Narrator

L. J. Ganser

L. J. Ganser
  • Mystery fans will devour this entry into the classic, wisecracking Nero Wolfe series, in which Wolfe must track down a dangerous gunman—or risk losing his right-hand man.

    Archie Goodwin is chipper as he strolls home from his weekly poker game, money in his pocket and a smile on his lips. He has just reached Nero Wolfe’s stately brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street when a sedan whips around the corner and two gunshots ring out, nearly hitting Goodwin. It is a warning, and the message is clear: the next bullet will not miss.

    Rotund investigator Nero Wolfe has made more than his fair share of enemies over the years, and it seems one of them has decided to strike, targeting Wolfe’s indefatigable assistant. Some might run for cover, but Archie Goodwin is not the type. With the help of Wolfe’s brainpower, Goodwin will find the man who wants him dead—unless the killer gets to Goodwin first.

    Nero Award–winning author Robert Goldsborough continues the brilliant work of Rex Stout in this classic mystery series. According to Publishers Weekly, “Goldsborough cleverly captures the tone and language of the originals. Rex Stout fans can only hope he has no plans to wind up the series soon.”

  • Nero Wolfe earns a big league call-up after a senator gets taken out at the ball game.

    Archie Goodwin and detective Saul Panzer have ventured into the wilds of northern Manhattan to watch the Giants take on the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. The national anthem is just winding down when Panzer spies a notable in the box seats: state senator Orson Milbank, a silver-haired scoundrel with enemies in every corner of upstate New York. In the fourth inning, a monstrous line drive brings every fan in the grandstand to his feet—every fan save for one silver-haired senator, who has been shot dead by a sniper in the upper deck.

    Archie’s employer—the rotund genius Nero Wolfe—has no interest in investigating the stadium slaying, but Archie is swayed by the senator’s suspiciously lovely widow. Her husband was mired hip-deep in corruption, and sorting out who killed him will be a task far less pleasant than an afternoon at the ball park.

  • In 1930, young Archie Goodwin comes to New York City hoping for a bit of excitement. In his third week working as a night watchman, he stops two burglars in their tracks—with a pair of hot lead slugs.

    Dismissed from his job for being “trigger-happy,” he parlays his newfound notoriety into a job as a detective’s assistant, helping honest sleuth Del Bascom solve cases like the Morningside Piano Heist, the Rive Gauche Art Gallery Swindle, and the Sumner-Hayes Burglary. But it’s the kidnapping of Tommie Williamson, the son of a New York hotel magnate, that introduces Goodwin to the man who will change his life.

    Goodwin knows there’s only one detective who can help find Tommie: Nero Wolfe, the stout genius of West Thirty-Fifth Street. Together, they’ll form one of the most unlikely crime fighting duos in history—but first Goodwin must locate Tommie and prove that he deserves a place by Wolfe’s side.

    In this witty story about the origin of a legendary partnership, Robert Goldsborough gloriously evokes the spirit of Nero Wolfe’s creator, bestselling author Rex Stout, and breathes new life into his beloved characters.

  • When a loudmouthed, arrogant author is silenced, the reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe looks for the killer.

    The gun was fired close to Charles Childress’s head, and his were the only fingerprints on it, forcing the police to conclude that the author committed suicide. But his friends know this is impossible, because Childress loved himself far too much. He had just begun attracting fame, writing new mysteries starring the iconic Sergeant Barnstable, and he had bright hopes for the future. His publisher hires corpulent genius Nero Wolfe to determine who cut Childress’s career short, and the detective finds no dearth of suspects.

    Among the many who may have wanted the wordsmith whacked are his agent, his editor, a corrupt book reviewer, and an enraged legion of Barnstable devotees. With the help of his indefatigable assistant, Archie Goodwin, Wolfe takes a look at those closest to the arrogant, argumentative author, hoping to decide which of Childress’s associates merely hated him and which would have been willing to kill.

  • Threats against a televangelist lead Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin into a murder case in this “brisk and beguiling page-turner” (Publishers Weekly).

    Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television, giving the good Reverend international fame, and a chance to spread the gospel from New York City’s harbor all the way to South Korea. But threatening notes have been appearing in the collection bag, suggesting that one of the faithful has decided it’s time this good shepherd get the hook.

    Believing organized religion is nothing more than a scam, rotund sleuth Nero Wolfe refuses to investigate the threats, instead recommending veteran investigator Fred Durkin for the case. But when Durkin is accused of murdering the Reverend’s assistant, Wolfe fights to clear his name. He may not be a Christian, but he will always help a brother in need.

  • A soda war explodes into murder for Nero Wolfe, “one of the two or three most beloved detectives in fiction” (Publishers Weekly).

    For the men of Madison Avenue, the battle between soft-drink giants Cherr-o-key and AmeriCherry seems heaven sent. For years now, the firm of Mills/Lake/Ryman has fought to help Cherr-o-key become the nation’s favorite fizzy cherry soda, but each time they come up with a new slogan, mascot, or jingle, AmeriCherry somehow beats them to it. There’s a mole inside the agency, and only Nero Wolfe can ferret him out. Although he’s as round as a cherry himself, Wolfe has no taste for soft drinks. But the question of industrial espionage is too sweet for him to resist, and so with assistant Archie Goodwin at his side, he sets out to end this vicious corporate feud. Only when the first adman dies does he realize that a marketing war can be just as dangerous as the real thing.

  • After the heir to a frozen-food fortune gets iced, Nero Wolfe’s right-hand man becomes a suspect: “Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy” (Booklist).

    When Lily Rowan doesn’t laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something’s wrong. Her niece Noreen has been running around with Sparky Linville, a club-hopping bad boy who’s the terror of Manhattan nightlife, and the last time she went out with him, Noreen wasn’t herself when she came home. All she would tell her aunt was that she had been assaulted. Springing into action, Goodwin waits for Linville outside of Morgana’s, a chrome-and-glass palace that sits like a wart on Second Avenue. They nearly come to blows, but Linville’s bodyguard intervenes, and Goodwin retreats to plan his next move. In the morning, Linville is dead, and Goodwin is the chief suspect. For years he has helped rotund genius Nero Wolfe out of jams, and now it’s time for the master detective to return the favor.

  • A professor’s death lures the reclusive detective and his sidekick to a bucolic crime scene: “Goldsborough does a masterly job with the Wolfe legacy” (Booklist).

    An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual tyrant—until the morning he’s found dead at the bottom of one of Prescott’s famously beautiful ravines. Every liberal on campus hated the crotchety old crank, but which one is responsible for giving Markham his final push to the right? The case so intrigues the incomparable, reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe that he takes the unusual step of leaving the confines of his home. With man of action Archie Goodwin at his side, Wolfe examines jealous professors, a fanatical assistant, and a university president with an ego that—like the school itself—will not stop growing. Though they’re far from the city, Wolfe and Goodwin will find that no back alley is as dangerous as the shadowy corridors of the Ivy League.

  • To save his favorite newspaper, Nero Wolfe steps into the crossfire of a tabloid war.

    Master sleuth Nero Wolfe’s small circle of friends is limited to his assistant, Archie Goodwin; his chef, Fritz; and Lon Cohen, the head man at the New York Gazette. Cohen knows more about the city’s power structure than any man in Manhattan, and for years, he happily passed Wolfe information in return for the odd exclusive scoop. But now Cohen needs Wolfe’s help, for the Gazette is ailing and the vultures have begun to circle. Scottish newspaper magnate Ian MacLaren plans to gut the paper and turn it into a sex-filled conservative rag. Standing in his way is the company’s chief shareholder, Gazette heir Harriet Haverhill. But when the aged Ms. Haverhill dies in an apparent suicide, no one remains to resist the Scot’s advances except Wolfe. MacLaren may be fierce, but when the cause is just, Nero Wolfe knows how to play dirty too.

  • Iconic sleuth Nero Wolfe returns to track down the murderer of a New York Symphony Orchestra conductor in this Nero Award–winning mystery.

    Ever since disgraced associate Orrie Cather’s suicide, armchair detective Nero Wolfe has relished retirement in his Manhattan brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street. Two years after Cather’s death, only a visit from Maria Radovich—and the urging of Wolfe’s prize assistant, Archie Goodwin—could draw the eccentric and reclusive genius back into business. Maria’s uncle, New York Symphony Orchestra conductor Milan Stevens, formerly known as Milos Stefanovic, spent his youth alongside Wolfe as a fellow freedom fighter in the mountains of Montenegro. And now that the maestro has been receiving death threats, Wolfe can’t turn his back on the compatriot who once saved his life.

    Though her uncle has dismissed the menacing letters, Maria fears they’re more than the work of a harmless crank. But before Wolfe can attack the case, Stevens is murdered. The accused is the orchestra’s lead violinist, whose intimate relationship with Maria hit more than a few sour notes in her uncle’s professional circle. But Wolfe knows that when it comes to murder, nothing is so simple—especially when there are so many suspects, from newspaper critics and ex-lovers to an assortment of shady musicians.

    Now, in this award-winning novel that carries on the great tradition of Rex Stout, the irascible and immovable Nero Wolfe is back in the game, listening for clues and ready to go to war to find a killer.

  • Archie Goodwin leaves Manhattan for the Midwest to find out who put a bullet into a banker.

    Archie Goodwin’s aunt Edna is about to lure him away from his work at Nero Wolfe’s New York brownstone. After a phone call, he heads off to Ohio, where the president of Farmer’s State Bank and Trust, an elderly widower, has died in an apparent suicide. But Archie’s aunt has expressed nagging suspicions—which only grow stronger when someone takes a shot at a local reporter who wrote about the case.

    It wouldn’t be a small town without some gossip, and Archie soon hears the whispers: romantic intrigues, a possible paternity case, a ruined business. While reconnecting with his aging mother—and fending off his nagging aunt—Archie tries to untangle a web of grudges, scandals, and murder.

    From Nero Award winner Robert Goldsborough, this is a brand-new novel in the series created by Rex Stout, starring one of the world’s most beloved detectives and his equally engaging sidekick.

  • The world named Mount Lookitthat was never meant for humans—it was shrouded in lethal mists. Life existed only on one plateau, unreachable except from space. But the disastrous decision to colonize the planet could not be reversed. So the settlers survived somehow—under a ruthless dictatorship. Mount Lookitthat was rebellion proof. Then fate dealt the colonists a wild card named Matthew Keller, who had a talent that neither he nor anybody else knew about. At last the colonists had a glimmer of hope!

  • It’s curtains for a famous Broadway director, and private investigator Nero Wolfe is on the case—but his assistant, Archie Goodwin, is a suspect.

    When a renowned theater director senses something amiss during his latest production, he calls in Nero Wolfe. Though the corpulent genius wouldn’t normally accept a job this vague, a mutual friend dangles the prospect of a very rare orchid in exchange for his services, and Wolfe can’t resist.

    With a mind to suss out useful backstage gossip, Wolfe turns to his faithful assistant, Archie Goodwin, to impersonate a journalist in order to speak to the cast. Though Goodwin’s conversations prove unfruitful, on his last day at the theater, the director is murdered in his sound-proof booth, poisoned by an unseen culprit during an evening performance. In short order, an actor whose health is failing attempts suicide with the same poison.

    Now Archie Goodwin is a prime suspect in the director’s demise, effectively sidelining him for the rest of the case, and freelance gumshoe Saul Panzer must step in to help wrangle the various members of the play—from the ingénue and the diva to the handsome movie star and the surly stage manager—so that New York’s smartest, and most reclusive, private detective can determine who is responsible for these dramatic deaths and clear Goodwin’s name once and for all.

    Continuing his beloved series, Nero Award–winning author Robert Goldsborough “brings Nero Wolfe, late of Rex Stout, gloriously back to life” (Chicago magazine).

    Murder, Stage Left is the fifty-ninth book in the Nero Wolfe Mysteries, but all stories can be enjoyed on their own.

  • A shake-up in the New York Polic Department’s homicide squad following a high-profile murder is bad for business for private investigator Nero Wolfe.

    When wealthy and popular crusader and reformer Lester Pierce is gunned down in front of his Park Avenue residence, the public outcry forces the NYPD to restructure its homicide department. As the deceased was highly critical of Inspector Lionel Cramer, the longtime head of homicide is temporarily relieved of his badge. But it seems Cramer was not just a scapegoat. He was seen dining in Little Italy with mob kingpin Ralph Mars.

    All of this amounts to little more than conversational fodder for private eye Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin. But if Cramer’s provisional replacement, Captain George Rowcliff, becomes permanent, Wolfe’s future dealings with the force will be much compromised. Loath to depart from his routine, Wolfe makes the unusual decision to take on a case without an actual client.

    His investigation quickly points toward Pierce’s organization, Good Government Group, where high-minded idealism is often trampled under the competing ambitions of the staff—several of whom would clearly have benefited from Pierce’s demise. Despite the burgeoning list of suspects, Wolfe hasn’t ruled out the involvement of the underworld and its connection to Cramer. But in order to untangle an abundance of motives and end the inspector’s forced furlough, Wolfe may have to venture out of his comfort zone—and the premises of his brownstone.

    Continuing his beloved series, Nero Award–winning author Robert Goldsborough “demonstrates an impressive ability to emulate Rex Stout’s narrative voice” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

    The Battered Badge is the sixtieth book in the Nero Wolfe mystery series, but all titles can be enjoyed in any order.

  • Knit me into a cocoon. Help me eat a burrito. Pretend to be a chair at my dinner party. Wrestle a Komodo dragon. Race me in a lobster suit. Author Kelly Mahon posts absurd gig ads online, and shares the conversations she had with the brave souls who wanted the job.

    We’re living in a gig economy. But would you respond to an online ad seeking someone to search for escaped ants? Or take an offer for a free tattoo by someone who “needs the practice?” How about a mattress for sale “tainted by geriatric love” or a workout plan that involves throwing Virginia hams? And if you hit reply, and the poster is sketchy about the details or offers to pay you with a gift card for clams, how long would you keep the conversation going?

    When New York City copywriter Kelly Mahon started posting weird, fake gig ads as a creative outlet, she found that there was someone interested in every bizarre offer she came up with. And the subsequent awkward email threads were equally hilarious and bizarre. Race Me in a Lobster Suit collects Mahon’s funniest fabrications, plus the hysterical email conversations that followed as she ratcheted up the crazy. While some respondents become suspicious, others seem willing to play along with the joke. And don’t worry, everyone involved agreed to share their emails in the book, so there are no hard feelings.

    In a world where it seems like everyone’s suspicious of everyone else, it’s nice to know that there are still people who will at least consider helping a stranger reenact a recurring spider nightmare or explain the principles of pig Latin to a baffled mother of three.

  • Eleven essential classics in one volume

    This last volume in the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964 contains eleven great classics. No anthology better captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

    Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

    This volume contains the following:

    Introduction by Ben Bova

    The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov

    Earthman, Come Home by James Blish

    Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

    The Spectre General by Theodore Cogswell

    The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster

    The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl

    The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

    E for Effort by T. L. Sherred

    In Hiding by Wilmar H. Shiras

    The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak

    The Moon Moth by Jack Vance

  • Eleven essential classics in one volume

    This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964, containing eleven great classics. No anthology better captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

    Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

    This volume contains the following:

    Introduction by Ben Bova

    Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

    Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. (as Don A. Stuart)

    Nerves by Lester del Rey

    Universe by Robert A. Heinlein

    The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth

    Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O’Donnell)

    … And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell

    The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainer Smith

    Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

    The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

    With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson

  • The definitive collection of the best in science fiction stories between 1929 and 1964

    This book contains twenty-six of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. They represent the considered verdict of the Science Fiction Writers of America, those who have shaped the genre and who know, more intimately than anyone else, what the criteria for excellence in the field should be. The authors chosen for the Science Fiction Hall Fame are the men and women who have shaped the body and heart of modern science fiction; their brilliantly imaginative creations continue to inspire and astound new generations of writers and fans.

    Robert Heinlein in “The Roads Must Roll” describes an industrial civilization of the future caught up in the deadly flaws of its own complexity. “Country of the Kind,” by Damon Knight, is a frightening portrayal of biological mutation. “Nightfall,” by Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest stories in the science fiction field, is the story of a planet where the sun sets only once every millennium and is a chilling study in mass psychology.

    Originally published in 1970 to honor those writers and their stories that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Vol. 1, was the book that introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction. Too long unavailable, this new edition will treasured by all science fiction fans everywhere.

    The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1, includes the following:

    Introduction by Robert Silverberg

    “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum
    “Twilight” by John W. Campbell
    “Helen O’Loy” by Lester del Rey
    “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert A. Heinlein
    “Microcosmic God” by Theodore Sturgeon
    “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov
    “The Weapon Shop” by A. E. van Vogt
    “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Lewis Padgett
    “Huddling Place” by Clifford D. Simak
    “Arena” by Fredric Brown
    “First Contact” by Murray Leinster
    “That Only a Mother” by Judith Merril
    “Scanners Live in Vain” by Cordwainer Smith
    “Mars Is Heaven!” by Ray Bradbury
    “The Little Black Bag” by C. M. Kornbluth
    “Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson
    “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber
    “The Quest for Saint Aquin” by Anthony Boucher
    “Surface Tension” by James Blish
    “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke
    “It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby
    “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin
    “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester
    “The Country of the Kind” Damon Knight
    “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
    “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny

  • Sometimes the people you know best are the ones you should fear the most.

    Any of the Warners could have been behind the accident. Every one of them had a problem that threatened to tarnish more than their old-money silver.

    Having spent the past three decades’ worth of summers on Nantucket, the Warners are as much a part of the island as the crust of salt on the ferry. But this year is different: Tripp is no longer the father he was, and it becomes clear that nothing—not the beams that hold the house together, and not the values the family clings to—can survive the ravages of time. When tradition turns to tragedy, the creaky old house swirls with suspicion. There are just so many reasons to want someone gone.

    With no easy answers as to how, why, or who, the Warners must face another frightening question: Do they really want to know the truth?

  • From filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Susanna Fogel comes a comedic novel about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents. Told entirely in letters to a heroine we never meet, we get to know the Fellers through their check-ins with Julie over the course of three decades: their thank-you notes, letters of condolence, family gossip, and good old-fashioned familial passive-aggression.

    Together, their missives—some sardonic, others absurd, others heartbreaking—weave a tapestry of a very modern family trying (and often failing) to show one another they care.

    The titular “nuclear family” includes, among many others, a narcissistic former-child-prodigy father who has taken up haiku writing in his old age and his new wife, a traditional Chinese woman whose attempts to help her stepdaughter find a man include FedExing her silk gowns from Filene’s Basement; their six-year-old son, Stuart, whose favorite condiment is truffle oil and who wears suits to bed; and Julie’s mother, a psychologist who never remarried but may be in love with her arrogant Rabbi and overshares about everything, including the threesome she had with Dutch grad students in 1972.

  • The Los Angeles Times affectionately referred to Freddy Powers as the “Ol’ Blue Eyes of Country Music,” and wrote that if you were to “ask country superstars Willie Nelson, George Jones, or Merle Haggard (they’ll) … tell you that he’s one of country music’s best-kept secrets.”

    The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame inductee has been to the top of the charts as both a producer for Willie Nelson’s Grammy-winning LP Over the Rainbow, and as a songwriter for many of country music legend Merle Haggard’s number one hits.

    Now, for the first time, Freddy recounts the entertaining and emotional stories behind his decades-long roller coaster ride through the music business; his voyage to the top of the charts, and his inspiring battle against Parkinson’s disease. Helping Freddy tell his story are exclusive interviews from fellow country music legends Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, John Rich, Tanya Tucker, The Voice finalist and Powers’ protégé Mary Sarah, along with a host of other Nashville luminaries.