As a child during the Depression and World War II, Pete Hamill learned early that drinking was an essential part of being a man, inseparable from the rituals of celebration, mourning, friendship, romance, and religion. Only later did he discover its ability to destroy any writer's most valuable tools: clarity, consciousness, memory. In *A Drinking Life*, Hamill explains how alcohol slowly became a part of his life, and how he ultimately left it behind. Along the way, he summons the mood of an America that is gone forever, with the bittersweet fondness of a lifelong New Yorker

New York's punchiest borough asserts its criminal legacy with all new stories from a magnificent set of today's best writers. Brooklyn Noir moves from Coney Island to Bedford-Stuyvesant to Bay Ridge to Red Hook to Bushwick to Sheepshead Bay to Park Slope and far deeper, into the heart of Brooklyn's historical and criminal largesse, with all of its dark splendor. Each contributor presents a brand new story set in a distinct neighborhood. Brooklyn Noir mixes masters of the mystery genre with the best of New York's literary fiction community-and, of course, leaves room for new blood. These brilliant and chilling stories see crime striking in communities of Russians, Jamaicans, Hasidic Jews, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Irish and many other ethnicities-in the most diverse urban location on the planet. Contributors include Pete Hamill, Nelson George, Sidney Offit, Arthur Nersesian, Pearl Abraham, Ellen Miller, Maggie Estep, Adam Mansbach, C. J. Sullivan, Chris Niles, Norman Kelley, and many others

Brooklyn Noir is back with a vengeance, this time with the masters of yore: H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and more!

No suspense collection is complete without this anthology. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the stories in this volume represent many of the biggest names in detective and suspense fiction: Ellery Queen, Harold Q. Masur, Celia Fremlin, Jack Ritchie, Patricia Highsmith and Bill Pronzini are only a few of the prize-winning authors in this amazing volume

Moving from Ireland to New York City in 1741, Cormac O’Connor witnesses the city’s transformation into a thriving metropolis while he explores the mysteries of time, loss, and love. By the author of Snow in August and A Drinking Life. Reprint. 100,000 first printing

It was 1953. A time of innocence. A time when the world seemed full of possibilities. And all the rules were about to change.Michael was a streetwise Brooklyn boy heading south to join the Navy and become a man. But he was about to learn more about life than he's ever imagined. Eden was beautiful, mysterious — the perfect instructor in the art of making love, in sexual pleasure and in courage. But her past was full of dangerous secrets that would haunt her forever. LOVING WOMEN is an unforgettable novel of honor and passion, heartbreak and desire, and one man's coming of age PRAISE FOR LOVING WOMEN AND PETE HAMILL “…{LOVING WOMEN has} one of those rare things in novels, a perfect voice,which enables Mr. Hamill to be both wryly wise and heartbreakingly innocent,often on the same page.” —New York Times Book Review “Mr. Hamill writes with passion…” —New York Times “…a journey into memory and nostalgia…a warm and winning novel.” —Washington Post Book World “…veteran journalist Hamill's…novel is told with such emotional urgency and pictorial vividness that it has the flavor of a well-liked old story rediscovered…he invests real passion, narrative energy, and fondly remembered detail in this novel, and it pays off.” —Publishers Weekly “Compulsively readable but unabashedly romantic…Generous, erotic, melodramatic…Hamill, engines on full, conjures up great sweeps of emotion anchored by impeccable period detail and a cast of memorable, true characters. A novel you'll settle in with, and will be sorry to see end.” —Kirkus Reviews “Hamill's writing is tough, immediate, funny, filled with vivid,breathtaking characters, and propelled by a fierce sense of time, place, and unbridled macho desire. A major effort by a major talent.” —Booklist “…a touching, nostalgic embrace of a novel.” —Los Angeles Times “Hamill displays his talent for getting inside all types of people…eerily evocative.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It is 1934, and New York City is in the icy grip of the Great Depression. With enormous compassion, Dr. James Delaney tends to his hurt, sick, and poor neighbors, who include gangsters, day laborers, prostitutes, and housewives. If they can’t pay, he treats them anyway. But in his own life, Delaney is emotionally numb, haunted by the slaughters of the Great War. His only daughter has left for Mexico, and his wife Molly vanished months before, leaving him to wonder if she is alive or dead. Then, on a snowy New Year’s Day, the doctor returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney’s care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as Rose and the boy begin to care for the good doctor, the numbness in Delaney begins to melt. Recreating 1930s New York with the vibrancy and rich detail that are his trademarks, Pete Hamill weaves a story of hon…

In a new volume of journalistic essays, the eclectic author of A Drinking Life offers sharp commentary on diverse subjects, such as American immigration policy toward Mexico, Mike Tyson, television, crack, Northern Ireland and Octavio Paz

In the year 1947, Michael Devlin, eleven years old and 100 percent American-Irish, is about to forge an extraordinary bond with a refugee of war named Rabbi Judah Hirsch. Standing united against a common enemy, they will summon from ancient sources a power in desperately short supply in modern Brooklyn — a force that’s forgotten by most of the world but is known to believers as magic

In a stately West Village townhouse, a wealthy socialite and her secretary are murdered. In the 24 hours that follow, a flurry of activity circles around their shocking deaths: The head of one of the city’s last tabloids stops the presses. A cop investigates the killing. A reporter chases the story. A disgraced hedge fund manager flees the country. An Iraq War vet seeks revenge. And an angry young extremist plots a major catastrophe. The City is many things: a proving ground, a decadent playground, or a palimpsest of memories- a historic metropolis eclipsed by modern times. As much a thriller as it is a gripping portrait of the city of today, TABLOID CITY is a new fiction classic from the writer who has captured it perfectly for decades

“Hamill, a master raconteur, mines his own roots in this enchanting new anthology.” —New York Times Pete Hamill’s collected stories about Brooklyn present a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming with nostalgia-for the world after the war, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, and even, for some, the years of Prohibition and the Depression. THE CHRISTMAS KID is vintage Hamill. Set in the borough where he was born and raised, it is a must-read for his many fans, for all who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was

The best USA-based stories in the Akashic noir series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!

In this unique homage to an American icon, journalist and award-winning author Pete Hamill evokes the essence of Sinatra-examining his art and his legend from the inside, as only a friend of many years could do. Shaped by Prohibition, the Depression, and war, Francis Albert Sinatra became the troubadour of urban loneliness. With his songs, he enabled millions of others to tell their own stories, providing an entire generation with a sense of tradition and pride belonging distinctly to them. From Publishers Weekly Like a musical Elements of Style, Hamill’s slim meditation on Frank Sinatra is confident, smart and seamless. Since (and immediately before) Sinatra’s death in May 1998, countless tributes have been made to the singer; Hamill (A Drinking Life) seems to be writing to set the record straight, for he knew Sinatra and, before that, knew the singer’s music. But Hamill doesn’t fawn over Sinatra the way other, younger writers have recently done. Rather, he elegantly tells the Sinatra story, dwelling on the singer’s best recordings, dismissing “the Rat Pack, the swagger, the arrogance, the growing fortune, the courtiers,” because in the end, he writes, they are “of little relevance.” What matters, according to Hamill, is the music, chiefly that of Sinatra’s early mature years, when the singer released his celebrated albums on the Capitol label. Where a starry-eyed author might vaguely praise these albums for their pathos and vulnerability, Hamill points out that, before the singer’s Capitol comeback years, Sinatra’s fans were almost exclusively young women. The stubborn, post-Ava Gardner heartache of Sinatra’s later records, however, with their lack of self-pity, gained Sinatra a chiefly male audience. Of this, perhaps the singer’s greatest musical period, Hamill writes that Sinatra “perfected the role of the Tender Tough Guy… Before him, that archetype did not exist in American popular culture.” That may be true, but Hamill sets his book apart from the many others about Old Blue Eyes by tempering intelligent superlatives with the retelling of touching, revelatory moments the two men shared. Hamill’s is a definitive introduction to Sinatra’s work. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The barrage of recent Frank Sinatra books has resulted in his being the most written-about celebrity in the world after Monroe and Presley. Hamill’s slim essay is distinguished from other recent works by its objective focus on the components of the late singer’s enduring musical legacy. Veteran writer Hamill (e.g., A Drinking Life, LJ 1/94) is comfortable in the New York City milieu of late nights, saloons, and prizefighters, and he has captured the essence of Sinatra, who created something that was not there before he arrived: an urban American voice. The book’s strength is its insight into and evocation of the Italian American immigrant experience that had such a strong influence on Sinatra. Minor weaknesses are an oversimplified examination of prejudice and an underdeveloped 1974 vignette about Ava Gardner that fails to make its point. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Bruce Henson, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc