Jared Chiziver is a single father and professional pick-pocket, devotee of Jean-Paul Belmondo and foreign films, and a suave ladies' man. His son Ben is sixteen, a bookish semi-introvert, a star on his school's track team, college bound and gay. Their unusual but quiet and affectionate life in New York City's Greenwich Village is ripped asunder by two singular events. First, Jared finally meets 'the one,' Anna, a photographer of criminals and death scenes - a woman he finds endless engaging. Second, in response to a brutal attack upon his son Ben, Jared breaks his own cardinal rule and commits the big crime, the one that draws the unflinching attention of the police. The only response possible to these events is to leave New York one step ahead of the police and embark upon a journey of both escape and discovery that will irrevocably change their lives. Told from the point of view of the too-wise and too-adult Ben, Belmondo Style is an unforgettable tale which movingly explores the bonds between an unusual father and a remarkable son.

Belmondo Style

Berlin, Adam

Literature & Fiction

St.Martin's Press

The Number of Missing

In the months after 9/11 David and Mel meet to drink, give each other comfort and reminisce about Paul--Mel's husband and David's best friend.   The memories are not all good for David.  Before Paul died in the north tower, the two friends fought, brutally questioning each other's lives.  Fueled by anger and grief and too much alcohol, David stumbles through the city while holding onto a silent promise made to a dead friend: he will wait for Mel to fall so he can catch her. 

Contemporary

Spuyten Duyvil

A powerful debut novel. --Booklist, starred review
"The crowded bar had made space an I could hear other people screaming byt no one came near me. It was a smaller circle than the one I had wrestled in but it was a circle and I went to work. I turned him around and pulled him to me, put a half nelson on him, forced his neck down. The circle opened up. There was a free space at the bar and I drove him forward, drove his face into the side of the bar. I moved my hand down his back and between his legs, picked him up and held him there, feeling his weight above my head, feeling the power in my muscles and I threw him to the floor. I wiped my shoe across the blood, lifted my foot and brought it down and brought it down, triumphant, foot on the back of a fallen opponent like a classical statue, like in the pictures my college wrestling coach showed the team at the beginning of each new season. White marble figures graceful in victory." --from Headlock

Headlock

United States

Algonquin Books

Adam Berlin's The Standing Eight points beyond boxing and goes to those between-round places where an eight count is both reprieve and curse.

The Standing Eight

Poetry

Finishing Line Press

Billy Carlyle is a professional fighter starting to lose. His eyes cut too easily and his friends—Gabriel, an aspiring actor, and Sam, an artist preparing for her first gallery show—try to persuade Billy to leave the ring. From the streets of Manhattan to the gyms of Paris, from struggling with hard pasts to harnessing the primal pull, Both Members of the Club is a story of friendship and ambition and violence set against the world of boxing, a place where bodies get tested and truths are exposed. “This astonishingly personal and touching account of a trio of friends who have emerged from a parentless, family-less childhood to form a lifetime bond is reminiscent of the best of short fiction from the previous century. The narrator and narrative voice of the story is compelling and fascinating, and the two principal characters who round out this small circle are driven by such a power of love and mutual responsibility that it’s moving in almost every way. It’s a stunning story that resonates long after the last page is turned.”—Clay Reynolds

Both Members of the Club: A Novella

Texas Review Press