John Shea has narrated 15 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 85 ratings. The most-rated is Hawke.
Hawke
Summary
"Hawke is a fast-paced adventure...truly an exciting listen", says Nelson DeMille. "Rich, spellbinding, and absorbing, Hawke is packed with surprises", raves Clive Cussler. Listeners beware, this stunning, high-caliber thriller is not recommended for the faint of heart. Lord Alexander Hawke is a direct descendant of the legendary English pirate Blackhawke and highly skilled in the cutthroat's deadly ways himself. While still a boy, on a voyage to the Caribbean, Alex Hawke witnesses an act of unspeakable horror. Hidden in a secret compartment on his father's yacht, Alex sees his parents brutally murdered by three modern-day pirates. It is an event that will haunt him for the remainder of his life. Now, fully grown and one of England's most decorated naval heroes, Hawke is back in the same Caribbean waters on a secret mission for the American government. A highly experimental stealth submarine, built by the Soviets just before the end of the Cold War, is missing. She carries 40 nuclear warheads and is believed to be in the hands of a very unstable government just 90 miles from the American mainland. Hawke is in a race against time. His mission: Find the deadly sub before a preemptive strike can be launched against the US, and confront the murderous men behind the personal nightmare that haunts him before they find him first. Featuring breathtaking action, international intrigue, and a hero worthy of the very finest adventure fiction, Hawke heralds the exciting debut of a bold new talent.
©2003 Theodore Bell (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Assassin
Summary
In an elegant palazzo on the Grand Canal, an American ambassador's tryst turns deadly. In the seamy underbelly of London, a pub-crawling killer is on the loose. And in a storybook chapel nestled in the Cotswolds, a marriage made in heaven turns to hell on earth. Isolated incidents? Or links in a chain of events hurtling towards catastrophe? So begins Assassin, the tour de force thriller that heralds the return of every terrorist's worst nightmare: Alex Hawke. A shadowy figure known as the Dog is believed to be the ruthless terrorist who is systematically and savagely assassinating American diplomats and their families around the globe. As the deadly toll mounts inexorably, Hawke, along with former NYPD cop and Navy SEAL Stokely Jones, is called upon by the U.S. government to launch a search for the assassin behind the murders. Hawke, who "makes James Bond look like a 'slovenly, dull-witted clockpuncher'" (Kirkus Reviews), is soon following a trail that leads back to London in the go-go 90s, when Arab oil money fueled lavish, and sometimes fiendish, lifestyles. Other murky clues point to the Florida Keys, where a vicious killer hides behind the gates of a fabled museum, and to a remote Indonesian island where a madman tinkers with strains of a deadly virus and slyly bides his time. Hawke must call upon resources deep within himself. He must enter a race against time to stop a cataclysmic attack on America's most populous cities and avenge the inexplicable and horrific crime that has left him devastated.
©2004 Theodore A. Bell (P)2005 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Warlord
Summary
Alex Hawke has all but given up on life. The British-American MI6 counterterrorism operative lost the woman he loved almost a year ago and has sought refuge at the bottom of a rum bottle ever since. But late one night at his home on Bermuda, he receives a wake-up call... literally. His Royal Highness Prince Charles, an old friend, desperately needs his help. The prince has discovered a not-so-subtle threat directed toward the British royal family. What’s more, the evidence reveals an ominous connection to Charles’s godfather, Lord Mountbatten - the beloved family patriarch assassinated by an ingeniously designed bomb 30 years before. A shadowy figure from the past has the British crown in his sights, and has proven once before that his warnings are not to be taken lightly. Several clues point to IRA involvement, but the authorities have little to go on and answers are scarce. This is just the call to duty Hawke needs to get back into action - if the madman doesn’t strike first.
©2010 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Tsar
Summary
In Ted Bell's latest pulse-pounding and action-packed tour de force, Alex Hawke must face a global nightmare of epic proportions. As this political crisis plays out, Russia gains a new leader. Not just a president, but a new tsar, a signal to the world that the old, imperial Russia is back and plans to have her day. And in America, a mysterious killer, known only as Happy the Baker, brutally murders an innocent family and literally flattens the small Midwestern town they once called home. Just a taste, according to the new tsar, of what will happen if America does not back down. Onto this stage must step Alex Hawke, espionage agent extraordinaire and the only man, both Americans and the Brits agree, who can stop the absolute madness born and bred inside the modern police state of Vladimir Putin's "New Russia".
©2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.; 2008 Ted Bell
Pirate
Summary
In Ted Bell's scorching follow-up to his New York Times best seller Assassin, intrepid intelligence operative Alex Hawke must thwart a secret, deadly alliance between China and France before they annihilate everything and everyone in their headlong rush toward world domination. Aboard the Star of Shanghai in the south of France, an American spy is held captive. He possesses vital, explosive intelligence linking two nations and one horrifying plot. If he is not rescued, he faces certain torture and inevitable death. Nearby, in a seaside hotel, a man still haunted by the loss of his wife two years earlier finds comfort in the arms of a beautiful Chinese actress - but is she to be trusted? So begins Pirate, an electrifying thriller marking the return of international counterterrorist Alex Hawke. In Paris, a ruthless descendant of Napoleon has risen to power, hell-bent on restoring France's former glory. His fiery ambitions are cynically stoked by a coterie of cold-blooded Mandarins, plotting behind the gates of Beijing's Forbidden City. Cloaked in secrecy, this unholy alliance devises a twisted global plan, backed by China's growing nuclear arsenal, that will send America and the world to the brink of a gut-wrenching showdown. With the aid of his old friend,and former Navy SEAL,Stokely Jones, Hawke sets out to investigate the deadly connections that bind the French-Chinese axis. Together, they discover that a powerful German industrialist may hold the key, somewhere inside the walls of his Bavarian mountain lair. Meanwhile, clues to an old and gruesome murder in Paris lead to New York City, where horrifying evidence could finally bring a madman to his knees. In the end, as American and British forces prepare to defend a sovereign and oil-rich Gulf nation against unwilling occupation, the terror is all too real. The world is once more balanced on the knife-edge of a full-blown nuclear confrontation.
©2005 Theodore A. Bell (P)2005 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Spy
Summary
"A border ain't nothing but a law drawn in the sand." So says a small-town Texas sheriff in Ted Bell's most gripping espionage thriller to date. Things along America's southern border are rapidly reaching the boiling point. American girls are being snatched from their homes, ranches are burning, and the number of deadly confrontations along the Mexican boarder grows daily. At night, armed Mexican troops cross the border at will in support of narcotics smugglers and illegal immigrants. By day, Americans take up arms and plan reprisals. An all-out border war is no longer inconceivable. It's happening! On assignment for the British Secret Service, a man leads a mysterious expedition into the heart of darkness. Sailing up the furthest reaches of the Amazon River, he is captured by a brutal tribe of indigenous cannibals. Forced into slave labor, he witnesses the unimaginable. Golden domes and minarets rise beneath the rainforest canopy. Vast terror armies are being recruited and trained in the jungle. Their goal: a vicious jihad that will unite one continent...and destroy another. They possess weapons only dreamed of by the Western allies. Somehow he must escape his captors and live to tell his tale. With tensions on its southern border threatening to ignite into war, America must look to the one man who might be able to confront the demons in the jungle...and destroy them. Alex Hawke, with the aid of brilliant Scotland Yard Inspector Ambrose Congreve, and an unstoppable force of nature named Stokely Jones, begins a river journey fraught with peril. Hawke once again takes listeners right to that thin border between fear and overwhelming terror. It's merely a line drawn in the sand. Cross it at your peril. Cross it if you dare.
©2006 Theodore A. Bell (P)2006 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Warriors
Summary
On the streets of Washington, D.C., a brilliant scientist, the brains behind a revolutionary fighter aircraft prototype in development by the Pentagon, is snatched by masked thugs and disappears. Now five years later, an elderly professor at Cambridge University has been murdered, a victim of bizarre, ancient Chinese torture. Alex Hawke teams up with Scotland Yard former Chief Inspector Ambrose Congreve to find the killer, but this death is merely the opening gambit in a tense and lethal game of geopolitical brinksmanship. In the United States, the president's behavior makes many question his fitness for leadership. Is his mental health deteriorating, or is there something far more sinister at work? The answer is crucial, for hostilities are rapidly escalating between China, North Korea, and the United States, as China launches a vastly advanced fighter far more sophisticated than any seen before, military technology that might leapfrog everything the U.S. and Great Britain now possess. With the situation edging closer and closer to the yawning abyss, Hawke faces a female Chinese mastermind and assassin named Chyna Moon. He must infiltrate enemy territory and neutralize their advantage...or risk the outbreak of World War III. Performed by John Shea
©2014 Theodore A. Bell (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers
Overkill
Summary
Putting it all on the line to rescue his kidnapped son pits counterspy Alex Hawke against Russian president Vladimir Putin in this action-packed thriller from New York Times best-selling author Ted Bell. On a ski vacation in the Swiss Alps high above St. Moritz, Alex Hawke and his young son, Alexei, are thrust into danger when the tram carrying them to the top of the mountain bursts into flame, separating the two. Before he can reach Alexei, the boy is snatched from the burning cable car by unknown assailants in a helicopter. Meanwhile, high above the skies of France, Vladimir Putin is aboard his presidential jet after escaping a bloodless coup in the Kremlin. When two flight attendants collapse and slip into unconsciousness, the Russian leader realizes the danger isn’t over. Killing the pilots, he grabs a parachute, steps out of the plane...and disappears. Hawke has led his share of dangerous assignments, but none with stakes this high. To save his son, he summons his trusted colleagues, chief inspector of Scotland Yard Ambrose Congreve and former US Navy SEAL Stokley Jones Jr., and recruits a crack Hostage Rescue Team - a group of elite soldiers of fortune known as Thunder & Lighting. Before they can devise a rescue plan, Hawke must figure out who took his boy - and why. An operative who has fought antagonists around the globe, Hawke has made many enemies; one in particular may hold the key to finding Alexei before it’s too late. But an unexpected threat complicates their mission. Making his way to Falcon’s Lair, the former Nazi complex created for Hitler, Putin is amassing an impressive armory that he intends to use for his triumphant return to Moscow. Only one man can smash the Russian president’s plan for domination - a master counterspy who will cross every line to save his son...and maybe save the world itself in the bargain.
©2018 Theodore A. Bell (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Patriot
Summary
Intelligence officer Alex Hawke takes on power-hungry Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is wielding a terrifying new weapon, in the latest adrenaline-fueled thriller in Ted Bell's New York Times best-selling series. In corrupt Russia, an erratic Vladimir Putin is determined to forge his country into a formidable superpower once again. He intends to redraw the map of Europe and will go to impossible extremes to realize his fantasies - including shooting down a civilian airliner packed with tourists bound for China. Kremlin scientists have developed a radical new weapon that could forever alter modern warfare. NATO, locked in a tense standoff over Ukraine, Poland, and Estonia, knows Putin will not hesitate to use it. But there is one man who can bring the world back from the brink: Britain's foremost intelligence asset, Lord Alexander Hawke. The intrepid MI6 officer's latest challenge begins in the Gulf of Aden and soon has him searching for the link to a series of bizarre assassinations. Spies are dying all over the world - from London, Washington, DC, and Maine to Moscow and even the glittering Cote d'Azur. In the murky world of counterterrorism and high-stakes intrigue, the odds have never been higher. Once again, Alex Hawke must save the world...one bullet at a time.
©2015 Theodore A. Bell (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers
Phantom
Summary
The first and most bizarre event nearly becomes a monumental catastrophe when something goes awry at an American theme park, wreaking havoc on visitors looking for nothing more than a sun-splashed holiday. In a different part of the country, a USAF F-15 pilot, escorting another jet in the skies over the Midwest, inexplicably loses control of his plane, endangering the lives of several people and deeply puzzling those following his mission on the ground. Then, in the misty calm of a coastal California evening, the world’s premier scientist on the subject of artificial intelligence gets a strange phone call. When he hangs up, he quietly grabs his coat and leaves for an after-dinner stroll from which he never returns. It’s up to Hawke and the brilliant former inspector Ambrose Congreve to find out what could possibly be happening. But how does one identify—and fight—an enemy one can’t see, a real phantom? Even these seasoned operatives are mystified. Is there really such a thing as an ultra-intelligent machine, a cyberweapon that can shift the geopolitical balance of power? In a hunt that takes him from Palo Alto, California, to the Russian frontier, to Cambridge University and the glistening Mediterranean aboard his newly christened and armed super-yacht Blackhawke, Alex Hawke is joined by the unstoppable Stokely Jones and his ex-CIA buddy Harry Brock. As he moves closer to unmasking the scientist behind these extraordinary events, he goes nose-to-nose with an enemy unlike any he’s fought before—and may never again.
©2012 Ted Bell (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Phantom
Summary
The first and most bizarre event nearly becomes a monumental catastrophe when something goes awry at an American theme park, wreaking havoc on visitors looking for nothing more than a sun-splashed holiday. In a different part of the country, a USAF F-15 pilot, escorting another jet in the skies over the Midwest, inexplicably loses control of his plane, endangering the lives of several people and deeply puzzling those following his mission on the ground. Then, in the misty calm of a coastal California evening, the world's premier scientist on the subject of artificial intelligence gets a strange phone call. When he hangs up, he quietly grabs his coat and leaves for an after-dinner stroll from which he never returns. It's up to Hawke and the brilliant former inspector Ambrose Congreve to find out what could possibly be happening. But how does one identify - and fight - an enemy one can't see, a real phantom? Even these seasoned operatives are mystified. Is there really such a thing as an ultra-intelligent machine, a cyberweapon that can shift the geopolitical balance of power? In a hunt that takes him from Palo Alto, California, to the Russian frontier, to Cambridge University and the glistening Mediterranean aboard his newly christened and armed super-yacht Blackhawke, Alex Hawke is joined by the unstoppable Stokely Jones and his ex-CIA buddy Harry Brock. As he moves closer to unmasking the scientist behind these extraordinary events, he goes nose-to-nose with an enemy unlike any he's fought before - and may never again.
©2012 Ted Bell (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
One Last Thing Before I Go
Summary
The best-selling author of This Is Where I Leave You returns with a hilarious and heart-rending tale about one family's struggle to reconnect. You don't have to look very hard at Drew Silver to see that mistakes have been made. His fleeting fame as the drummer for a one-hit wonder rock band is nearly a decade behind him. He lives in the Versailles, an apartment building filled almost exclusively with divorced men like him, and makes a living playing in wedding bands. His ex-wife, Denise, is about to marry a guy Silver can't quite bring himself to hate. And his Princeton-bound teenage daughter, Casey, has just confided in him that she's pregnant - because Silver is the one she cares least about letting down. So when he learns that his heart requires emergency, lifesaving surgery, Silver makes the radical decision to refuse the operation, choosing instead to use what little time he has left to repair his relationship with Casey, become a better man, and live in the moment, even if that moment isn't destined to last very long. As his exasperated family looks on, Silver grapples with the ultimate question of whether or not his own life is worth saving. With the wedding looming and both Silver and Casey in crisis, this broken family struggles to come together, only to risk damaging each other even more. One Last Thing Before I Go is Jonathan Tropper at his funny, insightful, heartbreaking best.
©2012 Jonathan Tropper (P)2012 Penguin
Hawke: Three Black Ops
Summary
Three Alex Hawke novellas never before on audio. Crash Dive: Alex Hawke is in hostile foreign waters, flying an F-16 Viper at nearly the speed of sound, at an altitude no sane man would dare, on a highly covert mission. His task is simple: enter another nation’s airspace undetected, meet a secret contact, and find a way to avert a global war. What Comes Around: An esteemed former CIA director dies off the coast of Maine. Another senior CIA officer is found dead of a “heart attack” in a posh Paris hotel. Counterspy Alex Hawke and his friend Ambrose Congreve think this could be more than coincidence. Hawke discovers that the victims are connected through one man: Spider Payne, a rogue intelligence officer whose dangerous exploits got him barred from the CIA. White Death: A powerful Swiss banker is found dead, frozen at the base of a soaring Alp. When a second man, the head of a rival banking empire, is found dead deep inside a mountain cave, MI6 suspects a bizarre conspiracy. Vast sums may have been plundered from the Queen of England’s accounts. The British royal family’s centuries-old Swiss bank holdings are at risk, shaking the foundations of Her Majesty’s government and the monarchy itself.
©2012, 2014, 2015 Ted Bell (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Day that Lehman Died
Summary
Written by Matthew Solon and directed by John Dryden
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest and largest investment banks in the world, with its headquarters in New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was the largest bankruptcy filed in US history and sent the already unstable global financial markets into an uncontrollable tailspin. Based on insider interviews, this 60-minute radio drama is a fictionalised reconstruction of what happened in one weekend.
Starring: John Shea, John Rothman, Rob Campbell and Mark La Mara. A Goldhawk Essential Production recorded on location in New York. Peabody Award – Winner, Wincott Award – Programme of the Year, The Sony Awards – Drama Award – Silver.
©2009 Goldhawk Essential Ltd (P)2011 AudioGo Ltd
Reservation Road
Summary
Here's a riveting novel of feeling and suspense in which grief and punishment become tragically intertwined. At the close of a beautiful summer day near the quiet Connecticut town where they live, the Learner family - Ethan, Grace, and their children, Josh and Emma - stops at a gas station on their way home from a concert. Josh Learner, lost in a 10-year-old's private world, is standing at the edge of the road when a car comes racing around the bend. He is hit and instantly killed. The car speeds away. From this moment forward, Reservation Road becomes a harrowing countdown to the confrontation between two very different men. The hit-and-run driver is a small-town lawyer named Dwight Arno, a man in desperate need of a second chance. Dwight is also the father of a 10-year-old boy, who was asleep in the car the night Josh Learner was killed. Now Dwight must decide whether to run from his crime or to pay the price for what he did. Ethan Learner, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college, has seen his orderly world shattered in a single moment, yet he persists in the belief that he can find the unknown man who killed his son. Behind their stories are those of 8-year-old Emma, who can't stop thinking her brother's death was her fault, and of Grace, who must find the strength to keep herself and her family together, and to be the mother Emma so badly needs. In a gripping narrative woven from the voices of Ethan, Dwight, and Grace, Reservation Road tells the story of two ordinary families facing an extraordinary crisis. This is an audiobook that sounds like a thriller but opens up a world rich with psychological nuance and emotional wisdom. Reservation Road explores the terrain of grief even as it astonishes with unexpected redemption.
©1998 John Burnham Schwartz (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.