Battle for the Big Top Now Available!


The untold story of three Golden Age titans and the confrontations, cutthroat business strategies, and eccentric personalities that built the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus.
 
Battle for the Big Top: P.T. Barnum, James Bailey, John Ringling and the Death-Defying Saga of the American Circus is out June 15!

Find out more and read reviews of Battle for the Big Top here!

And the launch event for Battle for the Big Top is coming up June 26th! Visit the events page for this event and more.
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"Studio Standiford" by Carol Garvin

"Every good story is personal." —Les Standiford, quoted in Writing Advice from Masters: Writing in Paradise

To contact Les Standiford, please visit the About & Contact page.

The Latest

The long-awaited sequel to 2006's best-selling Miami Noir highlights an outstanding tradition of legendary writers exploring the dark side of paradise.

Les Standiford returns in Miami Noir: The Classics, featuring classic noir fiction from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Elmore Leonard, Lester Dent, Zora Neale Hurston, and more. Find out more here!
With the authority and narrative prose style that has gained Standiford’s work widespread acclaim, Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, and the Rise of America’s Xanadu tells the history of this fabled landscape intertwined with the colorful lives of its famous protagonists. Les Standiford brings alive a fabled place and the characters—the rich, famous and infamous alike—who have been drawn inexorably to it.

Read reviews of Palm Beach and find out more here!

Discover how one spectacular building project revolutionized Miami, how one man’s moxie helped turn a fractious tropical city into a cultural capital of the Americas. In Center of Dreams, New York Times bestselling author Les Standiford tells the inspiring story of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

Find out more and read reviews of Center of Dreams here!
Based on the book by Les Standiford, The Man Who Invented Christmas was released November 22nd, 2017 in the United States and December 1st, 2017 in the United Kingdom. Watch the trailer and learn more here!
In addition, a new edition of The Man Who Invented Christmas has been released! See this page for more.

The paperback edition of Water to the Angels was released on February 1, 2016. See the Water to the Angels page for more.

Read Les' homage to the great John D. MacDonald published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on March 6, 2016.