John McLain has narrated 111 audiobooks on Listento.it by 115 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 367 ratings. The most-rated is The Lions of Al-Rassan.
Dallas Noir
Summary
Featuring brand-new stories by: Kathleen Kent, Ben Fountain, James Hime, Harry Hunsicker, Matt Bondurant, Merritt Tierce, Daniel J. Hale, Emma Rathbone, Jonathan Woods, Oscar C. Pea, Clay Reynolds, Lauren Davis, Fran Hillyer, Catherine Cuellar, David Haynes, and J. Suzanne Frank. From the introduction by David Hale Smith: My favorite line in my favorite song about Dallas goes like this: Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes / A steel and concrete soul in a warm heart and love disguise... The narrator of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's perfect tune "Dallas" is coming to town as a broke dreamer with the bright lights of the big city on his mind. He's just seen the Dallas cityscape through the window of his seat on a DC-9 at night. Is he just beginning his quest? Or is he on his way home, flying out of Love Field, reminiscing after seeing the woman who stepped on him when he was down? In a country with so many interesting cities, Dallas is often overlooked except on November 22 every year. The heartbreaking anniversary keeps coming back around in a nightmare loop, for all of us. On that day in 1963, Dallas became American noir. A permanent black scar on its history that will never be erased, no matter how many happy business stories and hit television shows arise from here. In a stark ongoing counterweight to the JFK tragedy are those two iterations of the TV show. Dallas is not a TV show. It's a real city... For the past 40 years, my capacity to be surprised by it has not diminished one bit. I hope the stories in this collection will surprise you too.
©2013 Akashic Books (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Residue
Summary
A long-unsolved mystery gets a grim new break when the bones of Kim Ward are unearthed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 45 years after her disappearance. Suspicion swiftly falls on her old college boyfriend: none other than retired police chief Kevin Kerney. The chief's hopes of clearing his name look bleak in the face of damning evidence compiled against him by State Police Lieutenant Clayton Istee - Kerney's own son. Left grasping for clues, with no alibi and not a single witness to speak for him, Kerney and his wife must race to reconstruct long-past events to identify the one person who can clear his name and expose the killer before it's too late. As their investigation unfolds, they'll discover that Kim Ward's murder isn't the only crime they'll have to solve before they can put danger behind them.
©2018 Michael McGarrity (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Spree of '83
Summary
The Los Angeles Times affectionately referred to Freddy Powers as the "Ol Blue Eyes' of Country Music" and wrote that if you were to "ask country superstars Willie Nelson, George Jones or Merle Haggard (they'll)...tell you that he's one of country music's best-kept secrets". The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame inductee has been to the top of the charts as both a producer for Willie Nelson's Grammy-winning LP Over the Rainbow and a songwriter for many of country music legend Merle Haggard's number one hits. Now, for the first time, Freddy recounts the entertaining and emotional stories behind his decades-long roller-coaster ride through the music business, his voyage to the top of the charts, and his inspiring battle against Parkinson's disease. Helping Freddy tell his story are exclusive interviews from fellow country music legends Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, John Rich, Tanya Tucker, and The Voice finalist and Powers' protégé Mary Sarah along with a host of other Nashville luminaries. Full cast of narrators includes Marguerite Gavin, Mark Bramhall, Renée Raudman, Lloyd James, Tanya Tucker, and Traber Burns.
©2017 Freddy and Catherine Powers (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Good Day for a Massacre
Summary
Johnstone Country. Where it's never quiet on the Western front. Life on the straight and narrow is easier said than done for a pair of crooks like Jimmy "Slash" Braddock and Melvin "Pecos Kid" Baker. But these reprobates are doing their damnedest to make an honest go of it. They've managed to safely deliver a church organ to a mountain parish when their sometime employer - Chief US Marshal Luther T. "Bleed-'m-So" Bledsoe - recruits them for a job only fools would take. Marshal Bledsoe wants them to pick up a shipment of gold in the mining town in the Sawatch Mountains. Here's the catch: Slash and Pecos's wagon is just a decoy. When a ruthless gang ambushes the real gold shipment, it's up to Slash and Pecos to go after the trigger-happy bandits. And they won't be alone. A lady Pinkerton, Hattie Friendly - who is anything but - survived the ambush and is hellbent on getting the gold back. Even if she has to team up with a pair of ornery old cutthroats like Slash and Pecos... The Cutthroats are back. The bad guys are history.
©2020 J. A. Johnstone (P)2020 Tantor
The Lost Wagon Train
Summary
The story of a Civil War soldier finding his humanity in the face of horrible savagery. Emerging from the Civil War a shamed and broken man, Stephen Latch turns to a life of thievery and murder. Still hoping to uphold the values of the Confederacy, Latch sets his sights on the wealth of resources pouring westward from the northern United States, putting together a band of ruthless misfits to help him stake his claim of the riches of the caravans. Latch's plan calls for an unusual alliance, one made with Chief Satana and his band of Kiowas. The Kiowas are in desperate need of "firewater" - the rum and whiskey that Latch keeps secreted away - and Latch plans to use it to inspire them to levels of barbarism not seen anywhere else. Once the caravan drivers and passengers are dispatched with, Latch and his men will spirit away the now ownerless wagons, never to be seen again. The Lost Wagon Train follows Latch on his greatest attack against a train of 160 wagons, and shows how the once-haunted man turns a corner and finds a new life away from the ways of the brigand.
©1936 Zane Grey. © 2016 by Joseph Wheeler, PhD. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Fisherman's Winter
Summary
An enchanting fly-fishing guide to the rivers and streams of South America. Originally published in 1954, Fisherman’s Winter is Roderick Haig-Brown’s final installment in his well-known “seasons” cycle. With a unique blend of experience and observation, Haig-Brown brings readers through the exotic rivers of South America in the winter months, showing rather than explaining the many things he encounters. Rather than writing about typical winter fishing, Haig-Brown departs from British Columbia, where the other titles in his seasons cycle take place, and heads to unknown rivers in South America, where he learns as much as his readers will. Fishing a “second summer,” Haig-Brown inhabits Argentina and Chile, where five- and six-pound trout are abundant in the streams of the Andes. The many chapters on fishing in South America include: The Lake of Big Rainbows, The Laja River, Some Incidental Things, Farm, Forest, and River, Lago Maihue and the Calcurrupe, The Beach of the Deer, Rivers of the Pampas, The Trout and Salmon of South America, Some Birds of Southern Chile and Argentina, Some Trees and Plants of Southern Chile, and much more! Since Haig-Brown’s revolutionary fishing journey to South America, one that few anglers had dreamed of before this, many flyfishermen since have fished their own second summers on the fresh, cold rivers found there. Let this guide be your own tour of the wondrous rivers and streams of the Southern Hemisphere.
©2014 Roderick L. Haig-Brown (P)2013 Audible Inc.
Lightning Sky
Summary
October 6, 1944. Twenty-year-old Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant David "Mac" Warren MacArthur was on a strafing mission over Greece when a round of 88-mm German anti-aircraft flak turned his P-38 Lightning into a comet of fire and smoke. Dave parachuted to safety as the Lightning lived up to her name and struck the Adriatic Sea like a bolt of flames. In minutes, he was plucked from the water - only to find himself on the wrong end of a German rifle pointing straight at his head. Dave's father, Lieutenant Colonel Vaughn MacArthur, was a chaplain with the 8th Armored Division of Patton's Third Army when he learned of his son's capture. He made it his personal mission to find him. For the duration of the war, as Dave was shuttled from camp to camp - including Dachau - his father never stopped searching. Then in May 1945, Vaughn's last hope was Stalag VII-A in Moosburg, Germany. Through the barbed wire fence, he cried out his son's name. Incredibly, out of tens of thousands of POWs, one of them, squinting into the sunlight, turned and smiled. Father and son spent the next two weeks together celebrating, a forever cherished memory. Over the next 25 years, Dave would go on to honor his father in rescue missions of his own, becoming a highly decorated and genuine American war hero.
©2019 R. C. George (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Raiders of Spanish Peaks
Summary
The Lindsay family has come west hoping to help the father, John, recover from an illness. When they arrive, they are induced to purchase Spanish Peaks Ranch, an abandoned United States military post surrounded by mountains. It seems like a perfect place to settle into their new life as ranchers. As they soon find out, though, this deserted fort is equally suited for both protection and imprisonment. In fact, they've been swindled into buying the longtime headquarters and hideout for a band of thieves and rustlers. Almost as soon as they get to work, the Lindsay family's peace is disturbed, and their protected new homestead quickly becomes an isolated outpost as rustlers begin to harass their herds. John Lindsay discovers there are spies among his faithful cowboys. Things continue to get worse until finally their brewing hostilities climax in a nighttime attack, leading to all-out war and the abduction of one of the Lindsay girls and elopement of another. John must fight against treason on the inside and enemies on the outside to keep his family and new life safe. First published in 1938, the greatest writer of the American West, Zane Grey, brings a classic tale of drama on the frontier. Raiders of Spanish Peaks is a thrilling tale of a how a man's home is truly his castle.
©1931, 1938 Zane Grey (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Monahan's Massacre
Summary
The accidental gunslinger Dooley Monahan has quit wandering and settled down to a farmer's life. But when the itch for adventure gets too strong, he packs up and rides west. Along with his horse General Grant, and Blue, a dog who's too smart for his own good, Dooley rides for the Black Hills to strike it rich in the gold fields of Colorado. But fate has other ideas. When the trigger-happy Dobbs-Queeg gang holds up the Omaha bank, Dooley is mistaken for one of the robbers, and a price is plastered on his head. With every lawman in the territory hot on his trail, Dooley has no choice but to join up with the murderous outlaws. If the hangman doesn't get him, his new friends will, but Dooley won't turn back. With Blue and General Grant at his side, Dooley will make his fortune - come hell, high water, and everything in between.
©2017 J. A. Johnstone (P)2020 Tantor
Fighting Caravans
Summary
Clint Belmet's parents were killed in a Comanche raid when he was young, but that hasn't stopped him from taking a job leading freight caravans on the old Santa Fe Trail, from Saint Louis, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico - a route that goes right through Comanche territory. Here is the raw, primitive West of the early pioneers, great caravans of freighters rumbling across the deadly prairies, risking attack by Comanche. In this action-packed adventure from the "greatest novelist of the American West," twenty-eight wagons loaded with families, supplies, and tough-as-nails Texans are forced to circle up and fight for their lives against relentless assaults by Comanche who have been goaded on and tricked by raiders. When amid the constant battle Clint falls in love with the beautiful May Bell, he makes an enemy even worse than the Comanche. Lee Murdock wants Mary Bell to himself, not to mention the valuable supplies their caravan is carrying. Soon, Clint must face enemies inside the circled wagons as well as outside. Zane Grey details the amazing, electric, and bloody days that existed on the American Frontier. Fighting Caravans brings us the story of brave men and women who risk everything for a new life and opportunities, or for the adventure of the wild.
©1928, 1929 Curtis Publishing Company. © 1929 by Zane Grey. © renewed 1956, 1957 by Lina Elise Grey. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Terroir of Whiskey
Summary
Look at the back label of a bottle of wine and you may well see a reference to its terroir, the total local environment of the vineyard that grew the grapes, from its soil to the climate. Winemakers universally accept that where a grape is grown influences its chemistry, which in turn changes the flavor of the wine. A detailed system has codified the idea that place matters to wine. So why don't we feel the same way about whiskey? In this book, Rob Arnold reveals how innovative whiskey producers are recapturing a sense of place to create distinctive, nuanced flavors. He takes listeners on a world tour of whiskey and the science of flavor, stopping along the way at distilleries in Kentucky, New York, Texas, Ireland, and Scotland. Arnold puts the spotlight on a new generation of distillers, plant breeders, and local farmers who are bringing back long-forgotten grain flavors and creating new ones in pursuit of terroir. In the 20th century, we inadvertently bred distinctive tastes out of grains in favor of high yields - but today's artisans have teamed up to remove themselves from the commodity grain system, resurrect heirloom cereals, bring new varieties to life, and recapture the flavors of specific local ingredients. The Terroir of Whiskey makes the scientific and cultural cases that terroir is as important in whiskey as it is in wine.
©2021 Rob Arnold (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books