Audiobooks by Matt Burgess

Uncle Janice

On any given day, Janice Itwaru might be found trolling the streets of Queens for drugs. Janice is an "uncle"-an undercover narcotics officer-trying to meet the impossibly high quota of drug busts needed to make detective, or be sent back down to uniformed patrol. So Janice is out there in her secondhand hoochie skirt, trying to get potential drug dealers-criminals, addicts, dumb kids, whomever-to commit a felony on her behalf. Other days are spent in the "Rumpus Room" at the precinct, trying to keep up with the bantering lies and inventively cruel pranks of her fellow uncles while coping with the insane demands of the big bosses. With an ailing mother at home, her cover nearly blown, four more buys to get her gold shield and rumors circulating that Internal Affairs has her unit under surveillance, Janice is running very short on luck as her quota deadline approaches. Now she has to decide which evil to confront: the faceless bureaucrats at One Police Plaza, or the violent drug dealers who may already be onto her identity. Bursting with the glorious chaos of the streets of New York, Uncle Janice is an uproariously funny portrait of how undercover cops really talk and act, and a compelling story of their crazy, dangerous and often nonsensical lives.

Matt Burgess (Author), Rachel Fulginiti (Narrator)

Audiobook

Play Sample Listen For Free

Dogfight, A Love Story

What Jonathan Lethem did for Brooklyn, Matt Burgess does for Queens in this exuberant and brilliant debut novel about a young drug dealer having a very bad weekend. Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose—sorry, Tariq—is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq's ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq's violent streak is probably #1 worry on Alfredo's list. Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight. Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An -glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess's incredible ear for language—the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love. With a story as intricately plotted as a Shakespearean comedy—or revenge tragedy, for that matter—and an electrically colloquial prose style, Dogfight, a Love Story establishes Matt Burgess as an exuberant new voice in contemporary literature. The great Queens novel has arrived.

Matt Burgess (Author), Ozzie Rodriguez (Narrator)

Audiobook

Play Sample Listen For Free