Audiobooks by James Musgrave

Orkidedatter (Orchid Daughter) Audiobook

“If Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) wrote fantasies, this is what he would have written. Shocking and alive with truth. Can’t wait for the next episode.” New Fantasy Reviews. Vetted and sold through the American Library Association’s auspices. “Magnificent folklore metaphor for the independent woman of today! Perfect mixture of urban fantasy and ribald art.” “Narratively, the story juxtaposes facets of Jungian psychology with elements of classic gothic horror. The resulting tapestry is a multi-l 'One woman's fantasy tale of breaking free from the control of others to earn her sexual and artistic freedoms.' Lily Orkidedatter is a Paranormal Medium and police psychotherapist. She fights Dr. Paul Balder, V, owner of Titan Energy. Her love is controlled by this wizard. Thus, she must break free of her sensual sex addiction. This may lead to a final confrontation at the end of the world, or Ragnarök. In this first volume of the series, Orkidedatter (Orchid Daughter) Lily joins with Dr. Martin Seagraves from San Diego. Seagraves becomes part of the fight to destroy Valhalla Castle. A lot of comedy and absurd confusion ensues. As a result, the police and Interpol step in. Vladimir Putin’s Chechen soldiers are guarding Balder’s castle. The battle inside Balder’s Valhalla Castle is between the supernatural powers. Therefore, the sexual action is hot an heavy, as Lily makes love to escape Balder’s powerful grip. He is a hunk, but he is also a slave master! Note: Lily Orkidedatter has been a medium and educated psychotherapist in her job in Oslo, Norway, for over twenty years. She’s also working for the police to question victims, witnesses, and accused psychopaths, pedophiles, rapists, and killers. The poetry included in these novels are from the haunting, true-life events she’s lived. She decided to lend her identity to award-winning author, James Musgrave. He’s crafting this series. Both Orkidedatter and Musgrave are childhood survivors of rape and sexual/mental abuse.

James Musgrave (Author), Nikki Delgado (Narrator)

Audiobook

Orkidedatter

“If Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) wrote fantasies, this is what he would have written. Shocking and alive with truth. Can’t wait for the next episode.” New Fantasy Reviews. Vetted and sold through the American Library Association’s auspices. “Magnificent folklore metaphor for the independent woman of today! Perfect mixture of urban fantasy and ribald art.” “Narratively, the story juxtaposes facets of Jungian psychology with elements of classic gothic horror. The resulting tapestry is a multi-layering of cognitive perspectives over an archetypal view of lust, love, and loss.” Louise Blackwick, internationally bestselling author of the Vivian Amberville Fantasy Series. Lily Orkidedatter is a Paranormal Medium and police psychotherapist. She fights Dr. Paul Balder, V, owner of Titan Energy. Her love is controlled by this wizard. Thus, she must break free of her sensual sex addiction. This may lead to a final confrontation at the end of the world, or Ragnarök. In this first volume of the series, Orkidedatter (Orchid Daughter) Lily joins with Dr. Martin Seagraves from San Diego. Seagraves becomes part of the fight to destroy Valhalla Castle. A lot of comedy and absurd confusion ensues. As a result, the police and Interpol step in. Vladimir Putin’s Chechen soldiers are guarding Balder’s castle. The battle inside Balder's Valhalla Castle is between the supernatural powers. Therefore, the sexual action is hot an heavy, as Lily makes love to escape Balder's powerful grip. He is a hunk, but he is also a slave master!

James Musgrave, Lily Orkidedatter (Author), Nikki Delgado (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chinawoman's Chance

The First Woman Attorney in California Fights the Patriarchy of the Nineteenth Century Clara Shortridge Foltz faces a patriarchal nemesis in 1884 San Francisco. When a white prostitute is murdered and flayed down to a skeleton, Clara is hired by the Six Companies of Chinatown to defend the sixteen males who are swept-up by the Chinatown Squad. This ragtag and corrupt group of sheriffs works for the mayor, Washington Bartlett. The mayor uses the nation's anti-Chinese sentiment in his quest to win the race for Governor of California. Foltz, the first woman admitted to the California Bar, must learn fast to become a detective in order to prove that her client, journalist George Kwong, is not the killer but was set-up by the mayor to take the fall. Along with Ah Toy, her trusted translator and best friend, she is instructed by the head of detectives, Captain Isaiah Lees. Lees becomes enamored with Clara, who is having personal problems with sexual commitment, due to her first marriage with Jeremiah Foltz. He was a Union vet who deserted Clara and their five children for a younger woman. Captain Lees has personal problems of his own, as he has devoted all his time fighting the corrupt politicians and the Chinatown Squad for twenty years, and has not even made time for female relations. Theirs is a very special kind of romance.

James Musgrave (Author), Anne James (Narrator)

Audiobook

Valley of the Dogs: Dark Stories

Dark Stories for Readers with Surreal, Realistic, and Deep Tastes Narrator: Award-winning actress and audiobook voice from the United Kingdom, Nikki Delgado. Silver Medal Winner of the 2021 Reader's Favorite International Contest for Best Adult Anthology A B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree, 2021 9.25 overall Evaluation at BookLife, Publishers Weekly Hollywood and Broadway are icons of the American Dream. But what happens to those who feed off that dream? Just as drug cartels have many underlings, who must get paid along the journey to the addicts, so do the characters who need to be nourished by the luminaries who make up this star-studded world above us. James Musgrave’s collection of eleven stories, in many ways, addresses the theme of “star power,” but in a way that satirizes the stereotypical “Hollywood endings” in very unique and literary ways. This collection has a remedy for the past year’s traumas caused by a worldwide pandemic. Award-winning short fiction author, Jacob M. Appel says, 'With the publication of Valley of the Dogs, Jim Musgrave joins the ranks of George Saunders, Steven Millhauser, and Kevin Brockmeier at the heart of the modern American short story's second great renaissance.'

James Musgrave (Author), Nikki Delgado (Narrator)

Audiobook

Valley of the Dogs, Dark Stories

Dark Stories for Readers with Surreal, Realistic, and Deep TastesSilver Medal Winner of the 2021 Reader's Favorite International Contest for Best Adult Anthology An Indie B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree, 2021 9.25 overall Evaluation at BookLife, Publishers Weekly Hollywood and Broadway are icons of the American Dream. But what happens to those who feed off that dream? Just as drug cartels have many underlings, who must get paid along the journey to the addicts, so do the characters who need to be nourished by the luminaries who make up this star-studded world above us. James Musgrave's collection of eleven stories, in many ways, addresses the theme of 'star power,' but in a way that satirizes the stereotypical 'Hollywood endings' in very unique and literary ways. This collection has a remedy for the past year's traumas caused by a worldwide pandemic. Award-winning short fiction author, Jacob M. Appel says, 'With the publication of Valley of the Dogs, Jim Musgrave joins the ranks of George Saunders, Steven Millhauser, and Kevin Brockmeier at the heart of the modern American short story's second great renaissance.' 'If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.' ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

James Musgrave (Author), Nikki Delgado (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Dancing Murders

Boomtown San Diego, in 1888, erupts in murder. Retired Marshal and hero of the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp is involved. What's really going on? Award-winning, best-selling mystery author, James Musgrave, takes issues from the present and turns them into ingenious puzzles for readers to solve. In the Nineteenth Century the same human foibles existed, but the problems happened at a much slower pace. In The Dancing Murders, Musgrave turns four suspects over to the reader to choose a murderer. Wyatt Earp, the hero of the O. K. Corral shoot-out in Tombstone, Arizona, is charged with the First Degree Murder. Series attorney and detective, Clara Shortridge Foltz, takes the case to defend him, as she’s moved to the San Diego boomtown, and she needs the money. The mystery soon escalates into a deep and increasingly frightening exploration into sex-trafficking, terrorism, mystical Kabbalah, Tantric sex, sado-masochism, and the rivalry of three Stingaree bordello madams, who each has a secret. With an extremely unique frame, Musgrave allows the reader to first explore the suspects and the issues through five chapters of prologue. Then, in a very Kurosawa-type twist, as in Rashomon, the reader/viewer gets to explore the psyches of the four main suspects, in chronological progression. However, deep within these characters, in their first-person narratives, lies the underlying truth of this entire mystery and how it will explode into the plot for the seventh mystery in this popular series.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave, Joan Dukore (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Dancing Murders

The Dancing Murders is the latest iteration in a series of mysteries and murders that revolve around the amazing and redoubtable Clara Shortridge Foltz. As one of the very first women attorneys and private detectives seeking to perform in a man's arena, Clara always has her back to the wall but her deductive skills and her uncanny intuition have seen some label her as the real-life incarnation of the fictional Sherlock Holmes. Author James Musgrave uses a literary contrivance of telling essentially the same story from four different perspectives,that of the principal suspects. This is a technique fraught with danger that risks the reader becoming overwhelmed with the repetitive nature of the facts; however, Musgrave handles it extraordinarily well, with strong characters whose interesting, and at times, unusual perspectives of the same event prevent the reader from wearying of its retelling. The plot is as twisty and convoluted as any I have read lately and sucks the reader into the narrative so completely that they will constantly find themselves questioning the motives and actions of the various characters. You genuinely will want to read this story from cover to cover because it just won't let you go. 'The Dancing Murders is a trove of secrets, but author James Musgrave's own secret is his gift for capturing the psyches of larger than life historical figures including gunslinger Wyatt Earp and his Jewish common-law wife, notorious madam Ida Bailey, and pioneering female attorney Clara Shortridge Foltz. From the heights of Jewish mysticism to the seedy underbelly of nineteenth century San Diego, The Dancing Murders is California's answer to Rashomon and As I Lay Dying. In Musgrave's nimble hands, the death of Rabbi Sonenschein becomes a window into the life of a West Coast as fascinating as it is forgotten.'--Jacob M. Appel, author of Einstein's Beach House.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave, Joan Dukore (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Spiritualist Murders: Portia of the Pacific Historical Myteries, Volume 2

Kirkus Review: Women in 1886 San Francisco investigate murders of husbands by their hypnotized wives. In Musgrave's (Chinawoman's Chance, 2018, etc.) first installment of his series, he tells the story of a fictional 1884 murder case involving several historical San Franciscans, including Clara Shortridge Foltz, California's first female lawyer, and Ah Toy, a famous and wealthy Chinatown madam. In this volume, set two years later, Clara, 37, has been living with her brood of children at a Nob Hill mansion with her best friend, Ah Toy, 58, now an affluent art dealer. At a Rosicrucian gathering, Clara meets Adeline Quantrill, a distressed young woman who can hear thoughts from the living and the dead. She's a disciple of Rosicrucian Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph, another historical figure, who wrote a banned book on sexual magic. A servant in a prosperous household, Adeline was called as a witness in the trial of Rachel Wilson-Rafferty for killing her abusive husband; the defense hoped her testimony would establish that the wife's doctor mesmerized her into doing it. The Nob Hill crew investigates further: questioning witnesses (sometimes through Adeline's clairvoyance), drawing on Ah Toy's uncle Little Pete (a Chinatown criminal), and learning more about Randolph. Additional cases arise of rich, abusive husbands seemingly murdered by their wives, and clues increasingly point toward wealthy widow Sarah Winchester's mysterious mansion and a flamboyant spiritualist residing there. Can his nefarious plot be stopped? In this second outing, Musgrave nicely orchestrates historical elements from this heady era, such as the Winchester house and Randolph's ideas; they're as strange and compelling as fictive paranormal abilities. The link between the occult and the suffrage movement is a captivating example of how politics makes strange bedfellows, since two of the few venues where women's voices could be heard were churches and spiritualist meetings.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Spiritualist Murders

CLARA AND HER FAMILY MUST STOP A MESMERIZING MURDERERWomen in 1886 San Francisco are killing their husbands. Attorney detective Clara Foltz uses an eighteen-year-old clairvoyant to track down the mysterious man using the powers of sexual magnetism and mesmerism to turn abused women into murderers. This becomes a family mystery, as Clara's two oldest children get involved. Clara's assistant, Ah Toy, must also enlist the help of her evil uncle, Little Pete, because he also uses his paranormal abilities to control his harem of prostitutes in Chinatown. Ah Toy learns how he does it and leads Clara and her family inside the dark, seamy side of how women are controlled for nefarious purposes. But the true confrontation comes when Clara joins together with her attorney friend, Laura de Force Gordon, to question witnesses who testified at the trial of Mrs. Rachel Wilson-Rafferty. They also pay a visit to the wife of the man who began the first Rosicrucian group in America, Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph. They learn he taught sexual magnetism and the use of hashish and marijuana to help transfix his members in spiritual trances before they had sex with their partners. As the wealthy and abusive husbands are murdered by their wives all over the United States, Clara and her team begin to close in on a variety of suspects. The supernatural climax leads to a final confrontation and the solution to the mystery, inside the Winchester house in San Jose, but not without several twists in the action, which place Clara's daughter and son in immediate danger. This second, much-awaited mystery in the Portia of the Pacific series shows how women used Spiritualism in order to further their rights as women and wives. In this case, however, women once again become victims of a sexist predator who will risk everything to achieve his misogynistic goals.

James Musgrave (Author), James Musgrave (Narrator)

Audiobook