frantically searches for Ben with the help of LAPD Detective Carol Starkey, as Lucy's wealthy, oil-industry ex-husband attempts to wrest control of the investigation. Amid the maelstrom of personal conflicts, Elvis and Joe are forced to consider a more troubling lead - one indicating that Ben's disappearance is connected to a terrible, long-held secret from Elvis Cole's past. Venturing deep inside a complex psyche, Crais explores Elvis's need for family - the military that embraced him during a troubled adolescence, his rock-solid partnership with Pike, and his floundering relationship with Lucy - as they race the clock in their search for Ben. The Last Detective is Robert Crais' richest, most intense tale of suspense yet.
©2004 Robert Crais (P)2004 Brilliance Audio
The Forgotten Man
Summary
"[A] riveting novel with a vivid sense of place.... Anyone who enjoys a well-written, fast-paced, noirish thriller with a great aha! moment shouldn’t miss The Forgotten Man."--The Boston Globe In an alleyway in Los Angeles, an old man, clutching faded newspaper clippings and gasping his last words to a cop, lies dying of a gunshot wound. The victim claims to be P.I. Elvis Cole’s long-lost father - a stranger who has always haunted his son. As a teenager, Cole searched desperately for his father. As a man, he faces the frightening possibility that this murder victim was himself a killer. Caught in limbo between a broken love affair and way too much publicity over his last case, Cole at first resists getting involved with this new case. Then it consumes him. Now a stranger’s terrifying secrets - and a hunt for his killer - give Cole a frightening glimpse into his own past. And he can’t tell if it’s forgiveness or a bullet that’s coming next.... "Robert Crais is a crime writer of incredible talent - his novels are not only suspenseful and deeply atmospheric but very hard to put down."--Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code "A brutal but exhilarating climax."--USA Today
©2005 Robert Crais (P)2005 Brilliance Audio
The Watchman
Summary
At last, the enigmatic partner of Elvis Cole (The Two Minute Rule) takes center stage in this pulse-racing thriller. When Joe Pike is charged with safeguarding a wealthy heiress, he discovers protecting the sole witness to a crime is nothing compared to protecting an LA party girl from her own self-destruction...
Larkin Conner Barkley lives like the City of Angels is hers for the taking. Young and staggeringly rich, she speeds through the city during its loneliest hours, blowing through red after red in her Aston Martin as if running for her life. Then suddenly she sees another car’s metal-on-metal explosion of a terrible accident and, dazed, finds herself the single witness in a secret federal investigation.
For maybe the first time in her life, Larkin wants to do the right thing. But in doing so she becomes the target for a relentless team of killers. And when the US Marshals and the finest security money can buy can’t protect her, Larkin’s wealthy family turns to the one man money can't buy - Joe Pike.
Pike lives a world away from the palaces of Beverly Hills. He’s an ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-mercenary who owes a bad man a favor, and that favor is to keep the uncontrollable Larkin alive.
Pike commits to protecting the girl, but it becomes clear someone in their circle is selling them out. Taking matters into his own hands, Joe drops off the gird with Larkin and follows his own survival rules: strike fast, hit hard, hunt down the hunters. With the help of private investigator Elvis Cole, Pike uncovers a web of lies and betrayals, and the stunning revelation that even the cops are not who they seem. As the body count rises, Pike’s biggest threat might come from the girl herself, a lost soul in the City of Angels, determined to destroy herself unless Joe Pike can teach her the value of life...and love.
©2007 Robert Crais (P)2007 Brilliance Audio
A Density of Souls
Summary
Four high-school students in present-day New Orleans are torn apart by envy, passion, and tragedy. Meredith, Brandon, Greg, and Stephen quickly discover the fragile boundaries between friendship and betrayal as they enter high school and form new alliances. Brandon and Greg gain popularity as football jocks, and Meredith joins the bulimic in-crowd, while Stephen becomes the target of homophobia in a school that viciously mocks him. Then, two violent deaths disrupt the core of what they once shared. Five years later, the friends are drawn back together as new facts about their mutual history are revealed, and what was held to be a tragic accident is discovered to be murder. As the true story emerges, other secrets begin to unravel and the casual cruelties of high school develop into acts of violence that threaten an entire city. A Density of Souls is a stunning debut novel that lays bare the darker side of the teenage experience in modern-day America.
©2000 Christopher Rice (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Chasing Darkness
Summary
Private Investigator Elvis Cole learns that LA fires bring more than heat, they bring his old friend Joe Pike and the past. Cole’s fight to clear his name brings murder and corruption terrifyingly close to home. It’s fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women - one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole’s world upside down. Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd’s case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole’s eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero. But the discovery of the death album in Byrd’s lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims - two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can’t help but wonder - did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives? Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death - a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be. Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing.
©2008 Robert Crais (P)2008 Brilliance Audio
The Snow Garden
Summary
Atherton University, freshman year. Kathryn, Randall, and Jesse come from different worlds, but find themselves drawn together in unexpected ways. For each of them, college promises a bright future and a way to disconnect from a dark, haunted past. But as winter sets in, their secret histories threaten to disrupt the layers of deceit that protect their fragile new lives.One dark night, a professor's wife is found drowned in an icy river, and rumors of murder threaten the safe haven of Atherton. Within days, Randall's illicit affair with the professor is about to be revealed in the local press.Then, an old mystery emerges from the shadows - the discovery of a co-ed's corpse in a frozen creek 20 years before makes these accidents of the past and the present look a little too closely connected.Gradually, the three friends find themselves snared in a web of lies, a web spun long before their days at Atherton. Snowbound on the university campus, they are unwitting captives of a malevolent force that drives them inexorably toward the "snow garden" of the title - a place of nightmares that is all too real, and all too near.
©2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Under the Water
Summary
What does the perfect family have to fear most? The perfect stranger. From the outside, Frank and Grace seem to have the perfect family. He’s a loving husband, she’s a devoted wife, and together they have two happy children. But appearances can be deceiving. A strange series of misfortunes has left them reeling: an unexplained break-in, a catastrophic handgun accident, and a bizarre poisoning that’s left Grace feeling especially unnerved. Packing up their RV for a move across the country, they’re ready for a fresh start, expecting to leave all their problems safely behind. Then one night on the road to their new home, the figure of a young woman emerges from the darkness, causing them to swerve off the road. The injured stranger says her name is Mara. Miles from help, Frank does what any decent man would do. He invites Mara to stay. But Mara is hiding a secret. And she is not the only one. Was it all just another inexplicable accident? Or has Frank opened the door to an escalating family nightmare designed to tear his perfect world apart?
©2019 Paul Pen, Translation © 2019 by Simon Bruni. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
The Overton Window
Summary
A plan to destroy America, a hundred years in the making, is about to be unleashed...can it be stopped? There is a powerful technique called the Overton Window that can shape our lives, our laws, and our future. It works by manipulating public perception so that ideas previously thought of as radical begin to seem acceptable over time. Move the Window and you change the debate. Change the debate and you change the country. For Noah Gardner, a 20-something public relations executive, it's safe to say that political theory is the furthest thing from his mind. Smart, single, handsome, and insulated from the world's problems by the wealth and power of his father, Noah is far more concerned about the future of his social life than the future of his country. But all of that changes when Noah meets Molly Ross, a woman who is consumed by the knowledge that the America we know is about to be lost forever. She and her group of patriots have vowed to remember the past and fight for the future - but Noah, convinced they're just misguided conspiracy-theorists, isn't interested in lending his considerable skills to their cause. And then the world changes. An unprecedented attack on U.S. soil shakes the country to the core and puts into motion a frightening plan, decades in the making, to transform America and demonize all those who stand in the way. Amidst the chaos, many don't know the difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact - or, more important, which side to fight for. But for Noah, the choice is clear: Exposing the plan, and revealing the conspirators behind it, is the only way to save both the woman he loves and the individual freedoms he once took for granted. After five back-to-back number-one New York Times best sellers, national radio and Fox News television host Glenn Beck has delivered a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller that seamlessly weaves together American history, frightening facts about our present condition, and a heart-stopping plot. The Overton Window will educate, enlighten, and, most important, entertain - with twists and revelations no one will see coming.
©2010 Glenn Beck (P)2010 Simon & Schuster
Smoke in Mirrors
Summary
A con artist and seductress, Meredith Spooner lived fast - and died young. Now it seems Meredith's last scam - embezzling more than a million dollars from a college endowment fund - is coming back to haunt Leonora Hutton. An e-mail just arrived in which Meredith - in fear for her life - explains that the money is waiting for Leonora in an offshore account...and a safe-deposit key is on the way. Leonora wants nothing to do with the tainted money. She's already been accused of being in on the theft by Thomas Walker - who, it seems, was a victim of Meredith's knack for both scams and seductions. Eager to prove him wrong, Leonora sets out to collect the cash and hand it over. But she discovers two other items in the safe-deposit box. One is a book about Mirror House - a mansion filled with antique mirrors, where Meredith engineered her final deception. The other is a set of newspaper stories about a 30-year-old murder that occurred there - unsolved to this day. Now Leonora has an offer for Thomas Walker. She'll hand over the money - if he helps her figure out what's happening. Meredith had described Walker as "a man you can trust." But in a funhouse-mirror world of illusion and distortion, Leonora may be out of her league.
©2004 Jayne Ann Krentz (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Freedom Road
Summary
He’s taking a dangerous path in search of his missing granddaughter - the only part of his life worth saving. Oliver Cross is fresh out of jail. His plans for the future are to live out his days in regret, back pain, and a bottle of Lone Star. But when he finds out his granddaughter, a wild child who reminds him of his late wife, has vanished - bless her hell-raising heart - Oliver jumps parole. With a sketchy teen and an abandoned dog, he hits the blacktop to find her. On the road and on the run from a vengeful Russian drug dealer, Oliver finds himself on a trip across America and into his own past, fueled by fumes from a Ford F-250 and a reason to live. But from an exclusive club in Chicago to a seedy commune in the Rockies, a series of disastrous choices sends Oliver spiraling further from his goal and deeper into danger. It’s a journey that could all end in redemption or a hail of bullets. And either’s okay by him.
©2019 William Lashner (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Free Fall
Summary
"A thoughtful and powerful page turner."--People Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiancé, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer's sure he's in trouble - the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves his office, Elvis and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip-deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops, and conspiracies of silence. And before the case is through, every copy in the LAPD will be gunning for a pair of escaped armed-and-dangerous killers - Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. "Elvis Cole provides more fun for the reader than any L.A. private eye to come along in years."--Joseph Wambaugh "Elvis lives, and he's on his way to being crowned the king of detectives."--Booklist
©1994 Robert Crais (P)2006 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Reckless Endangerment
Summary
Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi discover themselves working on two sides of the same case when a set of double homicides rocks downtown Manhattan. A bloody warning scrawled on the wall above a murdered elderly couple sends the Jewish community reeling into a tension-filled confrontation with the city's Arab population. In neighboring Brooklyn, a 16-year-old Arab runaway seeks refuge in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, where she becomes caught up in the ugly world of prostitution and drugs. After murderously defending herself against a malicious pimp, she escapes into a woman's shelter on the Lower East Side, into the helping hands of Marlene. As special prosecutor, Butch joins the hunt for the double murderers, finding himself in conflict with his own Jewish heritage, and with the realization that Marlene's case is inextricably linked with his own. As tensions build and fear escalates, New York City becomes a powder-keg of twisted emotions in a case of kill or be killed.
©2010 Robert K. Tanenbaum (P)2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Chasing Darkness
Summary
It is fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. Threatened by a raging brush fire, the residents of Laurel Canyon are being forced from their homes. Police and fire department personnel rush from door to door to evacuate the inhabitants, but find something in one of the houses none of them expected: The days-old corpse of a middle-aged recluse who apparently committed suicide. Then comes an even more horrible discovery. Clutched in his lap is a photo album containing photographs of seven young women who have been murdered. Each photograph was taken only moments after the women were killed, and could only have been taken by the killer. There was one murder per year for seven years, with their bodies found in different parts of the city. LAPD homicide detectives had never connected the seven murders. But now, with the discovery of the "death album", these seven murders have been linked, and the news for Elvis Cole is bad. Only one suspect had been charged in any of those cases, that being for the murder of victim #4. LAPD and the L.A. County District Attorney's office had a marginal case, but they also had a recorded confession by the suspect and believed him to be the murderer. But, with evidence supplied by Elvis Cole, in the end he walked free. That suspect was the suicide now discovered in the fire, Elliot Martin. Did Cole's action three years ago free a killer to commit more murders? Did Elvis cost three young women their lives?
©2008 Robert Crais (P)2008 Hachette Audio
The Dead Man, Vol. 3
Summary
Matt seeks out a paranoid visionary who claims to have defeated an entity just like Mr. Dark. His quest takes him deep into the Michigan woods — and into a bloody siege between warring, paramilitary factions in James Daniels’ "The Beast Within". In Jude Hardin’s "Fire and Ice", Matt is trapped inside an industrial plant during a deadly shooting rampage. As the body count rises, the cunning Mr. Dark raises the stakes to horrifying new heights, putting thousands of lives at risk. Matt is working security on the midway in Bill Crider’s "Carnival of Death". But when violence breaks out and a fake fortune teller’s dark prophecies suddenly begin coming true, Matt knows that Mr. Dark has arrived and it’s not for the cotton candy.
Public Domain (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Lullaby Town
Summary
"Quick, cutting wit...a keen ear."--The New York Times Book Review Hollywood’s newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelsen, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure. His films make billions, but his manners make enemies. What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelsen wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third-biggest filmmaker in America. It’s the kind of case Cole can handle in his sleep - until it turns out to be a nightmare. For when Cole finds Nelsen’s ex-wife in a small Connecticut town, she’s nothing like he expects. She has some unwanted - and very nasty - mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening an East Coast branch of his P.I. office...at the bottom of the Hudson River. "Elvis [Cole] is the greatest...[ he is] perhaps the best detective to come along since Travis McGee."--San Diego Tribune "[Crais is] far better at the private-eye-novel racket than most writers."--Newsweek
©1993 Robert Crais (P)2006 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Last Detective
Summary
Back in 1999, Robert Crais set out to take his readers fully into the world of one of his two heroes: Joe Pike. For the first time, we really saw what made his creation tick, away from his partnership with Elvis Cole. That book - LA Requiem - has since been hailed as Crais' finest novel. Now, with The Last Detective, we see the other half of this best-selling duo. Elvis Cole has to face up to a crime that takes place far too near home. His girlfriend's only child has been kidnapped, and it seems that something from his own past has come back to haunt him.
©2003 Robert Crais (P)2009 Orion Publishing Limited