Audiobooks by Beth Raymer

Fireworks Every Night: A Novel

"A young woman trapped in a deeply dysfunctional family in the seedy wilds of 1990s South Florida has to make a choice-save her family, or save herself-in this "riveting" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) novel from the acclaimed author of Lay the Favorite.   "Marvelous . . . a hopelessly funny, rueful account of [a] hair-raising childhood . . . a true heroine for tough times."-People (Book of the Week) A Jennette McCurdy Book Club Pick • An Oprah Daily Best Book of the Year "Florida, we got it all. Motor sports, ribs, beer. You can drive on the sand right on up to the ocean. Fireworks every night."   That's how twelve-year-old C.C.'s father, who named her after his beloved Canadian Club whiskey, describes the appeal of their new home. The man is a born grifter, a used-car salesman who burned down his dealership in southern Ohio for enough insurance money to set up a life for himself, his wife, and his two young daughters in a place he picked largely at random, because the living seemed easy.   C.C.'s mother is thirty-five going on seventeen, a housewife who just wants to drive a Mustang and hang out at the mall. C.C.'s sister goes from being a sweet, cheerful pre-teen to having a full-on drug addiction and listening only to heavy metal, after enduring forms of abuse within her family. In the midst of this chaos, C.C. is trying to stay afloat and make it out-to achieve some semblance of a stable life in America while coming up against the structural and cultural challenges of growing up in poverty.   This tumultuous coming-of-age novel features an unforgettable protagonist, a character who narrates her life story with dark comedy and compassion for her family, even as she is failed by them. Those failures-and her self-taught methods for succeeding anyway-are the backbone of this surprisingly poignant story about hard bargains, family loyalties, and the grit of a woman determined to create a better life for herself than the one she was born into."

Beth Raymer (Author), Rachel Jacobs (Narrator)

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Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling

"An eye-popping and hilarious joyride through the underworld of sports betting   Beth Raymer arrived in Las Vegas in 2001, hoping to land a job as a cocktail waitress at one of the big casinos. In the meantime, she lived in a $17-a-night motel with her dog, Otis, and waited tables at a low-rent Thai restaurant. One day, one of her regular customers told her about a job she thought Beth would be perfect for and sent her to see Dink, of Dink Inc. Dink was a professional sports gambler-one of the biggest in Vegas. He was looking for a right-hand man-someone who would show up on time, who had a head for numbers, and who didn't steal. She got the job. Lay the Favorite is the story of Beth Raymer's years in the high-stakes, high-anxiety world of sports betting-a period that saw the fall of the local bookie and the rise of the freewheeling, unregulated offshore sports book, and with it the elevation of sports betting in popular culture. As the business explodes, Beth rises-from assistant to expert, trusted and seasoned enough to open an offshore booking office in the Caribbean with a few associates, men who leave their families up north to make a quick killing, while donning new tropical personas fueled by abundant drugs and local girlfriends, and who one by one succumb to their vices. They lie, cheat, steal, and run, until Beth is the last man standing. Beth Raymer is a natural storyteller: funny, charming, and fully awake to the ironies around her. But she is also a keen and compassionate observer of the adrenaline-addicted, rougish types who become her mentors, her enemies, her family. Raymer brings to life a world that teems with pathos and ecstasy in this wild picaresque that also tells the story of a young woman's crazy, sexy, most unlikely coming-of-age."

Beth Raymer (Author), Phoebe Zimmermann (Narrator)

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