Showing results by author "Steven Thomas" in All Categories

Sparkling with magical realism, this book follows nine seemingly separate stories that dovetail in an unexpected and profound climax. It begins with a mysterious pow-wow to be held inside a colossal tipi, 3.5 miles tall and three miles wide, which suddenly appears on the outskirts of a small town. Advertising fliers blanket the area and all of Indian country, billing itself as "The Pow-Wow of all Pow-Wows." There is a stipulation to the pow-wow though: only full-blooded Native Americans are allowed to dance, drum, or attend the grand event.

About “The Final Case,” Doctor Scofield, Captain Underhill’s personal physician, comments, “A most interesting case study. It is both sad and ironic that the mental affliction Captain Underhill used to pretend to suffer from: that of being senile, was ultimately the very thing that laid him low. And yet, in the annals of crime solving, if this final case does nothing else, it proves the kind of natural-born sleuth my good friend, Waverly, was.”

With the worldwide shift to remote work, more and more people have started taking control of their own lives, careers, and financial freedom by pursuing a previously unimaginable work style: abusing the system, automating their jobs, and for some, holding multiple white-collar jobs at the same time. People are doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling their income thanks to "overemployment"—the term being used to describe the lifestyle of multiple full-time job juggling. Because when you understand how corporate America works, and how it does not work, you can use it to your advantage.

Lottery winners Henry and Pamela McKnown have their luck stolen from them when their four-year-old daughter, Heidi, is kidnapped. Years pass without a word and the McKnowns, coping with their grief, are slowly rebuilding their lives. Then the cycle of terror begins again, as a carnival psychic shows up on Cape Cod, claiming to have made contact with the spirit of the dead child. Though Heidi’s voice comes through in a séance, Underhill is convinced it’s a fake.

A literary flashback combining the creations of Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol) and Erle Stanley Gardner, this courtroom melodrama poses the questions: What if Ebenezer Scrooge was murdered, found strangled in his bed with a bell cord knotted around his neck and a stake of holly driven through his heart? And what if the man charged with the crime was his own employee, Bob Cratchit?

A mystery lampoon recorded live at the Woods Hole Community Hall, July 15, 1989. Hugo LeGrand, “The Great Hugo,” is determined to defy public opinion and be the first to help himself to the loot from the sunken Titanic. Together with his hapless pilot, Mr. Smalley, they discover a surprise much greater than teacups and saucers.

It begins as static ... then, you hear a voice, desperate, frightened, coming from a shack in the Cape Cod dunes, broadcasting his story to anyone who might be listening. He tells an unbelievable tale of missing persons and an unseen enemy that may already have conquered us.

Is he insane? Is he deluded? And most terrifying of all, is he telling the truth?

Edward Wolcott is an innocent tourist abducted from his motel room, taken by boat, and strapped to a large sea buoy in the Woods Hole Passage. His strange night bobbing alone at sea turns into one of sheer terror, when he realizes the current is slowly dragging the buoy under.

An excellent Halloween story, this Pit and the Pendulum-style thriller places the listener on the buoy with Mr. Wolcott to experience the terror first hand.

Robert Rivers is an honorable thief who has made a living conducting well-planned heists on the various businesses that dot the idyllic environs of Southern California. But during a routine robbery of a local steakhouse, Rivers comes across something that shakes him from his comfortable existence.

A comatose witness in the hospital is stalked by a fiendish killer. A compassionate psychiatrist must use the techniques of hypnosis to reach her in time before the killer does. A psychological thriller uniquely suited for radio. Told from the internal perspective of the comatose patient, it guides us through the twilight realm of the subconscious mind, where the real and the surreal coexist.

Menacing mob enforcer, Ricky Rubusto, kidnaps pet and store mascot, Hercules, world’s largest captive lobster, holding it for ransom and threatening to devour it unless radio DJ, Molly Neptune, pays off her father’s gambling debt. Now Captain Underhill must save the lobster before it ‘sleeps with the fishes.’

Dr. Alexander Scofield encounters his friend, retired police captain Waverly Underhill, at a Provincetown art opening. Then they both encounter a murder. The celebrity judge is stabbed in the back upstairs. Downstairs, there are seventy or eighty guests, one of whom must have done it.

Captain Underhill takes charge and quickly devises a simple but ingenious test that will force the killer to reveal himself.

This is a quick-to-read, small book of reports gathered by my late father. He had originally started as an amateur Bigfoot researcher but became increasingly interested in the mystery of the Dogman phenomenon and began looking into both when he could. This book was made from a few reports and some commentary and analysis of what was reported. The reports are what people said they saw. In this book, the reports are relayed as they were reported and accompanied by the comments and notes my father wrote down pertaining to each report he was given. Was it a Bigfoot? Was it a Dogman? Was it ...

A Captain Waverly Underhill mystery.

Captain Underhill and Doctor Scofield recount their very first case.

April, 1961. It is tourist season on Cape Cod … and open season on the President. Having sent its favorite son to the White House, Cape Cod has come under the spell of Camelot. Young police deputy Waverly Underhill meets Doctor Scofield for the very first time, and together they seek to stop an assassination plot that anyone would call crazy.

A meteor explodes in the summertime sky over Cape Cod, and a man is struck dead by a flying fragment. A freak accident, it is supposed, until Captain Underhill and Doctor Scofield, checking into the science and history of meteors, as well as the laws of probability, are led to form a different conclusion. In 1935, James M. Cain wrote the classic insurance fraud mystery, Double Indemnity. Here’s a story that could be titled Triple Indemnity.

The unforgettable villain from “The Caller on Line One” returns. A serial killer records his murders and sends the tapes to the police. A young detective takes charge and enlists the help of a beautiful FBI agent — with a great set of ears — whose specialty is analyzing audio recordings. But will that lead them to the killer before he strikes again?

Lady Kemp is worried. Her granddaughter, Carmeline, is about to marry Victor Fabloose, a French playboy who may be a gold-digger ... or a poisoner.

Captain Waverly Underhill is offered $25,000 to make sure the marriage never takes place. To succeed, he devises a clever scheme involving real buried treasure—a solid-gold statue of a pirate as big as a chocolate Easter bunny.

An epic river story and suspense thriller. If Mark Twain and Aaron Copland had gotten together to create an American river story for radio, it would probably sound something like this. Richard Thomas gives a memorable performance as river pilot Jeb Hardy, hired to deliver 15 barges and 40 million pounds of coal upriver on the Ohio to a power plant above Cincinnati. What begins as an idyllic rafting trip turns into a pilot’s worst nightmare.

A premonition of murder leading to violent death…voodoo, séances, automatic writing and psychic messages from the dead are all elements in a strange case that turns criminal. A worried Doctor Scofield calls in his friend, Captain Waverly Underhill, to unravel the mystery.

Tanya Macklin is the host of Talk Line, the weekly, advice-on-the-air radio program. Tonight, however, the problems of her listeners are about to take a back seat to one of her own ... a problem so large, it will transform her normally sane world into a nightmarish world of terror.

A real-time suspense thriller in the tradition of Sorry, Wrong Number.