As an Italian American family's decades-old secret begins to unravel, they will have to bear the consequences—and face each other—in this thrilling south Brooklyn-set tragic opera of the highest caliber from crime fiction luminary William Boyle. William Boyle is the master of Brooklyn-set crime fiction and Saint of the Narrows Street is his magnum opus. For fans of The Sopranos , Jonathan Lethem, and Dennis Lehane. Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa’s younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa, boiled over with anger and fear, strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot. The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man’s body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, in the late hours of the night, they call upon Sav’s childhood friend—the sweet, loyal Christopher “Chooch” Gardini—to help them, hoping they can trust him to carry a secret like this. Over the vast expanse of the next eighteen years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night. A standout work of character-driven crime fiction from a celebrated author of the form, Saint of the Narrows Street is a searing and richly drawn novel about the choices we make and how they shape our lives. Praise for Saint of the Narrows Street NPR’s Books We Love BookPage ’s Best Historical Fiction of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Mystery/Thriller of the Year BookPage ’s Top 10 Books of the Month A BookBrowse Top Pick A CrimeReads Best Book of the Year Publishers Weekly ’s Spring 2025 Preview Top 10 Mysteries & Thrillers “Boyle captures the essence of noir, pitting inept schemers against the big bad consequences of crimes—both petty and gravely serious. Writing beautifully about good souls trapped in bad situations, Boyle's characters evoke the working-class romantics of Bruce Springsteen, small-time and scrambling for money, love, or answers.” —Lisa Levy, Oprah Daily “This isn’t a crime novel that relies merely on suspense. Rather, we eagerly read Saint of the Narrows Street because of its beautifully rendered characters and haunting sense of place . . . Boyle is able to do what today’s best crime fiction writers do so well — tell a captivating, page-turning thriller, but one defined by its characters and the choices they make, rather than the circumstances into which they have been thrust. This subtle difference blurs any imaginary line between genre and great literature, and results in quiet moments of grace, of pain and love.” — The Washington Post “A heartbreaking tale of loss, anger, grief, poverty, the varying strength of familial bonds and how an accidental death can haunt a family for generations. Boyle is a master at making the ordinary important, the everyday special. A dark novel with a beautiful, broken heart.” —NPR “A potent crime saga with surprising emotional heft.” —Toronto Star “A treasure of a book written by the doyen of American crime fiction . . . illustrate[s] how small dreams can turn into large problems, and good people can get trapped in poverty, hopelessness and violence. William Boyle may well be the most skilled, nuanced and underappreciated American novelist working today.” — Durango Telegraph “Crime with heart is hard to do, and Boyle offers a master class of that here. Intricate, heartfelt, rich, and beautifully written, Saint of the Narrows Street is Boyle’s best novel so far, and that’s saying a lot.” —Gabino Iglesias, CrimeReads “Boyle’s sympathy and understanding for his damaged characters, accented by crisp dialogue, elevate the engrossing plot and show how a place shapes people.” —Oline H. Cogdill, Shelf Awareness “The stunning Saint of the Narrows Street is William Boyle’s best novel yet, a vibrant, operatic tale of two resilient, big-hearted sisters and the fateful night that sets their life on a path they never intended. Not since Richard Price has a writer brought New York to such vivid, spectacular life, and Boyle’s southern Brooklyn is all his own: a neighborhood pulsing with hard-earned humor, dive-bar pleasures and thunderous heartbreak.” —Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Beware the Woman “No one can make the everyday vagaries of life feel like Greek tragedies the way William Boyle can. He effortlessly maps the path of desire that moves through the human heart like burning chrome.” —S.A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed “You don’t read a William Boyle novel as much as you inhabit his intricately drawn world. Saint of the Narrows Stree t is on par with the best of