Set during the production of an out-of-control television comedy in 1989 Toronto, Under the Table is a snappy heist novel that will keep 'em guessing. Much like the sketch show that it portrays, Under the Table entertains with dark humor, quirky characters, and celebrity appearances, while poking fun at the absurdity of societal constructs. Quippy and smart, Smith's prose is electric and crackles across the page. Wickedly funny, you'll laugh even though you know you shoul...

Set in pre-9/11 Toronto, detective noir Scratching the Flint takes place over twelve days during the spring of 2001. Smith's two-tone anti-fraud team of Alex Johnson and Cecil Bolan are back in their first full-length novel to investigate a vintage car theft ring à la MacGyver. When witnesses end up mocked and murdered, proof becomes a relative term to Cecil. Racked with guilt while the system sputters, he covertly assumes the role of not just investigating officer but also that o...

Mitchell Hosowich is pleased as a puppy with two tails that the great American rust-out has rendered parts of Detroit rural again, wild. For him, the “green ghetto,” as the bureaucrats have come to call it, is a safe place to grow some fairly decent Detroit dope. But when two DEA agents start sniffing around his spread, only to wind up dead, Mitchell finds himself with a lot of explaining to do. Left with two stiffs, a dead dog, a shot cow, and 59 missing marijuana plants, Mitchell decides...

An all-out drug war explodes in 1970s Detroit when a young Vietnam veteran decides to rip off heroin kingpin Willis McDaniel. In the chaos, rival outfits, the Mafia, and even junkies themselves try to step in to fill the void while one lone assassin tries to hunt them all down—and one determined cop tries to stop it all.Vern E. Smith formerly served as the Atlanta Bureau chief and as a national correspondent for Newsweek. As a principal reporter with Newsweek's Special Projects Uni...

Journey to the Center of the Earth" is one of Jules Verne's best-known works and one of the most classic tales of adventure ever written.It is the story of the German geology professor Otto Lidenbrock who discovers a manuscript from a 16th century explorer who claims to have discovered a passageway that leads to the center of the earth.The professor hastily sets off with his nephew Axel and an Icelandic guide by the name of Hans to find the center of the earth. Great obstac...

"Round the Moon," written by the legendary Jules Verne, is a riveting continuation of his classic science fiction novel "From the Earth to the Moon." This sequel transports readers on a fantastical journey that explores the outer limits of human imagination and scientific ambition.The story picks up where its predecessor left off, with the three intrepid explorers—President Barbicane, Captain Nicholl, and the audacious French adventurer Michel Ardan—hurtling through space in their s...

Phileas Fogg is English exactitude personified. He eats breakfast at 8:23, shaves at 9:37, and leaves for the Reform club at 11:30. He reads, eats, and doesn't travel. But one day, after getting into an argument over an article in the Daily Telegraph, he is prompted to make the £20.000 wager with his club friends that he can travel all the way around the world in eighty days. And so he leaves, accompanied only by his new French valet Passepartout: it is 8:45 P.M. on Wednesday the 2nd of Oc...

Listen to The Blockade Runners with a movie-style soundtrack and amplify your audiobook experience. Writing at the end of the American Civil War, Verne weaves this story of a Scottish merchant who, in desperation at the interruption of the flow of Southern cotton due to the Union blockade, determines to build his own fast ship and run guns to the Confederates in exchange for the cotton piling up unsold on their wharves. His simple plan becomes complicated by two passengers who board his ne...

William Collins Books and Decca Records are proud to present ARGO Classics, a historic catalogue of classic fiction read by some of the world’s most renowned voices. Originally released as vinyl records, these expertly abridged and remastered stories are now available to download for the first time.A gentleman with a taste for gambling accepts a bet that he cannot make it around the globe in eighty days. Part travelogue, part high stakes thriller, Phileas Fogg and ...

From the Earth to the Moon is a humorous science fiction novel written by the French writer Jules Verne and is one of the earliest entries in that genre. It tells the story of three well-to-do members of a post-American Civil War gun club who build an enormous sky-facing canon and ride a spaceship fired from it to the moon.Jules Verne takes aim at some amusing stereotypes of Americans in this story of a pre-rocketry attempt to shoot a cannonball to the Moon. Those ...

The Mysterious Island is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne.A story of castaways, similar to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. The story begins in the American Civil War, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. As famine and death ravage the city, five northern prisoners of war decide to escape by the unusual means of hijacking a balloon in the midst of a hurricane.After ...

Scientist Pierre Aronnax and his trusty servant set sail to hunt a sea monster. With help from the world’s greatest harpooner, the men discover that the creature is really a high-tech submarine with a mysterious leader, Captain Nemo.