Audiobooks by Les Staniford

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

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