I Heard You Paint Houses

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.

Genovese, Gambino, Bonnano, Colombo, and Lucchese. For decades these Five Families ruled New York and built the American Mafia (or Cosa Nostra) into an underworld empire. Today, the Mafia is an endangered species, battered and beleaguered by aggressive investigators, incompetent leadership, betrayals, and generational changes that produced violent, unreliable leaders and recruits.

Vincent "Chin" Gigante. He started out as a professional boxer - until he found his true calling as a ruthless contract killer. His doting mother's pet name for the boy evolved into his famous alias, "Chin", a nickname that struck fear throughout organized crime as he routinely ordered the murders of mobsters who violated the Mafia code. Vincent Gigante was hand-picked by Vito Genovese to run the Genovese Family when Vito was sent to prison. Chin raked in more than $100 million for the Genovese Family, all while evading federal investigators.

American Desperado is possibly the most jaw-dropping, event-filled, adrenaline-soaked criminal autobiography ever written. Like a real-life Scarface Jon was born into the upper levels of the Gambino crime family and witnessed his first murder at age seven. He became a one-man juvenile crime wave before joining an assassination squad in Vietnam.

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.

Mafia Prince is the first-person account of one of the most violent eras in Mafia history - "Little" Nicky Scarfo’s reign as boss of the Philly family in the 1980s - written by Scarfo’s underboss and nephew, "Crazy" Phil Leonetti. The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 31, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent downfall of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state’s evidence against his own.

From his heyday to the present moment, Al Capone - Public Enemy Number One - has gripped popular imagination. Rising from humble Brooklyn roots, Capone went on to become the most infamous gangster in American history. At the height of Prohibition, his multimillion-dollar Chicago bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling operation dominated the organized-crime scene.

Written by the best-selling author of The Ice Man, The Butcher is a gripping and disturbing fly-on-the-wall account of the US Drug Enforcement Administration's four-year hunt to bring down Tommy 'Karate' Pitera, a drug-dealing, murderous capo in the Bonanno crime family. In 1992, Pitera was sentenced to life in prison for murdering six people and supporting a massive drug-dealing operation. Yet this covered only a fraction of the crimes he committed.

In Deal with the Devil, five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance draws on once-secret FBI files and exclusive new interviews to disclose the epic saga of Colombo family capo Gregory Scarpa, Sr., who spent more than 30 years as a paid Top-Echelon FBI informant while wreaking havoc as a drug dealer, loan shark, bank robber, hijacker, high-end securities thief - and killer. A Mafia capo who "stopped counting" after 50 murders, Greg Scarpa was enlisted by the FBI as early as 1960.

Top Mafia hit man. Doting father. For 30 years, Richard 'the Ice Man' Kuklinski led a double life beyond anything ever seen on The Sopranos, becoming one of the most notorious professional assassins in American history while hosting neighbourhood barbecues in suburban New Jersey. Kuklinski was Sammy 'the Bull' Gravano's partner in the killing of Paul Castellano, John Gotti hired him to kill his neighbour and he was also intimately involved in the killing of Jimmy Hoffa. He conducted this sadistic business with cold-hearted intensity, never disappointing his customers.

Drawing on a trove of sealed files and previously classified material, Whitey digs deep into the mind of James J. “Whitey” Bulger, the crime boss and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. He is an American original - a psychopath who fostered a following with a frightening mix of terror, deadly intimidation, and the deft touch of a politician who often helped a family in need meet their monthly rent.

After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood's door, he found himself inside of Arizona's deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival. Shaun's hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer. Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.

Breaking bones, burying bodies, and planting bombs became second nature to Two Tonys while working for the Bonanno Crime Family, whose exploits inspired The Godfather. After a dispute with an outlaw motorcycle club, Two Tonys left a trail of corpses from Arizona to Alaska. On the run, he was pursued by bikers and a neo-Nazi gang bloodthirsty for revenge, while a homicide detective launched a nationwide manhunt. 

On December 6, 1995, three key members of the infamous Essex Boys gang were lured to a deserted farm track on the pretense of planning a robbery. As the trio sat in their Range Rover, two gunmen approached the open rear door of the vehicle. Moments later, the first shots rang out signaling the start of a swift, yet bloody massacre. When the weapons fell silent, the three men lay dead.

Robert Mazur spent five years undercover infiltrating the criminal hierarchy of Colombia's drug cartels. The dirty bankers and businessmen he befriended knew him as Bob Musella, a wealthy, mob-connected big shot living the good life. Together they partied in expensive hotels, drank the world's finest champagnes, drove Rolls-Royce convertibles and flew in private jets. But under Mazur's designer suits and hidden away in his quality briefcase, recorders whirred quietly.