Westside: A Novel Audiobook (Free)

“Superb . his research is excellent . . . his prose sharply crystalline.” — NY Times Publication Review

“The Alienist fits The City & The City in this outstanding debut that mixes illusion and mystery. Gilda Carr’s ‘small mysteries’ pack a huge punch.’ –David Morrell, NY Times bestselling author of Murder As an excellent Art

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A young detective who specializes in “tiny mysteries” finds herself at the center of a massive conspiracy with this beguiling historical fantasy set on Manhattan’s about Westside: A Novel Westside-a peculiar and dangerous neighborhood real estate to strange magic and stranger residents-that blends the vivid atmosphere of Caleb Carr using the imaginative power of Neil Gaiman.

It’s 1921, and a thirteen-mile fence jogging the space of Broadway splits the island of Manhattan, separating the prosperous Eastside from the Westside-an overgrown wasteland whose hostility to modern tools offers it the flavor of old NY. Thousands have vanished here, and the respectable have fled, leaving behind the killers, thieves, poets, painters, drunks, and the ones as well poor or desperate to leave.

It really is a hellish surroundings, and Gilda Carr proudly phone calls it home.

Slightly built, yet having a will of iron, Gilda follows in the footsteps of her later father, a police detective turned private eye. Unlike that larger-than-life man, Gilda solves tiny mysteries: the difficult puzzles that keep us awake during the night; the tiny riddles that ruin us; the questions that spoil marriages, mess up friendships, and curdle joy. Those tiny situations distract her from her grief, and the main one impossible query she knows she can’t reply: “How did my father pass away?”

Yet on Gilda’s Westside, tiny mysteries result in blood-even the situation of the missing white leather glove. Mrs. Copeland, a well-to-do Eastside housewife, hires Gilda to think it is before her irascible product owner husband learns it really is eliminated. When Gilda witnesses Mr. Copeland’s murder at a Westside pier, she discovers herself sinking right into a mire of bootlegging, smuggling, corruption-and an bad too dark to face.

All she desires is to get one dainty women’ glove. She doesn’t want to know why this vendor was on the wrong side of town-or why he was murdered in cool blood. But as she starts to see the connection between his murder, her father’s loss of life, as well as the darkness plaguing the Westside, she faces the hard truth: she must conserve her city or pass away with it.

Introducing a really remarkable female detective, Westside is certainly a mystery steeped in the supernatural and shot through with gunfights, rotgut whiskey, and sizzling Dixieland jazz. Full of dazzling color, wonderful twists, and truly thrilling action, it announces the arrival of a wonderful new talent.