Are You Afraid of the Dark? » (Abridged, 5 CDs, 6 hours)

Sidney Sheldon's remarkable career as a novelist began when he was 50 years old, after he had already been a success in film and television. Perhaps it was his sensibility for screen entertainment that made him so readily able to produce his addictive novels of love and suspense.

All around the globe, people are being reported dead or missing.

In Berlin, a woman vanishes from the city streets. In Paris, a man plunges from the Eiffel Tower. In Denver, a small plane crashes into the mountains. In Manhattan, a body washes ashore from the East River. At first these seem to be random incidents, but the police soon discover that all four of the victims are connected to Kingsley International Group (KIG), the largest think tank in the world.

Kelly Harris and Diane Stevens - young widows of two of the victims - encounter each other in New York, where Tanner Kingsley, the head of KIG, assures them that he is using every resource to solve the mysterious deaths of their husbands. But he may be too late. Someone is intent on murdering both women, and they suffer a harrowing series of close escapes. Who is trying to kill them and why?

Forced together for protection, and suspicious of each other and everyone around them, the two widows embark on a...

Publishers Weekly

Two gorgeous widows go up against a nefarious multinational think tank in this airbrushed but goofily entertaining thriller by perennial bestseller Sheldon (The Sky Is Falling; Tell Me Your Dreams; etc.). Four scientists working for the New York-based Kingsley International Group have died or disappeared within 24 hours. Wolfish top boss Tanner Kingsley vows to find the perpetrator; meanwhile, stunning artist Diane Stevens, wife of a just-murdered KIG scientist, and supermodel Kelly Harris, whose husband has likewise been killed, find themselves under attack by mysterious strangers. Diane and Kelly form an uneasy alliance, though both spend most of their time ruminating on their wonderful (now dead) husbands: "I want to feel you stroking my breast.... I want to imagine that I can hear your voice saying that I make the best paella in the world...." The plot is straightforward: people are killed, women are in peril and an evil CEO (Tanner, gasp!) has a plot to take over the world. His technique involves controlling the weather, and in an intriguing short afterword, Sheldon explains the very real possibilities of just such a scenario. The on-the-lam ladies, Kelly and Diane, escape every assassination attempt with ridiculous ease, and other characters appear and disappear simply in order to get the author out of one plot pickle after another. Still, despite (or because of) Sheldon's blithe unconcern for logic and his just-add-water relationships, this is a breezily pleasing read. Agent, Mort Janklow. (Sept.) Forecast: A heavy publisher blitz and a huge fan base guarantee that this will hit bestseller lists. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.