Audiobooks by Thomas H. Cook

Samuel Madison always wondered what Sandrine saw in him, he a meek, stuffy doctorate student and she a brilliant, beautiful bohemian with limitless talent and imagination. Yet on the surface their marriage seemed perfectly tranquil: jobs at a small liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, a home filled with art and literature, and trips to some of the world’s most beautiful places. Then one night Sandrine is found dead in their bed from a deadly overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel is accused of poisoning her. As the truth of their turbulent marriage comes to light, Samuel must face a town convinced of his guilt, a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to it's core, and the truth about his brilliant wife whose shattering secrets could set him free-or condemn him to death.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Brian Holsopple (Narrator)

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Early Graves: A True Story of Murder and Passion

Shocking true crime from the Edgar Award-winning author. 'Powerful . . . A frightening close-up of sociopathic personalities at their most deadly' (Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter). Evil has a way of finding itself. How else could you explain the bond between Alvin and Judith Ann Neelley, who consecrated their marriage in blood? Before the killings started, they restricted themselves to simple mischief: prank calls, vandalism, firing guns at strangers' houses. Gradually their ambition grew, until one day at the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia, they spotted Lisa Ann Millican. Three days after Lisa Ann disappeared, the thirteen-year-old girl was found shot and pumped full of liquid drain cleaner. In between her abduction and her death, she was subjected to innumerable horrors. And she was only the first to die. Drawing on police records and extensive interviews, Thomas H. Cook recounts the story of Judith Ann Neelley, who at nineteen became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death row.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Kris Koscheski, TBD (Narrator)

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Blood Echoes: The Infamous Alday Mass Murder and Its Aftermath

Edgar Award Finalist: A true-crime account of a vicious massacre and the legal battles that followed. It was not a clever killing. On May 5, 1973, three men escaped from a Maryland prison and disappeared. Joined by a fifteen-year-old brother, they surfaced in Georgia, where they were spotted joyriding in a stolen car. Within a week, the four young men were arrested on suspicion of committing one of the most horrific murders in American history. Jerry Alday and his family were eating Sunday dinner when death burst through the door of their cozy little trailer. Their six bodies are only the beginning of Thomas H. Cook's retelling of this gruesome story; the horrors continued in the courtroom. Based on court documents, police records, and interviews with the surviving family members, this is a chilling look at the evil that can lurk just around the corner.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Kris Koscheski, TBD (Narrator)

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The City When It Rains

On a rainy night in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, a woman throws a doll from the fifth-floor window of a gutted tenement, then leaps herself. From his own apartment a few blocks away, freelance photographer David Corman listens to the radio reports as they come over his headset. Corman is a man at the edge, threatened with eviction, besieged by his wife's attempt to regain custody of their daughter, yet reluctant to give up the life that permits him to roam the night. In the woman's dying fall, he sees the chance to sell a story and perhaps buy some time. So he starts to probe deeper. Nothing prepares him for the odyssey he is about to undertake. As the path leads, dark and twisted, from the meanest streets of New York to the homes of the rich, he struggles to uncover the life of the woman who leaped into the rain. The more layers he strips away, however, the more puzzles confront him, until ultimately, the search turns back onto himself: the dead woman's true tale reveals shocking truths about his own life. At last, what began as a simple search for a story becomes a fight for his own soul. Rich in character, complex in plot, The City When It Rains is a haunting, suspenseful novel of uncommon force. Written with the stark beauty of the city it describes-passionate, resonant, a mystery in the deepest sense of the word.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), R. C. Bray (Narrator)

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Fatherhood, and Other Stories

Over his acclaimed career, Cook's novels have haunted, riveted, and spellbound readers across the world, and his short stories are equally acclaimed. They range from the intensely focused world of "Fatherhood," the Herodotus prize-winning title story, to the Edgar nominated "Rain," a dark, kaleidoscopic tale of Manhattan on a single, rain-swept night. "The Fix," the story of a famous boxing fix that was, well, not a fix at all, was selected for inclusion in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. "What She Offered," the gripping tale of a one-night stand, was included in The Best Noir Stories of the Century. Like Cook's novels, the range of this collection is, itself, astonishing. From a backwoods Appalachian shack during the Depression ("Poor People") to a Midwestern college campus in the throes of Sixties revolt ("The Sun-Gazer") to a midtown Manhattan bookstore on Christmas Eve, "The Lessons of the Season," this collection demonstrates precisely that, in the words of Michael Connolly, "no one tells a story better than Thomas H. Cook."

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Fred Sullivan (Narrator)

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The Cloud of Unknowing

David Sears grew up in the shadow of his brilliant younger sister, Diana, convinced by their father that she would accomplish great things. Instead, she married and had a son, Jason, who—like David and Diana's father—is schizophrenic. Her husband, Mark, a geneticist, never made peace with Jason's condition. Perhaps this is why, when Jason drowns, Diana will not accept the authorities' conclusion that his death was accidental. Or perhaps Diana is going mad. She begins to send David faxes and e-mails about ancient murders, driven by her growing belief that the earth is Gaia, a living witness to her son's murder who could give evidence in the case she is building against her husband. David soon fears for his own family's safety as the seductive qualities of Diana's manic energy become impossible to ignore. In The Cloud of Unknowing, Cook explores the power of blood and family mythology.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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Mortal Memory

Steve Farris is an unexceptional middle-aged architect with an extraordinary past: When he was 9, his father came home one evening and murdered his mother, brother, and sister before vanishing off the face of the earth. Steve has coped by shutting out the terrible memories, but when writer Rebecca Soltero arrives to interview him about his father, he is forced to reawaken the horrors of his childhood.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Dancer in the Dust

Twenty years ago, Ray Campbell, now a cautious risk- management consultant, was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country. He is forced to reconsider that year of living dangerously when a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert, the only woman Ray ever truly loved and whose fate he' d sealed in a moment of grievous error. Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those charged with its so-called development. But it was Ray' s failure to understand Martine' s commitment to her country that had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes. Ray' s return to the passion he' d once felt for Martine makes A Dancer in the Dust the enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray' s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine' s for a homeland that did not love her back.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Ray Chase (Narrator)

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Night Secrets: A Frank Clemons Mystery

The first case seems simple. A wealthy man's wife has grown distant, and he asks Frank Clemons, a private eye hardened by his past work on Atlanta's homicide beat, to find out why. There are a number of reasons why a young woman might withdraw from her older husband, but the spurned spouse rejects them all. Her jewelry is disappearing, but he insists that she doesn't have trouble with blackmail, drugs, or gambling. The answer must be more complex, and he begs Frank to find out what it is. Meanwhile, an old woman familiar to Frank from his nights haunting Tenth Avenue has been murdered, and a gypsy priestess claims that she killed her. But Frank is unconvinced, and unearthing these women's secrets will force him deep into the dark side of a city that he still cannot call home.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Ray Chase (Narrator)

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Instruments of Night

Thomas H. Cook's mesmerizing novels have attracted many Edgar Award nominations, and his Chatham School Affair (RB# 94796) won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Filled with the haunting characters that have become Cook's trademark, Instruments of Night creates a fusion between past and present that is unique and chilling. Author Paul Graves has achieved modest popularity for a crime series that pits a perceptive detective against his nemesis, a mastermind of evil. What readers don't know, however, is that writing provides Paul's only release from the horrors of his memory. Now, as he is hired to pen the ending to an unsolved murder case, Paul begins to find the border between the mystery and his own past growing precipitously narrow. The strands of this finely-crafted novel move seamlessly between scenes from Paul's latest crime novel and his investigation of the murder. In voicing the rich tapestry of character, emotion, and suspense, veteran narrator George Guidall creates a superbly rewarding audio experience. You'll also enjoy an interview with the author at the conclusion of the audiobook.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

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Flesh and Blood: A Frank Clemons Mystery

The sleek high-rises of Park Avenue make Frank Clemons uneasy. The former Atlanta homicide detective came to New York after a sickening murder case soured him on the South, but despite the glitz and excitement of his new surroundings and the beauty of the woman he shares them with, the city makes his skin crawl. Now a private eye, he is only at ease in the city’s darker corners, among the whores, gamblers, and pimps who call Eighth Avenue home. That affinity for the socially isolated is what draws him to the case of Hannah Karlsberg, an elderly seamstress who deserved a better death than she got. Hannah’s employer hires Clemons to find the victim’s next of kin so the police can release the body for burial, but as he learns about the dead woman’s past, which stretches back to the Lower East Side sweatshops of the 1930s, Clemons becomes obsessed with unearthing the decades-old secret that led to her death.

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Ray Chase (Narrator)

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Blood Innocents

Blood seeps into the gutters at the Children's Zoo in Central Park. Two deer have been slaughtered, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other slashed across the neck. Normally it would be a case for the Parks Department, but these are no ordinary deer. The pride of the small menagerie, they were given to the zoo by a prominent socialite who cannot afford bloody headlines. The NYPD hands the case to Detective Reardon, star of the homicide squad. A recent widower at fifty-six, Reardon has seen too many human victims to care much about the two butchered animals. He resents being taken off other pressing cases for the sake of politics, but soon another killing snaps him to attention. Two women are found dead in their Greenwich Village apartment, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other with her throat cut, and Reardon knows this vicious parallel is no coincidence. "Cook has shown himself to be a writer of poetic gifts, constantly pushing against the presumed limits of crime fiction." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

Thomas H. Cook (Author), Jonah Cummings (Narrator)

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