Cormac McCarthy Audio Booklists

All the Pretty Horses
(Book 1
Border Trilogy Series)
[UNABIDGED] 6 Audio Cassettes/9 Hrs.

All the Pretty Horses, is a novel written by the American author Cormac McCarthy published in 1992.

It is the first book of the Border Trilogy Series.

Two young Texas cowboys on the cusp of manhood ride into 1940's Mexico in search of experience. What they find is a country as chaotic as it is beautiful, as cruel and unfeeling as it is mysterious, where death is a constant, capricious companion. Written by Richard Foxx

You can purchase this Audio Book at: All the Pretty Horses, The Border Trilogy Series Book 1 by Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing
(The Border Trilogy, Book 2)

We could easily call The Crossing a coming of age story, an adventure story, a quest or an epic poem, but it is all that and much more. As with any coming of age story, Billy Parham loss of innocence comes with a price of great consequence. Like an adventure story The Crossing is filled with action and unexpected situations. As with tales of quests as the Iliad and Gulliver's Travels we meet strange and interesting creatures along Billy's path. Like an epic poem The Crossing is filled with lyrical prose, both in Spanish and English.

"We think we are the victims of time. In reality, the way of the world isn't fixed anywhere. How could that be possible? We are our own journey. And therefore we are time as well. We are the same. Fugitive. Inscrutable. Ruthless."

I cannot helped but be moved by Cormac McCarthy's work and The Crossing was perhaps the favorite, which I have read. -Reader's Review

You can purchase this Audio Book at: The Crossing, The Border Trilogy Series Book 2 by Cormac McCarthy

Cities of the Plain
(McCarthy, Cormac, Border Trilogy, Volume 3/Cassette/Abridged)

Cities of the Plain is the final volume installment of The Border Trilogy Series.

In the book 3 of the trilogy that includes All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, Cities of the Plain takes place on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. The novel unites John Grady Cole, protagonist of the first book of the trilogy, with Billy Parham, the young cowboy introduced in the second book.

Reader's Review
This final novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy of the southwest brings together the themes McCarthy has developed throughout the trilogy. In the first novel, All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy stresses the romanticism of John Grady Cole, who runs away to become a cowboy, suffers a heart-breaking loss at love, and returns, sadder and perhaps wiser, to find solace in the solitude of his work on the plains.

You can purchase this Audio Book at: Cities of the Plain, The Border Trilogy Series Book 3 by Cormac McCarthy

His earlier novel "Blood Meridien" published in 1985, was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years.

He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

You can download this Audio Book at: Blood Meridien or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

The Cormac McCarthy Value Collection:
All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain

Product Description
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
The first volume of the Border Trilogy-tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons-beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

THE CROSSING
In the late 1930's, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he beings an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet like ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat-lightening-a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there."

CITIES OF THE PLAIN
It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. They value that life all the more because they know it is about to change forever.

You can buy this Audio CD at: The Cormac McCarthy Value Collection Audio CD by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men

Customer's Review
'It's a mess, aint it Sheriff?' 'If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here.' "Sheriff Bell's deputy says to him. And, yes, what a hell of a mess. 305 pages of a riveting book that I read in almost one sitting. I could not stop reading. The "old man" of the book if there is one, is Sheriff Bell. And his wife, Loretta, is the calming influence. Bell's voice is heard through out this book, in italicized version; we recognize that his down to earth common sense views are sure to calm down the violence that starts on page 4. The first murder, and then the second on page 5 and...

The setting is Texas, and the title of the book may be a simile for what is happening in our world and in Texas. Llewellyn Moss, a young cowboy, who works hard for a living and is out hunting antelope, stumbles upon millions of dollars, drugs and 8 dead men in the Texas desert and highland. He does what many of us would do, he takes the money. He understands that his life will never be the same, but it is worth it, isn't it? Money is trouble and Moss is in for as much trouble as anyone could imagine. He has his wife move from their trailer to her mom's to keep her safe. And, Moss, well Moss goes looking for that trouble. And, Zagnorch? Well, find out for yourself.

The character that I am intrigued with is Anton Chigurh. We meet him via a murder in which Chigurh goes from being handcuffed by a West Texas county deputy to driving away in his patrol car, splattered with blood. The telling of the murder is so gory, your heart stops but for a second. The heartlessness of Chigurh is burned into our memory, he will allow some of his victims to flip a coin for their life, but that is just as grizzly as the murders.

The dignity and honor of Moss is contrasted with the heartlessness of Chigurh. We are rooting for Moss, and we understand this may be a little foolishness on our part. As Sheriff Bell says,the problems with our society now starts with the lack of manners. No one says, yes sir, anymore and it is all down hill from there. The lessons stated and learned in Cormac McCarthy's new book are many. We understand we are in the presence of a literary genius. Such a well written and played out novel.

As Sheriff Bell states, "I think if you were Satan and you were settin' around tryin' to think up somethin' that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics." Money is the root of all evil. Millions of dollars may be equitable to evil, but wouldn't we all like to have a chance to experience it? Anton Chigurh may be likened to evil; will we look evil in the face again?

Highly recommended!
-prisrob "pris

You can buy this Audio CD at: No Country for Old Men Audio CD by Cormac McCarthy

The Road

From Publishers Weekly
McCarthy's latest novel, a frightening apocalyptic vision, is narrated by a nameless man, one of the few survivors of an unspecified civilization-ending catastrophe. He and his young son are trekking along a treacherous highway, starving and freezing, trying to avoid roving cannibal armies. The tale, and their lives, are saved from teetering over the edge of bleakness thanks to the man's fierce belief that they are "the good guys" who are preserving the light of humanity. In this stark, effective production, Stechschulte gives the father an appropriately harsh, weary voice that sways little from its numbed register except to urge on the weakening boy or soothe his fears after an encounter with barbarians. When they uncover some vestige of the former world, the man recalls its vanished wonder with an aching nostalgia that makes the listener's heart swell. Stechschulte portrays the son with a mournful, slightly breathy tone that emphasizes the child's whininess, making him much less sympathetic than his resourceful father. With no music or effects interrupting Stechschulte's carefully measured pace and gruff, straightforward delivery, McCarthy's darkly poetic prose comes alive in a way that will transfix listeners.

You can buy this AudioBook at: The Road AudioBook by Cormac McCarthy