Audiobooks by Stephen Harrigan

The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. 'I couldn't believe Texas was real,' the painter Georgia O'Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, 'the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.' Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas's evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists-all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Friend of Mr. Lincoln: A novel

THE GATES OF THE ALAMO author Stephen Harrigan returns to his historical fiction roots, reimagining Abraham Lincoln's early life when he was a young lawyer and rising politician in Springfield, Illinois. Told from the point-of-view of Lincoln's best friend, it starts during the Blackhawk War (in which Lincoln served) and ends in the mid-1840's, when Lincoln goes off to Washington after being elected to Congress and his friend heads west with the Donner Party. The novel is about a crucially formative period in Lincoln's life, when he was ruled by an almost ungovernable ambition, beset by bouts of depression, sometimes ruthlessly trying to advance himself while tortured with self-doubt and questions of personal honor. It tracks his strange on-and-off relationship with Mary Todd, his sudden and puzzling marriage to her, the duel he almost fought with a political opponent, his pragmatic and sometimes contradictory stands on slavery, his desire to be a poet, and his true-to-life flirtation with suicide--all in all, a portrait of a young politician on the make, deeply principled but also deeply flawed.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Audiobook

Remember Ben Clayton: A Novel

New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan lit up the publishing world with his Spur Award-winning The Gates of the Alamo. The remarkable follow-up to that acclaimed hit, Remember Ben Clayton further cements Harrigan's place as a premier voice in American fiction. Exiled to Texas with his grown daughter, sculptor Francis "Gil" Gilheaney is commissioned to create a statue for a man who recently lost his son in WWI. But as work on the statue progresses, secrets slowly reveal themselves and Gil's fragile family threads begin to fray.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Gates of the Alamo

Best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings one of the pivotal battles in American history to life in this fiery, unforgettable novel. Meticulously researched and overflowing with fascinating characters, The Gates of the Alamo is an experience history buffs and fiction fans will equally enjoy. Edmund McGowan is a gifted naturalist whose life’s work is threatened by war. Mary Mott is a widowed innkeeper forced to rely on her own resources for survival. Mary’s 16-year-old son, Terrell, is a young man about to experience his first taste of love. Focusing on these three characters—and sprinkling in real-life figures such as James Bowie and Davy Crockett—Harrigan gives a human face to a true American legend. Told from the perspective of the Mexican attackers as well as the American defenders, this New York Times best-seller vividly recreates a time and a place where honor and gallant death shaped generations of people. George Guidall’s narration captures all the drama of ordinary people living through extraordinary events.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

Audiobook

Challenger Park: A Novel

From the author of the acclaimed and best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, a novel of extraordinary power about what it's like, and what it means, to journey into space as one of today's astronauts. At the novel's center: Lucy Kincheloe, an astronaut married to an astronaut, the loving mother of two young children, with a fierce ambition to excel in the space program. Her husband, Brian, a rigorous man whose dreams of glory have been blighted by two star-crossed missions. Walt Womack, the steady, unflappable leader of the training team that prepares Lucy for her first shuttle flight. Lucy has devoted years of intense and focused effort to win her place on a mission, but as her lifelong dream of flying in space comes true, her familiar world appears to be falling apart around her. Her marriage is deteriorating. Her son's asthma is growing more serious. Her relationship with Walt Womack is becoming dangerously intimate. And when at last she is in space, 240 miles above the earth, and an accident renders the world she left behind appallingly distant-perhaps unreachable-her spirit is tested in gripping and unexpected ways. In The Gates of the Alamo, Stephen Harrigan's narrative authority brought a vanished nineteenth-century Texas to vibrant life. In Challenger Park, he does the same with the world of space flight, bringing us up close to the lives-the risks, the friendships, the rituals, the training-of the astronauts and the people who work with them. Harrigan has written an exciting-indeed a thrilling-novel about the contrary pulls of home and adventure, reality and dreams, and the unimaginable experience, the joys and terrors and revelations, of space flight itself.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), Sam Freed (Narrator)

Audiobook

Challenger Park

From the author of the acclaimed and best-selling The Gates of the Alamo, a novel of extraordinary power about what it’s like, and what it means, to journey into space as one of today’s astronauts. At the novel’s center: Lucy Kincheloe, an astronaut married to an astronaut, the loving mother of two young children, with a fierce ambition to excel in the space program. Her husband, Brian, a rigorous man whose dreams of glory have been blighted by two star-crossed missions. Walt Womack, the steady, unflappable leader of the training team that prepares Lucy for her first shuttle flight. Lucy has devoted years of intense and focused effort to win her place on a mission, but as her lifelong dream of flying in space comes true, her familiar world appears to be falling apart around her. Her marriage is deteriorating. Her son’s asthma is growing more serious. Her relationship with Walt Womack is becoming dangerously intimate. And when at last she is in space, 240 miles above the earth, and an accident renders the world she left behind appallingly distant—perhaps unreachable—her spirit is tested in gripping and unexpected ways. In The Gates of the Alamo, Stephen Harrigan’s narrative authority brought a vanished nineteenth-century Texas to vibrant life. In Challenger Park, he does the same with the world of space flight, bringing us up close to the lives—the risks, the friendships, the rituals, the training—of the astronauts and the people who work with them. Harrigan has written an exciting—indeed a thrilling—novel about the contrary pulls of home and adventure, reality and dreams, and the unimaginable experience, the joys and terrors and revelations, of space flight itself.

Stephen Harrigan (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook