William Boyle

Goodfellas meets Thelma and Louise when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts. After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure. Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey “Wolfie” Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her. When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena’s her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand. But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next. A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself is a screwball noir about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar—and sometimes frightening—world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods.

A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

A vivid new cast of characters collide in gritty 1990s Brooklyn, in this latest from acclaimed neo-noir author William Boyle. In City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There’s Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava’s son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who’s returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie’s ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey’s mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won’t fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn. Uniting them are the dead: Mikey’s old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna’s poor son, Gabe. These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other. City of Margins is a Technicolor noir melodrama pieced together in broken glass.

City of Margins

This collection of essays aims to further the understanding of historical and contemporary geographies of science. It offers a fresh perspective on comparative approaches to scientific knowledge and practice as pursued by geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of science. The authors explore the formation and changing geographies of scientific centers from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and critically discuss the designing of knowledge spaces in early museums, in modern laboratories, at world fairs, and in the periphery of contemporary science. They also analyze the interactions between science and the public in Victorian Britain, interwar Germany, and recent environmental policy debates. The book provides a genuine geographical perspective on the production and dissemination of knowledge and will thus be an important point of reference for those interested in the spatial relations of science and associated fields. The Klaus Tschira Foundation supports diverse symposia, the essence of which is published in this Springer series (www.kts.villa-bosch.de).

Gravesend

A haunting crime story about the broken characters inhabiting yesterday's Brooklyn, this is the new novel from modern master of neo-noir William Boyle. An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights. Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it’s dumb and harmless until it’s too late to think otherwise. Then there’s Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home. Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco—with no real future mapped out and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror—has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max’s Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max’s safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there. Meanwhile, Bobby’s former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands. A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange. A sense of loss is palpable—what has been lost and what will be lost—and Boyle’s characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions.

A Novel

Shoot the Moonlight Out

When a young woman with a sordid past witnesses a murder, she finds herself fascinated by the killer and decides to track him down herself. Amy lives a lonely life, helping the house-bound receive communion in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. Oneof her regulars, Mrs. Epifanio, says she hasn’t seen her usual caretaker, Diane, in a few days. Supposedly, Diane has the flu—or so Diane’s son Vincent said when he first dropped by and vanished into Mrs. E’s bedroom to do no-one-knows-what. Amy’s brief interaction with Vincent in the apartment that day sets off warning bells, so she assures Mrs. E that she’ll find out what’s really going on with both him and his mother. She tails Vincent through Brooklyn, eventually following him and a mysterious man out of a local dive bar. At first, the men are only talking as they walk, but then, almost before Amy can register what has happened, Vincent is dead. For reasons she can’t quite understand, Amy finds herself captivated by both the crime she witnessed and the murderer himself. She doesn’t call the cops to report what she’s seen. Instead, she collects the murder weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer. Character-driven and evocative, The Lonely Witness brings Brooklyn to life in a way only a native can, and opens readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.

The Lonely Witness

"William Boyle does for the small damaged towns of New York what Nelson Algren did for Chicago: he makes the streets sing with piss-pot poetry and gut-bucket blues. These are edgy stories about people who would have to pull themselves up to walk the line, people who spend so much time in bars, drunks and bartenders start to look like family. In here, hardship is a given, failure too, but Boyle's beautiful prose infuses his characters with a deep sense of knowledge and dignity and awareness, so hope is always present, no matter how dim the light. In DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY, a shot of whiskey is rocket fuel, and the songs are all sung by dead folks and outlaws. Drunk working men look like dumptrucks, their mouths hanging open for booze. Boyle is a new breed of literary crime writer that knows to be alive is to be a criminal and the art of living is finding the best possible crime. Fans of James Cain and Vicki Hendricks, of Charles Bukowski and Larry Brown, saddle up to the bar and throw down your money for the excellent stories in DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY. I guarantee you will fall in love with the neighborhoods, with the alleys, with the garages and one-bedroom apartments, because around the corner William Boyle is bartending and everything he has to say is the best thing you will read this year. An outstanding collection " -Dave Newman, author of PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ANYONE TONIGHT, RAYMOND CARVER WILL NOT RAISE OUR CHILDREN, THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE POEMS, and TWO SMALL BIRDS

Death Don't Have No Mercy

Tout semble brisé dans la vie d'Erica qui ne peut compter sur l'aide de personne pour s'occuper de son père, tout juste sorti de l'hôpital. Son fils Jimmy, qui arrive à l'improviste après plusieurs années de silence, ne lui offre aucun soulagement car lui-même se sent mal à l'aise face à sa famille dans ce quartier de Brooklyn trop hanté par ses souvenirs. Il prend au contraire une nouvelle fois la fuite pour se réfugier chez des amis, à 80 km de l'Etat de New York, où il se sent plus perdu que jamais. Alors qu'une tempête se prépare, Jimmy appelle sa mère, et Erica n'hésite pas à prendre la route en affrontant les éléments déchaînés pour venir au secours de ce fils devenu sa seule raison de vivre. Et tous deux se retrouvent dans une atmosphère de fin du monde. William Boyle revient ici au décor et aux personnages de Gravesend qu'il évoque avec une mélancolie déchirante, celle-là même que lui inspire Bob Dylan lorsqu'il chante Everything is broken.

Tout est brisé

In this masterful work of neo-noir, William Boyle expertly captures the grit and desperation of a neighborhood in flux, and spotlights the neighbors who find themselves caught up in the crimes of the past. It’s been sixteen years since “Ray Boy” Calabrese’s actions led to the death of a young man. The victim’s brother, Conway D’Innocenzio, is now a 29-year-old Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and drawn into a darker side of himself when he hears that Ray Boy’s has been released. But even with the perfect plan in place, Conway can’t bring himself to take the ultimate revenge.Meanwhile, failed actress Alessandra returns to her native Gravesend after the death of her mother, torn between a desperate need to escape immediately back to LA and the ease with which she sinks back into neighborhood life. Alessandra and Conway are walking eerily similar paths—staring down the rest of their lives, caring for their aging fathers, lost in the youths they squandered—and each must decide what comes next.In the tradition of American noir authors like Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy, William Boyle’s Gravesend brings the titular neighborhood to life in this story of revenge, desperation, and escape.

In this masterful work of neo-noir, William Boyle expertly captures the grit and desperation of a neighborhood in flux, and spotlights the neighbors who find themselves caught up in the crimes of the past. Some worship him and some want him dead, but either way, tensions run high when “Ray Boy” Calabrese is released from prison. It’s been sixteen years since Ray Boy’s actions led to the death of a young man. The victim's brother, Conway D'Innocenzio, is a 29-year-old Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and drawn into a darker side of himself when he hears of Ray Boy’s freedom. But even with the perfect plan in place, Conway can’t bring himself to take the ultimate revenge on Ray Boy, which sends him into a spiral of self-loathing and soul-searching. Meanwhile, Alessandra, a failed actress, returns to her native Gravesend after the death of her cancer-stricken mother, torn between the desperate need to escape back to Los Angeles as quickly as possible and the ease with which she could sink back into neighborhood life. Alessandra and Conway are walking eerily similar paths—staring down the rest of their lives, caring for their aging fathers, lost in the youths they squandered—and each must decide what comes next. In the tradition of American noir authors like Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy, William Boyle’s Gravesend brings the titular neighborhood to life in this story of revenge, desperation, and escape.

Gravesend: A Novel

'It’s the women who make this novel such a great read. They are glorious and mad, vulnerable, so human, and very, very funny' - Roddy Doyle Thelma and Louise meets Goodfellas when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts. After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey 'Wolfie' Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her. When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend, she figures Rena is her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from their demons, no matter what the cost. A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself is a novel about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar - and sometimes frightening - world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods. 'A thunderous locomotive of a novel, driven by remarkable characters and sparkling dialogue. A treat for fans of neo-noir, it’s brimming with dark wit and piercing insight. Highly recommended' - Stuart Neville, author of The Twelve 'The three wondrous and resilient women at its center are so richly etched, so powerfully voiced, you’ll find yourself wanting to pull up to the dinner table with them, grab a glass, and tuck in' - Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and The Fever 'Wolfie Wolfstein is as comfortably intact a creature as any crime writer of recent vintage has put together' - Barry Gifford, author of Sailor & Lula:The Complete Novels and The Cuban Club 'A brilliant and nasty piece of joyful ambiguity that I loved deeply. What a marvelous and unexpected bunch of female characters, in particular. With this one, William Boyle vaults into the big time, or he damn sure should' - Joe R. Lansdale

Thelma and Louise Meets Goodfellas

A Friend is a Gift you Give Yourself

Hilary Davidson

Laura Scott

Nick Mamatas

Alex Segura

Paul D. Marks

Charles Salzberg

Dana Cameron

Gray Basnight

Josh Pachter

Steve Liskow

Brian Thornton

Matthew Martin

Kevin Burton Smith

From classics like “Werewolves of London,” “Excitable Boy,” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” to lesser-known gems across a career spanning nearly four decades, the songs of Warren Zevon are rich with crime and intrigue and suspense—guns and gunners, assassins and drug dealers, a supernatural serial killer, and a heap of hapless losers along the way too. In Lawyers, Guns, and Money, fifteen fantastic writers—avid fans of Zevon’s genius—offer fresh spins on his discography with tales that span the mystery genre: caper, espionage, noir, paranormal, private eye, and more. With new stories by Gray Basnight, William Boyle, Dana Cameron, Libby Cudmore, Hilary Davidson, Steve Liskow, Nick Mamatas, Paul D. Marks, matthew quinn martin, Josh Pachter, Charles Salzberg, Laura Ellen Scott, Alex Segura, Kevin Burton Smith, and Brian Thornton, Zevon’s wry lyrics and unforgettable characters serve as the inspiration for dark crimes and dirty deeds – just the way he liked them.

Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

A haunting crime story about the broken characters inhabiting yesterday's Brooklyn, this is the new novel from modern master of neo-noir William Boyle. An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights. Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it’s dumb and harmless until it’s too late to think otherwise. Then there’s Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home. Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco, with no real future mapped out—and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror—has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max’s Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max’s safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there. Meanwhile, Bobby’s former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands. A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange. A sense of loss is palpable—what has been lost and what will be lost—and Boyle’s characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions.

Goodfellas meets Thelma and Louise when an unlikely trio of women in New York find themselves banding together to escape the clutches of violent figures from their pasts. After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure. Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey “Wolfie” Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her. When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena’s her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand. But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next. A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself is a screwball noir about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar—and sometimes frightening—world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods.

A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself: A Novel

When a young woman with a sordid past witnesses a murder, she finds herself fascinated by the killer and decides to track him down herself. Amy was once a party girl, but she now lives a lonely life, helping the house-bound to receive communion in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. She stops in at one of the apartments on her route, where Mrs. Epifanio, the elderly woman who lives there, says she hasn’t seen her usual caretaker, Diane, in a few days. Supposedly, Diane has the flu—or so Diane’s son Vincent said when he first dropped by and vanished into Mrs. E’s bedroom to do no-one-knows-what. Amy’s brief interaction with Vincent in the apartment that day sets off warning bells, so she assures Mrs. E that she’ll find out what’s really going on with both him and his mother. She tails Vincent through Brooklyn, eventually following him and a mysterious man out of a local dive bar. At first, the men are only talking as they walk, but then, almost before Amy can register what has happened, Vincent is dead. For reasons she can’t quite understand, Amy finds herself captivated by both the crime she witnessed and the murderer himself. She doesn’t call the cops to report what she’s seen. Instead, she collects the murder weapon from the sidewalk and soon finds herself on the trail of a killer. Character-driven and evocative, The Lonely Witness brings Brooklyn to life in a way only a native can, and opens readers’ eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.

The Lonely Witness: A Novel

An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights. Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home. Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco - with no real future mapped out and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror - has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max's Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max's safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there. Meanwhile, Bobby's former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands. A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange. A sense of loss is palpable - what has been lost and what will be lost - and Boyle's characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions. Praise for William Boyle 'An Elmore Leonard-style caper... funny, touching and exhilarating in all the right places' - Guardian 'Boyle's characters are vividly drawn and painfully real. Fans of literary crime novelists such as George Pelecanos and Richard Price will be highly rewarded' - Publishers Weekly 'Boyle has quietly proven he can take on any number of kinds of crime fiction, from a screwball farce to a hardboiled noir to a heartfelt examination of lonely people whose lives cross' - Crime Reads

Amy Falconettis Leben könnte so einfach sein, seitdem ihre ihre Freundin Alessandra nach Los Angeles weitergezogen ist und sie verlassen hat. Ihre Bartending- und Party-Tage hat sie hinter sich gelassen lebt in einer Souterrain-Wohnung und geht ganz in der Arbeit für die Kirche auf, indem sie alten Menschen betreut, die die Kommunion Zuhause in Anfang nehmen müssen. Wäre da nicht dieser Mord, den sie mit angesehen hat und nicht nur das, sie hat auch die Tatwaffe entwenden und sie gesäubert. Seitdem fühlt sie sich verfolgt. Als auch noch Alessandra und ihr verschollener Vater wieder in ihren Leben auftauchen, ist es vorbei mit dem Glauben daran, dass sie einfach nur ihr Leben zu wechseln braucht, um mehr Ruhe und Zufriedenheit zu finden. Schließlich gibt es da auch noch einen Mörder und eine Zeugin, die lieber nicht die Polizei gerufen, sich vielmehr daran berauscht hat, eine Mitwisserin zu sein. Nicht genug, als der Mörder sie findet, macht er ihr ein Angebot, dass sie nicht abschlagen will.

Kriminalroman

Einsame Zeugin

Tisíce dolarů, vdova po mafiánovi, její vnučka a vysloužilá pornohvězda na útěku před psychopatem s kladivem. Drsný a zároveň svěží černý humor, originální příběh plný nečekaných zvratů a ironických komentářů – tahle knížka potěší fanoušky Quentina Tarantina a vůbec všechny, kteří si potrpí na čtenářskou jízdu plnou krve, násilí, bláznivých nápadů a vtipu.

William Boyle

About

Books

Join the club