Don Winslow has 18 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 15 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 723 ratings. The most-rated is The Border.
The Border
Summary
The explosive, highly anticipated conclusion to the epic Cartel trilogy from the New York Times best-selling author of The Force For over 40 years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America's longest conflict: the War on Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world's most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin - the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adan Barrera - has left him bloody and scarred, cost him people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul. Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster, he has created 30 more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there. Barrera's final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America. Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow, Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies - men that want to kill him, politicians that want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable - an incoming administration that's in bed with the very drug traffickers that Keller is trying to bring down. Art Keller is at war with not only the cartels, but with his own government. And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined. Now, he learns the final lesson - there are no borders. In a story that moves from deserts south of the border to Wall Street, from the slums of Guatemala to the marbled corridors of Washington, DC, Winslow follows a new generation of narcos, the cops that fight them, the street traffickers, the addicts, the politicians, money-launderers, real estate moguls, and mere children fleeing the violence for the chance of a life in a new country. This last novel in Don Winslow's magnificent, award-winning, internationally best-selling trilogy is packed with unforgettable, drawn-from-the-headlines scenes. Shocking in its brutality, raw in its humanity, The Border is an unflinching portrait of modern America, a story of - and for - our time. A Crime Reads Pick of One of the Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019
©2019 Don Winslow (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Power of the Dog
Summary
This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell's Kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hit man. All of them are trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federación. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you've never seen it.
©2005 Don Winslow (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Cartel
Summary
From the internationally best-selling author of the acclaimed novel The Power of the Dog comes The Cartel, a gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines story of power, corruption, revenge, and justice spanning the past decade of the Mexican-American drug wars. It's 2004. DEA agent Art Keller has been fighting the war on drugs for 30 years in a blood feud against Adán Barrera, the head of El Federación, the world's most powerful cartel, and the man who brutally murdered Keller's partner. Finally putting Barrera away cost Keller dearly - the woman he loves, the beliefs he cherishes, the life he wants to lead. Then Barrera gets out, determined to rebuild the empire that Keller shattered. Unwilling to live in a world with Barrera in it, Keller goes on a 10-year odyssey to take him down. His obsession with justice - or is it revenge? - becomes a ruthless struggle that stretches from the cities, mountains, and deserts of Mexico to Washington's corridors of power to the streets of Berlin and Barcelona. Keller fights his personal battle against the devastated backdrop of Mexico's drug war, a conflict of unprecedented scale and viciousness, as cartels vie for power and he comes to the final reckoning with Barrera - and himself - that he always knew must happen. The Cartel is a true-to-life story of honor and sacrifice as one man tries to face down the devil without losing his soul. It is the story of the war on drugs and the men - and women - who wage it.
©2015 Don Winslow (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Force
Summary
All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He’s the king of Manhattan North, a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of “Da Force.” Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself. What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all. The Force is a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, it is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.
©2017 Don Winslow (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Dawn Patrol
Summary
Every morning, Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police. He blames himself, just as almost everyone in the department did, for not being able to save her. Unexpectedly, he finds himself with the chance to make amends, and this new investigation gives him a wilder ride than any he's ever imagined.
©2008 Don Winslow (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Broken
Summary
“One of America’s greatest storytellers.” (Stephen King) “Winslow, whose work includes a dozen of the finest crime novels written in the last 20 years, displays all of his strengths, including propulsive narration, compelling characters and a tight, staccato writing style, in Broken, a collection of six remarkable novellas.” (Bruce De Silva, Associated Press) No matter how you come into this world, you come out broken.... In six intense short novels connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt, and redemption, Broken is number-one international best seller Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heart-stopping, heartbreaking best. In Broken, he creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops struggling with life on and off the job, private detectives, dope dealers, bounty hunters, and fugitives, the lost souls driving without headlights through the dark night on the American criminal highway. With his trademark blend of insight, humanity, humor, action, and the highest level of literary craftsmanship, Winslow delivers a collection of tales that will become classics of crime fiction.
©2020 Don Winslow (P)2020 HarperAudio
The Winter of Frankie Machine
Summary
Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine. Frank consigned his Mob ties to the past years ago, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favor being called in now by the local boss is one Frank can't refuse, and soon he's sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from the past wants him dead. He has to figure out who and why, and he has to do it fast.
©2006 Don Winslow (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Savages
Summary
Part-time environmentalist and philanthropist Ben and his ex-mercenary buddy Chon run an independent Laguna Beach–based marijuana operation, reaping significant profits from an established clientele. But they may have come up against something that they can't handle---the Mexican Baja Cartel wants in, and saying no is unacceptable. When they refuse to back down, the cartel kidnaps Ophelia, the boys' playmate and confidante. O's abduction sets off a dizzying array of ingenious negotiations and gripping plot twists that will captivate listeners eager to learn the costs of freedom and the price of an amazing high.
©2010 Samburu, Inc. (P)2010 Tantor
The Gentlemen's Hour
Summary
Laid back, ultra–California cool, the former cop turned PI begins each day with the Dawn Patrol, a close-knit group of surfers, best friends who not only ride waves together but have one another's backs out of the water. It's the life Boone loves, all he wants. To him, "There's no such thing as a bad day at the beach." So when one of their own is murdered - especially an icon like Kelly Kuhio, a local hero - and another surfer, a young punk from the Rockpile Crew, stands accused, the small world of Pacific Beach is rocked to its core. Boone knows he can no longer ignore the painful truth that violence is seeping into the surfing community. But when he agrees to help the defense, the outrage he courts from the community, and the Dawn Patrol, is more than he ever anticipated. He's risking losing the relationships that define his life - just when he needs them most. As Boone digs deeper into San Diego's murkier side, delving into places the city's reputation-conscious establishment would rather he left alone, it becomes clear that more than a murder case is at stake. He soon finds himself out there alone, struggling to stay afloat as the waves get rougher and rougher... and more deadly. It's The Gentlemen's Hour - and it could be Boone's last.
©2011 Don Winslow (P)2011 Simon & Schuster Audio
California Fire and Life
Summary
Jack Wade, a claims adjuster for California Fire and Life Mutual Insurance Company, is one of the best arson investigators around. He's a man who knows fire, who can read the traces it leaves behind like a roadmap. When he's called in to examine an unusual claim, the tracks of the fire tell him that something's wrong. So wrong that he violates his own cardinal rule - "You don't get personal, you don't get emotional. Whatever you do, you don't get involved" - and plunges into the case. Real estate mogul Nicky Vale's house is one of the most valuable properties on this stretch of the Southern California gold coast - large, luxurious, crammed with antiques, set on a nice piece of land with a perfect ocean view. After a disastrous blaze tears through a wing of the house, it's only normal that Vale would file an insurance claim. But a $3 million claim is rarely normal, especially not when it's filed within hours of the horrific death of the owner's young and beautiful wife. The County Sheriff's Department investigator, Brian "Accidentally" Bentley, has declared the fire, well, accidental - caused by Mrs. Vale's passing out in bed with a bottle of vodka and a lit cigarette - although a careful look at the evidence points to something more sinister. When Jack begins his investigation, he draws on his skill, experience and sheer stubbornness to uncover the truth of what's going on, but each step leads him further into a situation that's becoming increasingly dangerous. Soon arson is the least of Jack's worries, as the case grows to involve the Russian mob, Vietnamese gangs, real estate scams, counterfeiting and corporate corruption. In addition, Jack's forced to confront his own ghosts, including a fatal professional error, and to cope with the sudden reentry into his life of the best thing that ever happened to him: Letitia del Rio, a Sheriff's deputy whose bombshell looks are exceeded only by her smarts and guts.
©2012 Don Winslow (P)2015 Random House Audio
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
Summary
Neal Carey is not your usual private eye. A graduate student at Columbia University, he grew up on the streets of New York, usually on the wrong side of the law. Then he met a P.I. who introduced him to the Bank, an exclusive institution with a sideline in keeping its wealthy clients happy and out of trouble. They pay Neal's college tuition, and Neal gets an education that can't be found in any textbook, from learning how to trail a suspect to mastering the proper way to search a room.Now it's payback time. The Bank wants Neal to put his skills to work in finding Allie Chase, the rebellious teenage daughter of a prominent senator. The problem is that she's gone underground in the London punk scene. To get her back, Neal has to follow her into a violent netherworld where drugs run rampant and rage is the name of the game.
©1991 Don Winslow (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Kings of Cool
Summary
Published to coincide with the release of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone's major film of Savages from Universal Pictures in July 2012 - starring John Travolta, Blake Lively, Benecio Del Toro, Uma Thurman, Emile Hirsch, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, and Salma Hayek - this is the much-anticipated prequel to Don Winslow's acclaimed New York Times best seller. In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twentysomething best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. Among the most celebrated literary thrillers in recent memory, Savages was a Top 10 Book of 2010 selection by Janet Maslin in The New York Times and Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly as well as Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times and publications around the world. Now, in his high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, it is a tale of family in all its forms - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the younger generation does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents' history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will ultimately force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their love for each other.
©2012 Don Winslow (P)2012 Simon & Schuster
The Body on the Island
Summary
He was never truly gone, only biding his time.... Late on midsummer's night there is a splash in the river Thames. A body is found on an island, asphyxiated and laced with strange markings. For DCI Craig Gillard it's a baffling case. The victim's identity is elusive, clues are scarce and every witness has something to hide. Meanwhile one of Britain's deadliest serial killers is finally up for parole after a deal to reveal the location of two missing bodies. The felon has his own plans to get even with witnesses, accusers and the officer who caught him 30 years before. And who was that? A young trainee by the name of Gillard. An explosive crime thriller from master storyteller Nick Louth, perfect for fans of Mark Billingham, Cara Hunter and Robert Bryndza.
©2020 Nick Louth (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd
Way Down on the High Lonely
Summary
From domestic war to barroom brawls, grad-student-turned-PI Neal Carey’s got more than studying on his plate. Neal’s three-year confinement in a Chinese monastery is finally over—but his troubles are just beginning. The elusive financial benefactors who have bought his freedom expect a return on their investment. They want him to find Cody McCall, a two-year-old boy recently abducted by his father in a bitter Hollywood custody battle—a task that will propel Neal from the glittering Hollywood hills to the remote wilds of Nevada. To find Cody, Neal has to turn outlaw in a land of two-bit casinos and roadside cathouses to infiltrate a vicious white supremacist group spouting hatred and dealing in terror. But the deeper undercover he goes, the deadlier the game becomes. Now Neal must force a showdown with the group’s crazed leader and find Cody before the missing toddler ends up lost in a world of unspeakable evil.
©1993 Don Winslow (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Treason
Summary
In Rick Campbell’s newest thriller, a military coup in Russia leads to a swift invasion of former Soviet territories - while the US has been rendered powerless to respond. In Russia, the military is anxious to assert its military strength and regain its role as a superpower. The Russian president refuses to greenlight a bold plan to disable American strategic nuclear capability and retake Ukraine and the Baltic States, fearing the potential consequences of involving nuclear weapons. But the generals won't have it and at the first opportunity, they overthrow the president in a military coup. Then they use a narrow window to initiate their bold plan - the Zolotov option - which will render all of America's B2 bombers and ballistic missiles useless. With the US off the board, they swiftly invade Ukraine with an overwhelming force, an invading Army that even NATO can't hope to resist. Now, it's game on. Without their primary weapons, the US has to find a way to fight back on multiple fronts. If they're to have any chance, they'll have to overcome the malware that has grounded their ballistic missiles and planes, as well as secretly land a SEAL team to help rescue the imprisoned Russian president, and help retake control from the forces that are driving Europe into a continental war. Rick Campbell, one of the finest young military thriller writers, returns with his biggest and boldest audiobook to date.
©2019 Rick Campbell (P)2019 Macmillan Audio
While Drowning in the Desert
Summary
Shamus Award winner and Edgar Award nominee Don Winslow combines breathless suspense, zany wit, and whiplash action in his latest novel featuring grad student/private eye Neal Carey. Now Neal is assigned to escort monkeyish octogenarian Natty Silver home from Las Vegas to Palm Springs. Natty, once a burlesque top banana, has a nonstop barrage of corny jokes, an eye for an aging cocktail waitress, and a chronic disappearing act. When Neal catches up with him, he can see why Natty doesn’t want to go home. Sole witness to a crime, he’s now the quarry of hard-faced suits, a fascist con artist, and a career-track assassin. And bodyguard Neal—scorching through the trackless desert at 80 miles per hour, brooding on his inner child by freezing starlight, and looking down the barrel of one gun too many—is soon dodging vultures and on the brink of a surprise watery grave.
©1996 Don Winslow (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Long Walk up the Water Slide
Summary
Neal Carey has to keep the mob, the FBI, and a major television personality from killing his newest client—but he’s tempted to do the job himself. Sometime student and ever-reluctant detective Neal Carey would rather be finishing a dull doctoral thesis than staring down the nose of a loaded gun—but his new assignment doesn’t sound dangerous. All he has to do is pull off the ultimate makeover: turn Polly Paget—a gum-chewing, foul-mouthed, big-haired broad—into a perfect lady in time to testify in a rape case against Jack Landis, head of the Family Cable Network and America’s most beloved family man. But Polly isn’t cooperating, and everyone—including a former FBI agent, an obsessive-compulsive hit man, the Mafia, a porn prince, and a slew of tabloid reporters—is on her trail, turning Neal’s “simple” assignment into a deadly game of duck-duck-goose. In a hellish and hilarious escapade that takes him from the deserts of Nevada to the bright lights of Las Vegas and finally to a hair-raising climax in a shoddily built amusement park, Neal tries to escape the mob’s big guns while taking a slippery walk up the world’s biggest water slide.
©1994 Don Winslow (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
Summary
When Tim Kearney draws a license plate across the throat of a Hell's Angel, he's pretty much a dead man. It's his third crime and, according to California law, that gives him "life without the possibility of parole". Killing a Hell's Angel also makes him a dead man on any prison yard in California. That's when the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him to Don Huertero, northern Mexico's drug kingpin, for a captured DEA agent. Tim Kearney bears an uncanny resemblance to Bobby Z, and, with some training, he might be able to pass. Or not. But, really, what choice does he have? So, he's off to a compound in the middle of a desert that's been designed by Huertero's number-two man to look like the Arabian fort in his favorite movie, Beau Jeste. ("The Santa Fe thing had been done to death.") Kearney's surprised when he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, who was never mentioned in his training, and the son she claims belongs to him. It's a short vacation by the pool before Kearney's on the run from drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops...and the kid's along for the ride. Some of the pursuers want Bobby Z, and some want the considerably less legendary Tim K. Whether he pulls it off, whether he can keep the kid and the girl and his life, makes for a hilarious, fast-paced, and truly touching novel.
©1997 Don Winslow (P)1997 Random House Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House Inc.