True Organized Crime

Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, and he didn't have to act - he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club. Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minelli....

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. But when David Mockett, a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd’s of London, inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. How had the pirates gotten aboard so easily? And if they wanted to steal the ship and bargain for its return, then why did they destroy it? The questions didn’t add up—and Mockett would never answer them.

In his own words, real life American Gangster Frank Lucas recounts his life as the former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who ran Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Determined to break the Italian mafia’s monopoly over drug smuggling in New York, Frank cut out middlemen and began smuggling heroin into the United States directly from his source in Vietnam using the coffins of dead American soldiers.

Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on earth, with an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad. But it is also misunderstood—less a drug cartel and more a hand-to-mouth organization whose criminal economy is based mostly on small-time extortion schemes and petty drug dealing. Steven Dudley brings listeners inside the nefarious group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and exploitative economic systems, helped foster the gang and sustain it.

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window.

In this gritty New York Times best-seller, the true story of a crooked deal between the FBI and the Irish Mob is exposed. By providing a penetrating look into the mean streets of mid-1970s South Boston, the author shows how two kids from the neighborhood cross paths again years later, ending in the biggest informant scandal in FBI history.

Dr. James Kauffman and his wife, April, were the perfect couple: a respected endocrinologist and a beautiful radio host. But under the surface lurked a world of drugs, sex, and biker gangs. A world Dr. Kauffman would kill to keep secret.

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital centre of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America—addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America...until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed, and the decline of its traditional crime family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi. As a member of New York's feared Colombo Family, Polisi ran the Sinatra Club, an illegal after-hours gambling den that was a magic kingdom of crime and a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters. But the nonstop thrills of Polisi's criminal glory days abruptly ended.

Known for his sharp mind, sharp suits, and bold courtroom strategies, Bronx-native Barry Slotnick is known as the best criminal lawyer in the US. He calls himself “Liberty’s Last Champion.” Slotnick mediates Bette Midler’s bathhouse contract and represents John Gotti, “The Dapper Don.” He defends “Subway Shooter” Bernie Goetz and negotiates future First Lady Melania Trump’s pre-nup. His unparalleled legal brilliance defines a profession, a city—and an era.

"We are the people our parents warned us about" is the motto of the Bandidos, one of the world's most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs. For ten years, Steve Utah was a Bandidos insider. He arranged the security of their clubhouses. He 'cooked' ecstasy and ice for them. He was at meetings where interstate and overseas drug and weapons smuggling was planned. He saw stolen military weapons being sold. He witnessed vicious beatings, helped dump corpses.It all became too much and, in an attempt to regain control of his life, Utah resorted to the unthinkable....

At home, Richard Kuklinski was a dedicated suburban family man; on the street, he was the Iceman, a professional hit man and lethal scam artist, a man so heartless he kept one of his victims frozen for over two years to disguise the time of death. His personal body count was over 100, but the police couldn’t touch him. Then undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. The Iceman chronicles Kuklinski’s grisly career and exposes his murderous double life.

Death stalks America's wildlands. Indiscriminate destroyers of people, wildlife, and the environment, cartel marijuana growers will do anything to supply the black-market demand for weed. HIDDEN WAR, 2nd Edition, exposes this threat, give you a rare, inside glimpse into the operations of specially trained tactical teams with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to infiltrate and take down these groups.

Three very different men battle to control their destinies as they hurtle through the hall of mirrors of the global shadow economy. Each man, born in radically different circumstances in the 1960s, is in his own way grappling with the powerful and unstoppable forces that shape the world around us; forces which topple governments, send refugees fleeing across borders, and put guns in the hands of mercenaries and militias. Each has devoted his whole life to an institution - and each will eventually be destroyed or betrayed by the thing they believe in the most.

Naples et la Campanie sont dominées par la criminalité organisée - la camorra - sur fond de guerre entre clans rivaux et de trafics en tout genre : contrefaçon, armes, drogues et déchets toxiques. C'est ainsi que le Système, comme le désignent ses affiliés, accroît ses profits, conforte sa toute-puissance et se pose en avant-garde criminelle de l'économie mondialisée. Roberto Saviano, au péril de sa vie, a choisi l'écriture pour mener son combat contre la camorra. Il met au jour les structures économiques et territoriales de cette mafia surpuissante.

This is my account of life as a hitman from someone who has been doing it for years. Hitmen commit heinous crimes virtually every day of the week and, in most instances, we don't even realise. I've been a killer for hire for more than 20 years now, but life as a fulltime professional assassin has never been easy. There have been close calls, failed attempts and a lot of looking over my shoulder. And now, I've decided to come clean and seek atonement for my life as a murderer and one of the most covertly dangerous men alive.

Historians have previously glazed over the Mafia's formative years. In this first volume, Ferrante explores its Sicilian roots, before following a cast of larger-than-life characters who arrived as fugitives on American shores. Through these and other lives - including legendary mobsters Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Seigel - Ferrante tells the extraordinary story of the Mafia's rise in America, as they provided alcohol during Prohibition, created the gambling mecca Las Vegas and practically took over the island of Cuba.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force―the yakuza. Saigo, nicknamed “The Tsunami”, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.

Alfonso "Little Al" D'Arco, the former acting boss of the Luchese crime family, was the highest-ranking mobster to ever turn government witness when he flipped in 1991. His decision to flip prompted many others to make the same choice, including John Gotti's top aide, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, and his testimony sent more than fifty mobsters to prison. In Mob Boss, award-winning news reporters Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins team up for this unparalleled account of D'Arco's life.

A sworn member of the Colombo crime family in New York City, Michael Franzese was considered the biggest moneymaker in the mob since Al Capone. At age 35, he was number 18 on Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most wealthy and powerful Mafia bosses in America. But then he did the unthinkable. He quit the mob. Franzese met Camille Garcia, who turned his world upside down with her innocent beauty. He fell in love with her, married her, and began a new life that didn't include the Mafia.