Showing results by narrator "Michael Kramer" in All Categories

Michael Shaeffer is a retired American businessman, living peacefully in England with his aristocratic wife. But her annual summer party brings strangers to their house, and with them, an attempt on Michael's life. He is immediately thrust into action, luring his lethal pursuers to Australia before venturing into the lion's den - the States - to figure out why the mafia is after him again and how to stop them.

Married and living in England under the name Michael Schaeffer, the assassin known as the Butcher's Boy is the target of a Mafia hit team sent to exact revenge for his deadly campaign against the Balacontano family years earlier. Schaeffer kills all three attackers, but he knows more will come and needs to find whoever sent them to end it once and for all.

Tor’s rebellion against the Mindolarn Empire has delivered a crippling blow - the death of Emperor Mentas. Seeking aid from their allies, the Mindolarn Empire turns to the Principality of Soroth and its society of mages, the Sorothian Magical Order. In an effort to aid the empire, the Order’s council mounts an expedition to travel to the nethermost reaches of the world, the Abodine Wasteland. There they must venture to a reliquary hidden deep within crystal ruins left over from a fabled war now almost forgotten.

Focusing mostly on Italy and Germany but also considering Spain, Romania, Japan, and movements in other countries, Payne describes fascism as revolutionary ultranationalism based on national rebirth, extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the promotion of violence and military virtues. He also suggests that the early Russian communists borrowed many techniques from fascism, and that though we are fairly well-inoculated against fascism itself, the values it represents could still emerge in new forms.

Tom Clancy is an unstoppable force in fiction, nonfiction, and even on the silver screen. Now listeners can take a journey with America's most proficient covert team as they struggle to avoid full-fledged war in Clancy's latest edge-of-your-seat thriller. Tom Clancy's newest Op-Center is a gripping, powerful profile of America's defense, intelligence, and crisis management technology - from the master of the technological thriller. As with all of the titles in the series, elements of technology, diplomacy, military might, and espionage come together....

He came to England to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he's a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there's been a price on his head. Now, after a decade, they've found him.

The wanderer knows this, for over the last century he has lived those stories, has seen them scrawled in his blood or the blood of others. Others like those dead Perishables scattered about the noble’s courtyard, like those servants of the enemy, mortal and not, lying beside them. And yet…he knows it is only the beginning.

Udo has escaped his home world in search of peace and found only more trouble living among the giants of Talamh. When he decides he cannot live within the restrictions of their society any more than his own, he flees to the country and forests beyond. There, he runs into his old friend Gefan, who offers to take him to a new world where he can find the ultimate peace of mind he's always sought along with Ing, the goddess-mother Udo never stopped searching for.

The city of Peradain is the heart of an empire built with steel, spears, and a monopoly on magic...until in a single day it falls, overthrown by a swarm of supernatural creatures of incredible power and ferocity. Neither soldier nor spell caster can stand against them. The empire's armies are crushed, its people scattered, its king and queen killed. Freed for the first time in generations, city-states scramble to seize neighboring territories and capture imperial spell casters.

A careful, methodical young data analyst for a California insurance company, John Walker knows when people will marry, at what age they will most likely have children, and when they will die. All signs point to a long successful career---until Max Stillman, a gruff security consultant, appears without warning at the office. It seems a colleague with whom Walker once had an affair has disappeared after paying a very large death benefit to an impostor.

In Russia, the military is anxious to assert its military strength and regain its role as a superpower. The Russian president refuses to greenlight a bold plan to disable American strategic nuclear capability and retake Ukraine and the Baltic States, fearing the potential consequences of involving nuclear weapons. But the generals won't have it and at the first opportunity, they overthrow the president in a military coup. Then they use a narrow window to initiate their bold plan - the Zolotov option - which will render all of America's B2 bombers and ballistic missiles useless.

Santa Fe lawyer Ed Eagle fell in love with the seductive Barbara Kennerly, and married her, against his better judgment. He should have listened to his intuition. Ed awakens on the morning after his 40th birthday to find that Barbara has vanished, and Ed's money from his business, his bank, and his brokerage accounts has been wired to the Cayman Islands.

Life can kick us when we are down. In Shawn Speakman's case, he is fighting back. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011, Speakman beat the disease as well as the massive medical debt he amassed from its treatment. He did this by publishing Unfettered, an anthology featuring short stories donated by some of the best science fiction and fantasy writers working today. Speakman has again collaborated with celebrated genre authors to publish Unfettered II.

The salacious and scandalous murders of a series of couples on Texarkana's "lovers' lanes" created a media maelstrom and cast a pall of fear over an entire region. What is even more surprising is that the case has remained cold for decades. Combining archival research and investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian James Presley reveals evidence that provides crucial keys to unlocking this decades-old puzzle.

The Op-Center team heads for Spain, where ethnic conflicts threaten to break out into a conflagration. As the novel's intelligence chief Bob Herbert puts it, this clash "will make the Spanish Civil War look like a brawl." The intelligence team's efforts to defuse the crisis are foiled when an Op-Center representative is assassinated in Madrid on her way to a high-level diplomatic meeting. Someone very powerful wants another Spanish War - no matter what the cost. Now the crew must delicately navigate the treacherous shoals of a planned insurrection by a popular Spanish general and his troops.

With the Order knights of Branil’s Burg defeated, the victorious Niyandrian rebels bend the knee to Anskar, their Melesh-Eloni—“godling”—and the true heir to the throne. But despite their victory, time is running out. Anskar’s powers are unpredictable, and to some, terrifying. Already, the mainlanders plan vengeance: An armada is being prepared, not for colonization this time, but for slaughter. And the ever-looming spirit of Queen Talia still seeks to return from the dead to begin a new necromantic empire, with her as the ever-living ruler.

It's the 22nd century. Humanity has taken its first steps into the galaxy, and we've found ourselves in a vast playground of alien races, environments, and cultures. As the newest players on the universal stage, though, our position is readily apparent - we're at the bottom of the food chain.

ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - has taken on the mantle of being the single most dangerous terrorist threat to global security since al-Qaeda. In Defeating ISIS, internationally renowned intelligence veteran, author, and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance gives an insider's view to explain the origins of this occult group, its violent propaganda, and how it spreads its ideology throughout the Middle East and to disaffected youth deep in the heart of the Western world.

The shocking death of an immortal sends Collector Mavell, a master of shadows, on a quest for the killer. He believes a foreseer of Drawlen, a religious regime, knows something about the murder. Jon Therman and his family of sunrock smugglers stumble into this manhunt. A former slave, he only desires to live unnoticed and to avoid the corruption of the world. But when a Drawlen immortal pursues his children, Jon retaliates. Jon’s daughter, Ella, attempts to rescue her friend from a ritual sacrifice. To do so, she must defy the commands of her fellow smugglers.

It's a mission that only Striker - the military arm of Op-Center - can handle: capture an Islamic cleric who is stirring up a rebellion against the Indian government. But when the border between India and Pakistan erupts, the Striker team gets caught in the crossfire. Now America's most proficient covert team is trapped in a full-fledged war. Their fate rests in the hands of a devious NSA double agent whose own agenda is unknown - a man who could just as easily sell them out as set them free. This book is an implicit profile of America's defense, intelligence, and crisis management technology....