Narrator

Shaun Grindell

Shaun Grindell
  • Henry Vestin always believed that, despite being a carpenter with no training in swordplay or survival, he could lead Isabelle and his friends to safety. He thought he could defy an emperor and protect Isabelle from harm. He was certain that love and friendship would help them survive.

    He was wrong.

    The second volume in the Tale of Light and Shadow series follows Henry and his friends after the disastrous battle at the Iron Pass. Horrors await the band of travelers in strange new lands. Crippled and broken, Henry must rely on his friends more than ever. New allies and foes find them at every turn, but which are friendly and which are deadly? Isabelle, now a slave in Neverak, finds herself surrounded by enemies, uncertain about the fate of her friends and relying on only herself to survive. The emperor moves forward with his plans of conquest, spurred on by the Seer’s dark prophecy, but he has not forgotten those who defied him.

    Return to the world of Atolas, where swords and daggers extend life or end it, where feuds and friendships influence kingdoms and courtships, and where magic is feared by all but a few.

  • A medieval adventure for young adults, A Tale of Light and Shadow is the story of a boy struggling to become a courageous and honorable man and a girl who is desperately in love with him despite her father’s disapproval. The book chronicles the extraordinary tasks their adventure asks of their band of five friends and how those demands can overwhelm and break the bonds of friendship.

    Enter Atolas, a world where swords and daggers both extend life and end it, where magic is feared by all but a few, and where feuds and friendships influence kingdoms and courtships.

    Henry and Isabelle have secretly sworn to marry despite his lowly station. Though Henry is but a carpenter, his devotion drives him to commit an unthinkable act that may cost both of them their lives. At the same time, a secret, dark prophecy has set in motion events that will affect not only them but the thrones of rulers throughout all of Atolas, threatening to eclipse the world in shadow. But all is not lost while hope remains in the guise of an unlikely hero and the strength of friendship.

  • Fatal attraction, primal fear, survival in the forest—from the author of the Printz Honor Book Stolen comes the highly anticipated thriller about deadly games played in the dark.

    Ashlee Parker is dead, and Emily Shepherd's dad is accused of the crime. A former soldier suffering from PTSD, he emerges from the woods carrying the girl's broken body. "Gone," he says, then retreats into silence.

    What really happened that wild night? Emily knows in her bones that her father is innocent—isn't he? Before he's convicted, she's got to uncover the truth. Does Damon Hilary, Ashlee's charismatic boyfriend, have the answers? Or is he only playing games with her … the kinds of games that can kill?

  • Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth's life is going to pot. He has—horrors!—been promoted, his new boss is a dunce, and a self-proclaimed traveler named Sean and his girlfriend have parked their rusty eyesore of a van in the middle of the village. Hamish smells trouble, and he's right, as usual. The doctor's drugs go missing. Money vanishes. Neighbors suddenly become unneighborly. The tension only explodes after the itinerant Sean is found brutally beaten to death in his camper. Suspicion quickly falls on his girlfriend, but with nobody willing to talk, the canny Hamish faces the tough task of worming the facts out of the villagers. As he uncovers a bizarre story around the murdered traveler, Macbeth knows he must find the truth soon—before the killer gets away for good.

    Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth's new promotion means more money, but it also means that an eager beaver of a policeman has been thrust upon him, interfering with Hamish's easygoing way of life. Fans of the lazy Hamish will delight in seeing him pitted against a zealous young officer while solving a disturbing murder.

  • A classic title from M.C. Beaton's New York Times bestselling Hamish Macbeth series about the death of a practical joker.

    Admittedly, there's a touch of black humor in the case. Rich, old practical joker Andrew Trent summons his kin to the remote Arrat House in the dead of winter for a deathbed farewell. They arrive to find him in perfect health and eager to torment them with a new bag of unfunny jokes.

    But this time the body that falls out of the closet is Andrew Trent's own. And nobody's laughing.

    Especially not Constable Hamish Macbeth, who is hard put to glean any information from Trent's unappealing nearest and dearest. And when the lanky constable's former flame Priscilla Halburton-Smythe inserts her beautiful self into the case, Hamish must muster all his native guile to carry him through. Fortunately, he has a few clever tricks up his own sleeve which enable this most endearing of crime fighters to get the best—and last—laugh.

  • A classic title from M. C. Beaton's New York Times bestselling Hamish Macbeth series

    Peta Gore is the bane of her friend's otherwise successful life. Maria Worth has come to hate her old friend—a noisy, vulgar glutton. There is no other way to describe Peta. She doesn't just "have a good appetite"—she sucks and chomps and chews with relish. Not only are her table manners horrifying, but she has a habit of showing up at Maria's carefully planned singles' gatherings and spoiling everything by flirting with all the men. This time Maria is determined to keep her latest event a secret.

    The gathering is to be at Tommel Castle Hotel in the remote Scottish village of Lochdubh—the perfect setting for a particularly difficult group. Nothing can go wrong. Except that somehow Peta finds out about the gathering and shows up, thoroughly disgusting everyone. Guests and staff band together in mutual loathing. But does someone hate her enough to kill her? When she is found dead, an apple stuck unceremoniously in her mouth, Constable Hamish Macbeth is on the scene. With a castle full of odd suspects, the lazy, long-limbed constable has to put his wooing of the hotel proprietress, Priscilla, on hold to solve the case. 

  • Another adventure in M. C. Beaton’s New York Times bestselling Hamish Macbeth series

    About the best that can be said of wealthy Maggie Baird is that, inside her middle-aged body, there still beats the heart of a beautiful tart. So when her car catches fire with Maggie in it, there are five likely suspects right on the premises of her luxurious Highlands cottage.

    Lochdubh police constable Hamish Macbeth has to question Maggie’s timid niece and four former lovers, one of whom Maggie had intended to pick for her husband. All five are equally poor—with ample motive and opportunity to monkey with Maggie’s car.

    Now to find the killer, the astute policeman must apply his extraordinary Highland insight into human nature. But when the evidence appears to point to the wrong person entirely, Hamish must dig down deep to stop the real murderer’s escape.

  • A classic title from M. C. Beaton's New York Times bestselling Hamish Macbeth series

    Believing that someone is trying to murder her, gorgeous Jane Wetherby asks Hamish Macbeth to spend Christmas with her and an exclusive group of friends at her Scottish island health farm. With a cold in his head and no place to go for the holidays, Hamish accepts her invitation. He thinks the lady is a bit daft, but, arriving on the lonely isle of Eileencraig, he feels a prickle of foreboding.

    The locals are openly threatening; the other guests, especially a terrible snob named Heather Todd, are barely civil. So when Heather meets an untimely end, Hamish knows he doesn't have far to look for the culprit. The only snag in his investigation is that all the guests were in the house when Heather vanished.

    Now, as mysterious events abound on Eileencraig, Hamish must work through the holiday sniffles to find the killer—or else it will be a very miserable Christmas indeed.

  • The third book in the much-loved Hamish Macbeth series from the author of the bestselling Agatha Raisin series

    The most hated man in the most dour town in Scotland is sleeping with the fishes, or—more accurately—has been dumped into a tank filled with crustaceans. All that remains of the murdered victim are his bones. But once the lobsters have been shipped off to Britain's best restaurants, the whole affair quickly lands on the plate of Constable Hamish Macbeth.

    Exiled to the dreary outpost of Cnothan, Macbeth sorely misses his beloved Lochdubh, but before he can head back home he has to contend with a detective chief inspector who wants the murder hushed up, a dark-haired lassie who is out to seduce him, and a killer who has made mincemeat of his last victim—and will no doubt strike again.

  • Hamish Macbeth, the laid-back constable of Lochdubh, Scotland, has a new Land Rover to drive and a Highland summer to savor, but as fast as rain rolls in from the loch, his happy life goes to hell in a handbasket.

    The trouble begins when his beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe returns from London—with a fianc├® on her arm. His miseries multiply when clouds of midges, the diabolical Scottish mosquito, descend on the town. Then a paragon of housewifery named Trixie Thomas moves into Lochdubh with her lapdog husband in tow. The newcomer quickly convinces the local ladies to embrace low-cholesterol meals, ban tobacco, and begin bird-watching. Soon the town's fish-and-chips-loving men are up in arms.

    Now faced with the trials of his own soul, Macbeth must solve Lochdubh's newest crime: the mysterious poisoning of the perfect wife.

  • When the Sydney police minister's son falls twenty floors to his death, the politics of murder ripple the city like a boulder into a pool. Caught in the wash is Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, as he uncovers an elaborate financial scheme, a series of cold-blooded precision killings, and layers of political intrigue. Scobie thinks he is immune to politics, but he is soon engulfed in its consequences: the police minister applies pressure, a millionaire banker becomes less than his public image, a hit man goes about his grisly work, and three of Sydney's most powerful (and libidinous) women give Scobie a glimpse of how life in Sydney really operates. Finally, when he is forced to accept aid from his onetime enemy, top criminal Jack Aldwych, now retired but still ruthless, Malone learns once again that when politics and money are arrayed against him, the odds are never even.

  • In 1966 Sir Walter Springfellow, head of Australian intelligence, vanished mysteriously and without a trace. As a young constable, Scobie Malone investigated the disappearance. Years later some bones are found up in the hills which are presumed to be Sir Walter's, and Detective Inspector Malone finds himself back on the case. His first task is to break the news to Venetia Springfellow, Sir Walter's glamorous widow, whose ruthless ambition has made the Springfellow Corporation a hugely successful company. Then comes news that there has been another death in the family, and one of the Springfellows is to be charged with murder. The police commissioner turns out to have every reason for taking a close interest in the case, but emotional involvement results in his putting unfair pressure on Scobie Malone. Always a straight cop and a decent man, Malone finds his divided loyalties extremely troubling.

  • When local solicitor Will Rockne is found in his car by his wife—shot through the head—it seems a baffling and motiveless murder. However, Scobie Malone, newly assigned to the case, has his suspicions. Despite his daughter Claire's shy romance with young Jason Rockne, Scobie and his wife Lisa's encounters with Will and Olive Rockne at school functions have always been a little disconcerting … Will had been determined to convince them that he was more than just a suburban lawyer.

    But when a huge amount of cash is found in a safe in Rockne's office, Scobie discovers that he wasn't just boasting; he would seem to have been caught up in something big—big enough to involve Bernie Bezrow, Sydney's largest bookmaker, the mysterious Shahriver offshore bank, and an elusive, undoubtedly dangerous Russian.

    Somewhere in this labyrinth lies the key to a ruthless murder, and Scobie is determined to pursue it to the end … until his investigation is thwarted by an unexpected source and he is met with a wall of deceit and evasiveness. To break it down will demand all of his skills and experience and will put the lives of young Claire and Jason in terrible danger.

  • In the heat of an Australian summer, Inspector Scobie Malone of the New South Wales police finds the body of a promising informer, Scungy Grime, floating face down in his family's backyard swimming pool. Scobie is investigating Sydney's major drug-dealing operation, and Grime's murder is a clear warning. Malone's family is put under police protection—a nightmare for Scobie, who had always been able to separate his professional obligations from his home life. But Scobie is determined not to be frightened off the job and leads the search for the murderer. 

    Scungy Grime turns out to be only the first victim of an innovative killer who injects his victims with curare. The trail leads in many directions: to Grime's former boss, retired big-time criminal Jack Aldwych; to Aldwych's son, Junior, who is using his father's ill-gotten fortune to build a legitimate business empire; to Junior's unlikely girlfriend, Janis, a tough-nut social worker who counsels drug addicts; and to the original target, Sydney's drug king, Danny Pelong, who is annoyed because an unknown newcomer is muscling in on his patch. 

    The case before Malone is baffling. Worried as he is for his family's safety, distracted by his partner's troublesome love life, with the bite of economic recession casting gloom, this dark summer seems endless—until a vital clue appears, and the case begins to unravel.

  • A young woman named Mardi Jack is killed by a sniper's bullet in a Sydney apartment apparently owned by a wealthy businessman, Boru O'Brien, who has ties to seedy goings-on and to the prime minister's wife. O'Brien, the real target of the assassin, had been a cadet with Detective Inspector Scobie Malone two decades earlier, and after Jim Knoble, another police academy classmate, is also professionally shot, the mantle falls to Malone to investigate the case. Forced into hiding and afraid for the safety of his family, Malone must find a psychopathic murderer before he too is stopped by a killer's bullet.

  • In the town of Collamundra, Australia, the corpse of Japanese farm manager Kenji Sagawa is found in one of his cotton mill's threshing machines. The prosperity that his company had brought to the small town had also engendered racial tension, and Detective Inspector Scobie Malone of the Sydney Police Department is called in to investigate—hardly a vacation. The local corrupt government and law enforcement resent him, and the Aborigine population gets ever more restless. When the only Aboriginal police officer becomes the target of everyone's frustration, Scobie becomes increasingly sympathetic—as well as increasingly involved with the cold murder case of the wife of Collamundra's most famous citizen seventeen years prior. As more and more people flock to this dry town for its annual horse race, the list of suspects becomes longer and longer. Can Malone, the visitor, crack the case?

  • It's a special occasion Down Under and the notoriously frugal Inspector Malone is taking his family to dinner at one of Sydney's finest Chinese restaurants. But their gala turns grisly when a masked assassin enters and guns down three men at a nearby table.

    The ante goes up when Scobie discovers that one victim was an investor in Olympic Tower, a multimillion dollar luxury project in downtown Sydney, originally intended as posh housing for the VIPs during the 2000 Olympic Games. With construction stalled by union strife and an economic slump, the Olympic Tower is still an empty shell—or is it a deadly shell game?

    Scobie must solve a scam that could sour the city's image. It seems everyone is involved from former Chinese government bigwigs to a city councilman on the take and from humble Chinese students with seven figure bank accounts to the mysterious Madame Tzu, a dragon lady if there ever was one.

    As Scobie and his family are drawn into the circle of danger, he finds himself in an arena where sportsmanship is the last thing on anybody's mind.

  • It begins one rainy dawn: Orville Brame, prominent lawyer and president of the American Bar Association, is found shot through the heart, slumped in a monorail, silently circling downtown Sydney. The next day, the body of a security guard is fished out of the harbor. During the ensuing investigation, a talented rookie cop is ruthlessly gunned down. The trail Inspector Scobie Malone uncovers leads to betrayal—betrayal between brothers, when jealousy causes estrangement and murder, and betrayal between countrymen, when cynicism triumphs over patriotism and sparks a multimillion-dollar international intrigue.

  • It is Bicentenary year and Australia is having the party of its lifetime. Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, hero of three previous Cleary books and the most human of cops, would much rather be out on Sydney Harbor with his family, watching the fun. Instead he is on duty, investigating the murder of an aide to President Timori, who has just arrived unwanted in Australia following a coup in the Spice Islands republic of Palucca.

    With Timori is his glamorous wife, Delvina, a lady as famous for her extravagance as for her lust for power. Clearly the bullet was meant for the president, and Malone has the task of tracking down the hit man before he takes a second shot.

    Malone identifies the would-be assassin as Miguel Seville, an international terrorist now turned contract man, a hired killer who wants to retire and needs the money from this job to achieve his aim. Malone also suspects that Seville is in contact with a young Aboriginal rights activist. But who is paying Seville, and why?

    Prime Minister Philip Norval, an ex–TV star who is lost without his advisors, turns out to be an old flame of Delvina’s from the days when she was a dancer in Sydney. Business tycoon Russell Hickbed, though a reluctant host to the Timoris, has his own reasons for wanting President Timori protected. And interfering in the cast at every opportunity is Hans Vaderberg, premier of the state of New South Wales, political enemy of Prime Minister Norval, and master of every political trick ever devised.

    In this gripping new novel, Jon Cleary has set an ominous cat-and-mouse game in a sophisticated city intent on celebrating. But carried on the wind at the edge of the city, fire, the summer scourge of Australia, is scorching the bush and destroying people’s homes. Not all Australians will celebrate this two hundredth birthday and Malone knows it.

  • A nun is found murdered on the steps of the Quality Couch, Sydney's most expensive house of ill repute. She is Sister Mary Magdalene, an idealistic young woman who previously had worked at a mission in Nicaragua. Detective Inspector Scobie Malone, that most human of cops, picks up the trail when he discovers that her real name was Teresa Hourigan—the illegitimate granddaughter of Fingal Hourigan, one of Australia's most powerful businessmen, who is currently entertaining some rich contras at his palatial home. The case leads Malone deep into Hourigan's murky past and threatens to expose the secret the old man has kept since 1929: the reason he hurriedly left Chicago in fear for his life. It also threatens to destroy his ambitions for his son, Archbishop Kerry Hourigan: to become the first-ever Australian pope. But Kerry's fanatical anticommunism has already led him to acts that will fatally endanger his standing in the Vatican.