Audiobooks by Pete Hamill

A Killing for Christ, 50th Anniversary Edition

Rome. Holy Thursday. A limousine carrying two pilgrims speeds toward the city. Rail, an American publisher, an obese voluptuary, perspires in the heat and shivers with the icy premonition of death. His companion, Harwell, is running a cold fever of bigotry and violence, self-indulgence and sadism: he is an American Nazi. The two must separate soon, must not be seen together, for they are to be the instruments of a public murder.Rail meets Father Malloy, who is to show him around the city. Malloy had been a chaplain in Vietnam, and he had seen too many people die. He is not aware of the murder Rail carries with him. This is to be a murder of world-shaking consequence. It is a plot on a grand scale, conceived by men of secret power: a sin-crazed, aging cardinal and a powerful Italian count. For them, Rail and Harwell are only acolytes in a monstrous ceremony; Malloy, awash in doubts about himself and his religious faith, is drawn into the drama.In A Killing for Christ, Pete Hamill steps behind the public face of the modern Church and sees the dark grottoes within. He examines the hidden hearts of priests and prostitutes, the tortured windings of perverted thinking, the orgies of the bored and the bitter. Within the passage of the four days most holy to the Church, he traces the malignant progress of a blasphemous conspiracy to the taut moment of its ultimate act and redeems from it a unique understanding of man and of faith.

Pete Hamill (Author), Keith Szarabajka, Keith Szarabajka (Narrator)

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Why Sinatra Matters: Anniversary Edition

In honor of Sinatra's 100th birthday, Pete Hamill's classic tribute returns with a new introduction by the author. 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. With a new look and a new introduction by Hamill, this is a rich and touching portrait that lingers like a beautiful song.

Pete Hamill (Author), Joe Knezevich (Narrator)

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The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories

"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.

Pete Hamill (Author), Henry Leyva (Narrator)

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Tabloid City: A Novel

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.

Pete Hamill (Author), Ellen Archer, Peter Ganim (Narrator)

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North River

In North River, critically acclaimed, best-selling author Pete Hamill whisks listeners back to 1934'when the Great Depression held New York City in its relentless grip'for a story of one remarkable man's perseverance. Haunted by the horrors of World War I, Dr. James Delaney's personal life is a nightmare. But everything changes when he returns home one day to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep.

Pete Hamill (Author), Henry Strozier (Narrator)

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The Guns of Heaven

On a visit to Northern Ireland, newspaper reporter Sam Briscoe meets with a mysterious IRA leader and agrees to deliver an envelope to his supporters in New York City. It’s a decision with grave consequences—not just for Briscoe, but for his eleven-year-old daughter as well. Because the bloody Irish conflict is about to come to the streets of New York, and Briscoe is the only man standing in its way. “Though first released twenty-three years ago, it’s only dated by its villains, not its prose, subject matter, or Christian Conn’s delivery…Conn’s performance refreshes the thriller.”--AudioFile

Pete Hamill (Author), Christian Conn (Narrator)

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Downtown: My Manhattan

In Downtown, Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to 42nd Street, combining a moving memoir of his days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places and people. From the Battery's traces of the early port to Washington Square's ghosts of executed convicts and well-heeled Knickerbockers; from the Five Points, once the most dangerous and squalid slum in America, to the mansions of the robber barons on "the Fifth Avenue"; from the Bowery of the 1860s, the vibrant heart of the city's theater world, to the Village of the 1960s, with its festival-like street life, this is downtown as we've never seen it before. Hamill weaves his own memories of Manhattan with the liveliest moments from its past, and points out the hints of that past living on in the city of today, fueling the ever-present nostalgia of its inhabitants.Hamill introduces us to the New Yorkers who have left indelible marks: Peter Stuyvesant and John Jacob Astor, Stanford White and George Templeton Strong, Edith Wharton and Henry James, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, W. H. Auden and Allen Ginsberg, Boss Tweed and Fiorello La Guardia, Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk, and scores of others. And he takes us to the eateries, saloons, theaters, movie houses, bookstores, and street corners they, and he, once frequented, whether still standing or existing only in memory. Through the city's transformations, the pulse of Pete Hamill's brilliant voice melds with the pulse that drives New York, that mixture of daring, greed, anger, rebellion, hope, entrepreneurialism, and longing that never fades. Written by native son who has lived through some of New York City's most historic moments, Downtown is an extraordinary celebration of the magnificent, haunted place that Hamill continues to call home, and that people from all over the country and the world have come to call their own.

Pete Hamill (Author), Pete Hamill (Narrator)

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Forever

This is the magical, epic tale of Cormac O'Connor, who arrives in New York City form Ireland in 1741 and remains, well, forever. For Cormac has been given the gift of immortality, but only on the conditoin that he never leave the island of Manhattan. Through Cormac's eyes, we watch the city transform from a burgeoning settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the romantic, gaslit world of Edith Wharton's time, and finally to the pulsing, thriving metropolis of the present day. This is also Cormac's story, as he explores the mysteries of time and immortality, death and loss, sex and love. Though his life is proof of enduring magic, the living of it takes place in a world that can be gloriously, or terribly, real.

Pete Hamill (Author), Stevie Ray Dallimore (Narrator)

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Pete Hamill on Eddie Stanky

It's a cold spring day in 1944. A young Pete Hamill is with his father watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Boston Braves. The wartime teams are just dismal - many major league players are serving their country and the teams have been clogged with has-beens and guys that are 4-F. But Pete's father tells him to "watch this little guy." His name is Eddie Stanky. An ex-soccer player, Stanky bounced around the minor leagues until getting the call to the majors. He was small, but played with intensity. He risked beanings by crouching over the plate. He slid hard into second base to break up the double play. Instead of hitting home runs, he'd draw a walk, and then steal second. He wasn't a great player, but his intangibles made him stand out. Eddie Stanky represents the twilight of Hamill's youth and his growing appreciation of his father through his admiration of Stanky. A time before Jackie Robinson; before the hated Giants and before the demise of Ebbets Field. This story will appeal not only to baseball fans, but to anyone who has rooted for the underdog.

Pete Hamill (Author), Pete Hamill (Narrator)

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