Showing results by narrator "Rick Barr" in All Categories

Across continents and into and out of the hands of royalty, revolutionaries, smugglers, thieves, and the world's greatest tech engineers, was Marie Antoinette's watch, the "160" worth an estimated $40 million in today's dollars. Perhaps the most sought after personal technology device of the last 200 years, the timepiece, designed by the legendary Abraham-Louis Breguet, is the launching point for a thrilling and fluidly woven set of narratives that are, in part, forbidden love story, historical document, and police procedural.

A fascist administration rounds up undesirables. Terrorist groups strike governmental and religious targets. The constitution is under assault. Erec Stebbins’s China Girl is a controversial look at an America that is all too close to reality, radioactive in its timely examination of extremism in the nation.

Detectives link gruesome murders to the Eunuch Maker, a serial killer targeting men. The stakes soon escalate to global proportions.

Roxane Quinn has worked for years toward becoming the event coordinator for the hotel her father runs in Quinn Valley. As soon as she starts the new position, she hears that the only man she has ever loved has moved back to town and is now running a business out of a taco truck. She’s worried she won’t be able to keep her heart intact with her high school sweetheart so close.

In March 2012, a serial killer provokes terror in South Bend, Indiana, near the University of Notre Dame. The notorious FBI agent Jack Savage is hunting the serial killer, desperately trying to stop another brutal murder in the town where he "Woke up the Echoes" and led the fighting Irish to a national championship in 1977. The serial killer brutally tortures his victims while always keeping one heart-pounding step ahead of law enforcement.

When detectives respond to a crime scene in Orlando, Florida, during the "summer of hurricanes" in 2004, they find Charlie Brandt hanging from the rafters in the garage of his niece Michelle Jones' home. Inside the house, they find a scene of horror that reminds them of other murders.

Katie was born into a cult. Her family lived there for generations. As she got older, she realized the Elders were keeping secrets from the community. Risking everything, she leaves the cult and searches for the truth. With the help of outsiders, Katie and her young husband David are put in touch with an organization called Purple Haven, which provides medical care, shelter, counseling and job training to individuals who have escaped from cults. She soon discovers she’s pregnant.

Detective Levin must find the cause of an outbreak of mass murders in his hometown. Norcastle was the first town to fall. Not long after entire cities fell one by one to The Decay. It seems that everyone who enters Norcastle...goes insane. No one has come out alive. Some believe The Decay is a virus spread by the government. Others say it was brought by a cult known as the Ravelim. Can Detective Levin solve the mystery before he falls victim to The Decay? Or will he go insane like all the others who have tried?

Abigail Livingston is tired of the uncertainty—are her suitors really interested in her or her father's fortune? The only way to know for sure is to pretend to be someone else. But her plan derails the moment she boards the train to Durango, Colorado. Matthew Bellamy is on a mission. His business and financial future depends upon his ability to keep a certain wealthy debutante out of trouble. But when he loses track of her on the way to her holiday in Colorado, he realizes he's the one in trouble.

When America declared war on the German Empire in 1917, young men were drafted and thrown into the conflict on the Western Front. A group of young women decided to help the war effort by writing to the soldiers. As Matrice Hamilton corresponds with several young men, only one claims her heart. Will he come home to her if he survives the carnage on the frontlines? If so, can they find love and fulfillment together, or will the dark clouds of war overshadow them forever?

To say Maeva Stewart is not a patient young woman is an understatement. Full of ideas, she meets life head on—usually with her best friend and neighbor, Ruby Risler. Aside from Ruby’s good qualities as a friend, she also has a brother, Leo. After giving cookies to the men leaving the train station for Camp Douglas, Maeva begins writing letters to those she doesn’t know. Then, drawing upon an untapped well of courage, she writes to tell Leo how she feels about him. A telegram changes everything when Leo is injured in France, and Maeva wants to go to him.

Tatianna Murray joins her best friends in writing to the men headed for Europe during World War I. Ryan’s letters stand out from the others. Two strangers find within the words something they both share: loneliness and the loss of their parents. As the correspondence continues, they find love, although they’ve never met. While in the horrific war, Ryan carries a bit of Tatianna with him, a golden cross. When Ryan’s letters stop, Tatianna worries. Is he wounded, dead, or imprisoned by the enemy?

When an explosive conflict is determined to destroy lives the world over, Ruby Rose Risler undertakes her patriotic responsibility to the Doughboys being called to defend liberty “over there.” But Ruby’s civic duty becomes a labor of love when her newest pen pal sparks a sweet interest. Farm boy Earnest Steiner cannot fathom the scope of the task before him when he’s pulled from small town America and dropped into the trenches of France. But the touching letters he receives from a gentle young woman provide a lifeline during his time on the Western Front.

Lara Cummings came to Last Chance with her sister for a new life, far away from the farm where her inquisitive nature always seemed to land her in trouble. Living on her cousins' ranch sounded ideal...until the drought came. Mitchell King wants as far away from Colorado as he can get. But opportunities to work are slim, and when he arrives in Last Chance, he's more than willing to take a job on a ranch in exchange for room and board. Of course, the pretty, mischievous redhead who lives there makes it all the easier to decide to stay.

Rosella Tihold and her family spent years as travelling musicians with Hammerman’s Cultural Musicale. But when her brother is injured at Gettysburg, the young singer’s priorities shift, and the lure of a place to call home settles in Rosella’s heart. Longing for stability, Gier Knudsen risks everything when he sends for a mail-order bride. But the secret he is hiding will certainly be a detriment to his well-laid plans. So he requests that the marriage be performed by proxy, in hopes that by the time the truth is known, the new Mrs. Knudsen will give him a chance.

When his girlfriend disappears, Jack Mathews' only option is to drive if he ever wants to see her again. He's got nothing but time, which is quickly running out. Five Hours is a nonstop thrill ride that never slows down. This short story is an adrenaline rush where nothing is what it seems.

Cecily James is determined to save Last Chance, Nebraska, from another tragedy. As the drought consumes everything around her, she wonders if her prospects are drying up with it. Left alone in a destitute town, she learns of a device that can drill for water previously unreachable. She expects this could be the answer the town prayed for. What she doesn’t expect is a handsome drill operator who makes her flame up like a match to a tumbleweed.

Fighting to keep the remnant of her family alive, Mara Peterson eschews the company of most of her neighbors in the small logging town of Widow’s Ridge. Instead, she prefers the safety and security of the trading post her grandfather established long before the big woods of Wisconsin were felled. But when she is pressed to marry for the sake of the Whistler family legacy, Mara accepts an unconventional solution to the problem—and finds herself knee-deep in enemy territory trying to avoid bounty hunters and government agents.

A female rookie cop in Mobile, Alabama, finds an African-American teenager’s bones and a ring in the bottom of an abandoned well. Her training officer confiscates the ring and blames the rookie. Recruit Carly Redmund is in big trouble: She could lose her job if Field Training Officer Grey doesn't turn in the ring, or worse, be charged with withholding evidence. What she doesn't know is a white supremacist group is conspiring with Officer Grey's brother and mayoral candidate to manipulate the facts for political reasons.

When she offers to help plan her older sister’s wedding, Dinky Redfern knows that she’ll have to pack up everything and move to Idaho temporarily. Luckily, this isn’t a big deal, because a) Dinky is able to fit her entire life - including her pet hedgehog - into her beat-up sedan, and b) her sister lives at a beautiful tourist-destination ranch. No hardship at all...until Dinky meets her handsome co-planner, the groom’s best man.