William Boyle has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself.
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself
Summary
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 80-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 listeners into the familiar - and sometimes frightening - world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods.
©2018 William Boyle (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
Gravesend
Summary
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 16 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.
©2018 Pegasus (P)2019 TalkingBook
The Lonely Witness
Summary
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 listeners' eyes to the harsh realities of crime and punishment on the city streets.
©2018 Pegasus Books (P)2019 The Talking Book