From Karen Gravano, a star of the hit VH1 reality show Mob Wives, comes a revealing memoir of a mafia childhood, where love and family come hand-in-hand with murder and betrayal. Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With nineteen confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss—and John Gotti’s right-hand man—is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn State’s evidence and testify against members of his high-profile crime family.  But to Karen, Sammy Gravano was a sometimes elusive but always loving father figure.  He was ever-present at the head of the dinner table.  He made a living running a construction firm and several nightclubs.  He stayed out late, and sometimes he didn’t come home at all.  He hosted “secret” meetings at their house, and had countless whispered conversations with “business associates.” By the age of twelve, Karen knew he was a gangster.  And as she grew up, while her peers worried about clothes and schoolwork, she was coming face-to-face with crime and murder.  Gravano was nineteen years old when her father turned his back on the mob and cooperated with the Feds.  The fabric of her family was ripped apart, and they were instantly rejected by the communities they grew up in.This is the story of a daughter’s struggle to reconcile the image of her loving father with that of a murdering Mafioso, and how, in healing the rift between the two, she was able to forge a new life.

A true account of the author's drug dealing past that turned into trumped up organized crime charges over a bad business deal with the fabricator of Custom Craft Harley Davidson's.Another true account of how the corrupt California Prison Union used terror tactics with then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger relating to the 3 Strikes Law. Harvard lawyer Daniel Morris has since confirmed it with, "A shameful lie."Roll Call is a true prison story with a cast of characters that include Mexican drug cartels, Southern California street gangs and Hell's Angels all fighting for their piece of the drug culture. In the middle of it all, B.J. is hell bent for destruction until he realizes his destiny in the nick of time. Add a good detective squeezed out of the loop by an overzealous narcotic detective; a robust prison union trying to call the shots; a handful of drug criminals trying to find their conscience and you have the perfect recipe for a revolutionary uprising, bound by blood, all leaving the reader wondering, who are the real criminals?

The true story of the largest homegrown marijuana syndicate in American history, a band of Kentucky farmers descended from Prohibition-era moonshiners versus the War on Drugs.

The riveting account of former head of Massachusetts State Police Thomas J. Foley’s twenty-year pursuit of murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger—and of Foley’s key role in exposing the FBI’s protection of Bulger’s criminal empire. On June 23, 2011, James “Whitey” Bulger, fugitive Boston mob boss, #1 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, was arrested after sixteen years on the lam. Incredibly, it was a member of the FBI who originally tipped off Bulger to his impending arrest, undoing nearly two decades of painstaking investigation by a small band of state police officers. Most Wanted is the story of the campaign, led by Massachusetts State Police Col. Thomas J. Foley, to bring down America’s most brutal crime boss and the painful discovery that Bulger was actually an FBI informant, a rat providing inside information about rivals and witnesses—some of whom wound up dead—in exchange for protection. And in many instances, the man the FBI was protecting Bulger from was Tom Foley, effectively derailing Foley's efforts time and again. For Foley, life was a double chase: he was going after Whitey while the FBI was going after him. Most Wanted follows the tale as it unfolded, event by event, each one contributing to the deepening truth: that the despicable mendacity of Whitey Bulger was matched only by the terrible corruption of the FBI agents who made his crimes possible. 

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect's women. Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young. Once she was married, Wall's childhood shattered as she was obligated to follow Jeffs's directives and submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." With little money and no knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed. Yet even in those bleak times, she retained a sliver of hope that one day she would find a way out, and one snowy night that came in the form of a rugged stranger named Lamont Barlow. Their chance encounter set in motion a friendship and eventual romance that gave her the strength she needed to break free from her past and sever the chains of the church. But though she was out of the FLDS, Wall would still have to face Jeffs—this time in court. In Stolen Innocence, she delves into the difficult months on the outside that led her to come forward against him, working with prosecutors on one of the biggest criminal cases in Utah's history, so that other girls still inside the church might be spared her cruel fate. More than a tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.

Killing Pablo is the story of the fifteen-month manhunt for Colombian cocaine cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, whose escape from his lavish, mansionlike jail drove a nation to the brink of chaos. In a gripping, up-close account, acclaimed journalist Mark Bowden exposes the never-before-revealed details of how U.S. military and intelligence operatives covertly led the mission to find and kill the world's most dangerous outlaw. Drawing on unprecedented access to the soldiers, field agents, and officials involved in the chase, as well as hundreds of pages of top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden creates a narrative that reads as if it were torn from the pages of a Tom Clancy technothriller. Killing Pablo also tells the story of Escobar's rise, how he built a criminal organization that would hold an entire nation hostage -- and the stories of the intrepid men who would ultimately bring him down. There is Steve Jacoby, the leader of Centra Spike, the ultrasecret U.S. special forces team that would use cutting-edge surveillance technology to find one man among a nation of 37 million. There is Morris Busby, U.S. ambassador to Colombia, who would convince the Bush administration to approve the deployment of the shadowy Delta Force operators who would be the key to the drug lord's demise. And there is Escobar's archenemy, Col. Hugo Martinez, the leader of Colombia's federal police, who would turn down a $6 million bribe, survive countless attempts on his life, and endure a humiliating exile while waging his battle against the drug lord's criminal empire. It was Martinez's son, raised in the shadow of constant threat from Escobar's followers, who would ultimately track the fugitive to a Medellin rooftop on the fateful day in 1993 when the outlaw would finally meet his end. Action-packed and unputdownable, Killing Pablo is a tour de force of narrative journalism and a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world.

The boss of New York's infamous Lucchese crime family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso's life in the Mafia was preordained from birth. His rare talent for "earning"—concocting ingenious schemes to hijack trucks, rob banks, and bring vast quantities of drugs into New York—fueled his unstoppable rise up the ladder of organized crime. A mafioso responsible for at least fifty murders, Casso lived large, with a beautiful wife and money to burn. When the law finally caught up with him in 1994, Casso became the thing he hated most—an informer. From his blood feud with John Gotti to his dealings with the "Mafia cops," decorated NYPD officers Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to the Windows case, which marked the beginning of the end for the New York Mob, Gaspipe is Anthony Casso's shocking story—a roller-coaster ride into an exclusive netherworld that reveals the true inner workings of the Mafia, from its inception to the present time.

What do you do when the law wants you behind bars and the New York crime families want you buried? That was the life and death dilemma confronting Andrew DiDonato, who began his criminal career at the age of 14 under the watchful eyes of the local mob. By the time he was 17, the infamous Gambino family made DiDonato an associate of the Nicholas Corozzo crew. For the next 14 years, he was a loyal street soldier. But by 1996, DiDonato had run afoul of both the law and his friends, turning him into a hunted man on two fronts. Surviving the Mob is a cautionary tale of the harsh reality of a criminal, inmate, fugitive, and witness who, so far, has lived to tell the tale.

This biography of celebrity gangster Mickey Cohen digs past the sensational headlines to deliver a remarkable story of a man who captivated, corrupted, and terrorized Los Angeles for a generation.When Bugsy Siegel was murdered, his henchman Mickey Cohen took over the criminal activity in Los Angeles. Mickey Cohen attained such power and dominance from the late 1940s until 1976 that he was a regular above-the-fold newspaper name, accumulating a remarkable count of more than 1,000 front-pages in Los Angeles papers alone, and was featured in hundreds of articles in national and international periodicals. His story and the history of mid-century L.A. are inextricably intertwined.Mickey Cohen is a seductive, premium-octane blend of true crime and Hollywood that spins around a wildly eccentric mob boss. Author Tere Tereba delivers tales of high life, high drama, and highly placed politicians, among them RFK and Richard Nixon, as well as revelations about countless icons, including Shirley Temple, Lana Turner, Frank Sinatra, and the Reverend Billy Graham. Meticulously researched, this rich tapestry presents a complete look at the Los Angeles underworld.

The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it part of a worldwide shadow economy that threatens Mexico’s democracy? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, and lots of money at the problem. But in secret, Washington is at a loss. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico’s democracy? What is El Narco?El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands, from bullet-riddled barrios to marijuana-covered mountains. The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond). In this "propulsive … high-octane" book (Publishers Weekly), Ioan Grillo draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico’s cartels and how they have radically transformed in the past decade.