#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The extraordinary true story of four men who take the law into their own hands.   This is the story of four young boys. Four lifelong friends. Intelligent, fun-loving, wise beyond their years, they are inseparable. Their potential is unlimited, but they are content to live within the closed world of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. And to play as many pranks as they can on the denizens of the street. They never get caught. And they know they never will.   Until one disastrous summer afternoon.   On that day, what begins as a harmless scheme goes horrible wrong. And the four find themselves facing a year’s imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys. The oldest of them is fifteen, the youngest twelve. What happens to them over the course of that year—brutal beatings, unimaginable humiliation—will change their lives forever.   Years later, one has become a lawyer. One a reporter. And two have grown up to be murderers, professional hit men. For all of them, the pain and fear of Wilkinson still rages within. Only one thing can erase it.   Revenge.   To exact it, they will twist the legal system. Commandeer the courtroom for their agenda. Use the wiles they observed on the streets, the violence they learned at Wilkinson.   If they get caught this time, they only have one thing left to lose: their lives.   Praise for Sleepers   “Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story . . . Sleepers is a thriller, to be sure, but it is equally a wistful hymn to another age.” — The Washington Post Book World   “A powerful book, hard to forget . . . Carcaterra is an excellent writer, changing pace here and there but never letting the reader go. . . . Sensitive, humorous, and harrowing, featuring dialogue with perfect pitch.” —The Denver Post “A gut-wrenching piece of work . . . [Lorenzo] Carcaterra’s graphic narrative grips like gunfire in a dark alley.” — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A terrifying account of brutality and retribution, searing in its emotional truth, peopled with murderers, sadists, and thugs, but biblical in its passion and scope.” — People “ Sleepers  is so many things: a Dickensian portrait of coming of age in Hell’s Kitchen, a terrifying and heartbreaking account of the brutalization of youth, a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—climax worthy of the finest suspense novel. A brilliant, troubling, important book.” —Jonathan Kellerman “Compelling.” — USA Today “A riveting story delicious with revenge . . . Carcaterra mixes horror, laughter, and pathos to show that justice, like love, is in the eye of the beholder.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Lorenzo Carcaterra is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sleepers, A Safe Place, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, Midnight Angels, and The Wolf . He is a former writer/producer for Law & Order and has written for National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Maxim. He lives in New York City with Gus, his Olde English Bulldogge, and is at work on his next novel. Summer 1963   1   LABOR DAY WEEKEND always signaled the annual go-cart race across the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, the mid-Manhattan neighborhood where I was born in 1954 and lived until 1969.   Preparations for the race began during the last two weeks of August, when my three best friends and I would hide away inside our basement clubhouse, in a far corner of a run-down 49th Street tenement, constructing, painting, and naming our racer, which we put together from lifted lumber and stolen parts. A dozen carts and their teams were scheduled to assemble early on Labor Day morning at the corner of 50th Street and Tenth Avenue, each looking to collect the $15 first-prize money that would be presented to the winner by a local loan shark.   In keeping with Hell’s Kitchen traditions, the race was run without rules.   It never lasted more than twenty minutes and covered four side streets and two avenues, coming to a finish on the 12th Avenue end of the West Side Highway. Each go-cart had a four-man team attached, one inside and three out. The three pushed for as long and as hard as they could, fighting off the hand swipes and blade swings of the opponents who came close. The pushing stopped at the top of the 50th Street hill, leaving the rest of the race to the driver. Winners and losers crossed the finish clothesline scraped and bloody, go-carts often in pieces, driver’s hands burned by ropes. Few of us wore gloves or helmets, and there was never money for knee or elbow pads. We kept full plastic water bottles tied to the sides of our carts, the fastest way to cool off hot feet and burning wheels.   The runt of the litter among my team, I always drove.     JOHN REILLY AND Tommy Marcano were spreading black paint onto thick slabs of dirty wood with color-by-number brushes.   John was eleven years old, a dark-haired, dark-eyed