Audiobooks by Les Standiford

Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling, and the Death-Defying Saga of the

"Les Standiford takes us under the big top and behind the curtain in this richly researched and thoroughly engaging narrative that captures all of the entrepreneurial intrigue and spirit of the American circus." -Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove Millions have sat under the "big top," watching as trapeze artists glide and clowns entertain, but few know the captivating stories behind the men whose creativity, ingenuity, and determination created one of our country's most beloved pastimes. In Battle for the Big Top, New York Times-bestselling author Les Standiford brings to life a remarkable era when three circus kings-James Bailey, P. T. Barnum, and John Ringling-all vied for control of the vastly profitable and influential American Circus. Ultimately, the rivalry of these three men resulted in the creation of an institution that would surpass all intentions and, for 147 years, hold a nation spellbound. Filled with details of their ever-evolving showmanship, business acumen, and personal magnetism, this Ragtime-like narrative will delight and enchant circus-lovers and anyone fascinated by the American experience.

Les Standiford (Author), B.J. Harrison (Narrator)

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Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles

The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever created, William Mulholland's Los Angeles aqueduct, a story of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man who's vision shaped the future and continues to impact us today. In 1907, Irish immigrant William Mulholland conceived and built one of the greatest civil engineering feats in history: the aqueduct that carried water 223 miles from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Los Angeles, allowing this small, resource-challenged desert city to grow into a modern global metropolis. Drawing on new research, Les Standiford vividly captures the larger-then-life engineer and the breathtaking scope of his six-year, $23 million project that would transform a region, a state, and a nation at the dawn of its greatest century. With energy and colorful detail, Water to the Angels brings to life the personalities, politics, and power, including bribery, deception, force, and bicoastal financial warfare, behind this dramatic event. At a time when the importance of water is being recognized as never before, considered by many experts to be the essential resource of the twenty-first century, Water to the Angels brings into focus the vigor of a fabled era, the might of a larger than life individual, and the scale of a priceless construction project, and sheds critical light on a past that offers insights for our future. Water to the Angels includes 8 pages of photographs.

Les Standiford (Author), Robert Fass (Narrator)

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Desperate Sons: Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and the Secret Bands of Radicals Who Led

A groundbreaking narrative-a historical political thriller-that explores the role of the Sons of Liberty in the American Revolution. More than two hundred years ago, a group of British colonists in America decided that the conditions under which they were governed had become intolerable. Angry and frustrated that King George III and the British Parliament had ignored their lawful complaints and petitions, they decided to take action. Knowing that their deeds-often directed at individuals and property-were illegal, and punishable by imprisonment and even death, these agitators plotted and conducted their missions in secret to protect their identities as well as the identities of those who supported them. Calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, they gathered together in a radical society committed to imposing forcible change. Those determined men-including second cousins Samuel and John Adams, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock-saw themselves as patriots. Yet to the Crown, and to many of the Sons' fellow colonists, the revolutionaries were terrorists who deserved death for their treason. In this gripping narrative, Les Standiford reveals how this group of intelligent, committed men, motivated by economics and political belief, began a careful campaign of interlocking events that would channel feelings of vague injustice into an armed rebellion of common cause, which would defeat an empire and give birth to a radical political experiment-a new nation known as the United States.

Les Standiford (Author), Robert Fass (Narrator)

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Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America

Before Adam Walsh there were no faces on milk cartons, no Amber Alerts, no National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, no federal databases of crimes against children, no pedophile registry. His 1981 abduction and murder'unsolved for over a quarter of a century'forever changed America. One sunny July morning in 1981, Rev' Walsh and her six-year-old son Adam stopped by the local Sears to pick up some new lamps. Enchanted by a video game at the store's entrance, Adam begged Rev' to let him try it out while she shopped. When she returned a few minutes later, Adam was gone. The shock of Adam's murder, and of the inability of the police and the FBI to find his killer, radically altered American innocence and our ideas about childhood. Gone forever were the days when parents would allow their kids out of the house with the casual instruction "Be home by dark!" Rev' and John Walsh'who would go on to create America's Most Wanted'became advocates for the transformation of law enforcement's response to and handling of such cases. Prompted by the Walshes' activism, Congress passed the Missing Children Act in 1982, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded in 1984. While our lives have been significantly altered by Adam Walsh's case, few of us know the whole story'how, after more than twenty-seven years of relentless investigation, decorated Miami Beach homicide detective Joe Matthews finally identified Adam's killer. Bringing Adam Home is the definitive account of this horrifying crime'which, like the Lindbergh kidnapping fifty years earlier, captured public attention'and its aftermath, a true story of tragedy, love, faith, and dedication. It reveals the pain and tenacity of a family determined to find justice, the failed police work that allowed a killer to remain uncharged, and the determined efforts of one cop who accomplished what an entire legal system could not. As harrowing as In Cold Blood, yet ultimately uplifting, Bringing Adam Home is the riveting story of a triumph of justice and the enduring power of love.

Joe Matthews, Les Standiford (Author), Robert Fass (Narrator)

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Washington Burning: How a Frenchman's Vision of Our Nation's Capital Survived Congress, the Founding

Les Standiford (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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Meet You in Hell

Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation, probably to ease his conscience. Frick's reply: Tell him that I'll meet him in hell. It is a fitting epitaph. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of upward mobility and expansionism went hand in hand with optimism, Meet You in Hell is a classic tale of two men who embodied the best and worst of American capitalism. Standiford conjures up the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of late-nineteenth-century big business, and the fraught relationship of the world's richest man and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. Enamored of Social Darwinism, the emerging school of thought that applied the notion of survival of the fittest to human society, both Carnegie and Frick would introduce revolutionary new efficiencies and meticulous cost control to their enterprises, and would quickly come to dominate the world steel market. But their partnership had a dark side, revealed most starkly by their brutal handling of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. When Frick, acting on Carnegie's orders to do whatever was necessary, unleashed three hundred Pinkerton detectives, the result was the deadliest clash between management and labor in U.S. history. WHILE BLOOD FLOWED, FRICK SMOKED ran one newspaper headline. The public was outraged. An anarchist tried to assassinate Frick. Even today, the names Carnegie and Frick cannot be uttered in some union-friendly communities. Resplendent with tales of backroom chicanery, bankruptcy, philanthropy, and personal idiosyncrasy, Meet You in Hell is a fitting successor to Les Standiford's masterly Last Train to Paradise. Artfully weaving the relationship of these titans through the larger story of a young nation's economic rise, Standiford has created an extraordinary work of popular history. From the Hardcover edition.

Les Standiford (Author), John Dossett (Narrator)

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Black Mountain

When Presidential Deal hit the best-seller lists, fans of Les Standiford's other books, including Done Deal , and Raw Deal rejoiced. They already knew what new readers would find: taut suspense, tough characters, and a superb sense of mood. Now in Black Mountain, Standiford combines high-country adventure with a tale of ruthless revenge. Black Mountain looms on the horizon east of Yellowstone. When New York's governor goes there on vacation, policeman Richard Corrigan is an unofficial part of the security team. The first "accident" occurs when the seaplane explodes after dropping them at the campsite. The second is clearly murder. One by one, members of the camping trip fall under the hands of unseen, silent killers. As Corrigan desperately tries to anticipate the next attack, the danger and tension mount with each passing hour. Filled with non-stop action, Black Mountain reaches new heights of suspense, and narrator Richard Ferrone captures every perilous step with his muscular performance.

Les Standiford (Author), Richard Ferrone (Narrator)

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Bone Key

In 1931, a storm passes through the Florida straits, soon followed by a devastating explosion aboard a freighter, The Magdalena. Decades later, John Deal, the brooding real-estate developer and hero of eight previous Standiford mysteries, is traveling to Key West to talk over a prospective project with an old friend of his father's, the wealthy entrepreneur Franklin Stone. En route, Deal stops to help a young black man being harassed by police officers on a lonely beach road. Two days later, the young man turns up in Deal's hotel room - dead and clutching a label from a bottle of rare vintage wine, 1929, worth thousands of dollars. As Deal finds out, while trying to save his own life, past and present collide in this mystery where all answers point to a seventy-year-old tale of piracy and murder, and where a former girlfriend suddenly appears for reasons only she knows. "The action moves so quickly that each scene is like a little gasp for breath. There is art to it, and Standiford makes it look easy." (The New York Times)

Les Standiford, Les Staniford (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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Havana Run

Many writers have highlighted South Florida's colorful characters, but John Deal is a remarkably normal man, put in extraordinary situations. Deal has spent much of his adult life trying to rebuild the Miami construction firm that his late father ruined. Cuba has just normalized relations with the United States, and when the possibility of a major project there arises, he can't help being intrigued - only to find that he has been lured to Havana for another, far more dangerous purpose: to help spring an American prisoner from a Castro jail. Deal wants nothing to do with it, until he discovers the identity of the prisoner: a man closer to him than he could have possibly imagined, and the holder of secrets many groups would kill for... "[The John Deal series] is one of the best-written, most completely satisfying series currently being produced." (St. Petersburg Times)

Les Standiford (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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Deal with the Dead: A John Deal Mystery

Les Standiford is the best-selling author of the famous John Deal suspense series, including Presidential Deal. The quickly paced plot, intriguing characters, and electric dialogue found in Deal With the Dead will please longtime fans and enthrall newcomers. John Deal is attempting to resurrect his late father's failed building firm when he makes an awesome discovery. Now he faces the strong-arm tactics of the same secret organization that ruined his father.

Les Standiford (Author), Ron McLarty (Narrator)

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Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed

Last Train to Paradise is acclaimed novelist Les Standiford's fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller and the true mastermind behind Standard Oil, concocted the dream of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. The financiers considered the project and said, Unthinkable. The engineers pondered the problems and from all came one verdict, Impossible. . . . But build it they did, and the railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for twenty-two years. Once dismissed as Flagler's Folly, it was heralded as the Eighth Wonder of the World until a will even greater than Flagler's rose up in opposition. In 1935, a hurricane of exceptional force, which would be dubbed the Storm of the Century, swept through the tiny islands, killing some 700 residents and workmen and washing away all but one sixty-foot section of track, on which a 320,000-pound railroad engine stood and gripped its rails as if the gravity of Jupiter were pressing upon it. Standiford brings the full force and fury of this storm to terrifying life. In spinning his saga of the railroad's construction, Standiford immerses us in the treacherous world of the thousands of workers who beat their way through infested swamps, lived in fragile tent cities on barges anchored in the midst of daunting stretches of ocean, and suffered from a remarkable succession of three ominous hurricanes that killed many and washed away vast stretches of track. Steadfast through every setback, Flagler inspired a loyalty in his workers so strong that even after a hurricane dislodged one of the railroad's massive pilings, casting doubt over the viability of the entire project, his engineers refused to be beaten. The question was no longer Could it be done? but Can we make it to Key West on time? to allow Flagler to ride the rails of his dream. Last Train to Paradise celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature's wrath.From the Hardcover edition.

Les Standiford (Author), Richmond Hoxie (Narrator)

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Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed

Les Standiford, Les Staniford (Author), Del Roy (Narrator)

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