Live by Night

From Gone, Baby, Gone to Mystic River to Shutter Island to The Given Day, the phenomenal Dennis Lehane has proven himself to be one of the most versatile and exciting novelists working in America today — whether hes breaking new ground with uniquely inventive psychological suspense, redefining the detective story, or bringing a bygone era to life with sweeping and masterful historical fiction. Hes back with Live by Night, an epic, unflinching tale of the making and unmaking of a gangster in the Prohibition Era of the Roaring Twenties.

Meticulously researched and artfully told, Live by Night is the riveting story of one mans rise from Boston petty thief to the Gulf Coasts most successful rum runner, and it proves again that the accolades New York Times bestseller Lehane consistently receives are well deserved. He is indeed, “a master” (Philadelphia Inquirer) whose “true literary forefathers include John Steinbeck as well as Raymond Chandler” (Baltimore Sun). And, “Boy, does he know how to write” (Elmore Leonard).

“Lehane's novel carves its own unique place in the Prohibition landscape....This is an utterly magnetic novel on every level, a reimagining of the great themes of popular fiction — crime, family, passion, betrayal — set against an exquisitely rendered historical backdrop.” Booklist (starred review)

“Masterful....Lehane has created a mature, quintessentially American story that will appeal to readers of literary and crime fiction alike.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Live by Night is Crime Noir 101, as taught by the best of its current practitioners....A sentence-by-sentence pleasure. You are in the hands of an expert. And you'll know it.” Janet Maslin, New York Times

“Live by Night transcends the familiar and assumes an unimpeachable reality of its own....[A] meticulously crafted portrait of our violent national past.” Washington Post Book World

From Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of The Given Day, comes a spellbinding tour de force that brings to life a bygone era when vice was a national virtue

Boston, 1926. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent police captain, has graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt.

Joe's dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream.

Dennis Lehane is the author of ten novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; and Live by Night, as well as Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play. He and his wife, Angie, divide their time between Boston and the Gulf Coast of Florida.