Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland


James St. James - 1999
    Nominated for the Edgar Award for best true-crime book of the year, it also marked the debut of an audaciously talented writer, James St. James, who himself had been a club kid and close friend and confidant of Michael Alig, the young man convicted of killing the drug dealer known as Angel. Now the book has been brought to the screen as Party Monster, with Macaulay Culkin playing killer Michael Alig and Seth Green as author/celebutante James St. James.

The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano


Martin A. Gosch - 1975
    Gosch, this powerful inside chronicle is literally the "last testament" of America's most notorious gangster.

Shot in the Heart


Mikal Gilmore - 1994
    Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

Wiseguy


Nicholas Pileggi - 1985
    "Wiseguy" is Henry Hill's story, in fascinating, brutal detail, the never-before-revealed day-to-day life of a working mobster - his violence, his wild spending sprees, his wife, his mistresses, his code of honor.

For the Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life


Albert Demeo - 2002
    The moment sent DeMeo into a psychological tailspin: How could he have spent his life looking up to, and loving, a vicious killer?For the Sins of My Father recounts the chilling rise and fall of the man who led the Gambino family's most fearsome killers and thieves, through the eyes of a son who had never known any other kind of life. Coming of age in an opulent Long Island house where money is abundant but its source is unclear, Al becomes Roy's confidant, sent to call in loans at age fourteen and gradually coming to understand his father's job description--loan shark, car thief, porn purveyor and, above all, murderer. But when Al is seventeen, Roy's body is found in the trunk of a car, a gangland slaying that places Al between federal prosecutors seeking his testimony and a mob crew determined to keep him quiet.Desperate to abide by the father-son bond, but equally determined to escape his father's dangerous and doomed life, Al Demeo embarks on a courageous quest for the truth, reconciliation, and honor. With the implacable narrative drive of a thriller and the power of a painfully honest memoir, For the Sins of My Father presents a startling and unprecedented perspective on the underworld of organized crime, exposing for the first time the cruel legacy of a Mafia life.

The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy


Stephen G. Michaud - 1983
    Handsome, boyish and well-spoken, a law student with bright political prospects, Bundy was also a predator and sexual deviant who murdered and mutilated at least thirty young women and girls, many of them college coeds but at least two as young as twelve.

The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia


Frank DiMatteo - 2016
    Frankie Shots. Joseph "Little Lolly Pop" Carna. Larry "Big Lolly Pop" Carna. Salvatore "Sally Boy" Marinelli. Johnny Tarzan. Louie Pizza. Sally D, Bobby B, Roy Roy, and Punchy.They were THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS of Brooklyn, New York.Frank Dimatteo was born into a family of mob hitmen. His father and godfather were shooters and bodyguards for infamous Mafia legends, the Gallo brothers. His uncle was a capo in the Genovese crime family and bodyguard to Frank Costello. Needless to say, DiMatteo saw and heard things that a boy shouldn't see or hear.He knew everybody in the neighborhood. And they knew him. . .and his family. And does he have some wild stories to tell. . .From the old-school Mafia dons and infamous "five families" who called all the shots, to the new-breed "independents" of the ballsy Gallo gang who didn't answer to nobody, Dimatteo pulls no punches in describing what it's really like growing up in the mob. Getting his cheeks pinched by Crazy Joe Gallo until tears came down his face. Dropping out of school and hanging gangster-style with the boys on President Street. Watching the Gallos wage an all-out war against wiseguys with more power, more money, more guns. And finally, revealing the shocking deathbed confessions that will blow the lid off the sordid deeds, stunning betrayals, and all-too-secret history of the American Mafia.Originally self-published as Lion in the BasementRaves For THE PRESIDENT STREET BOYS: Growing Up Mafia "Frankie D was born and raised in this life--and he's still alive and still free. They don't come any sharper then Frankie D. A real gangster story. Read this book!" --Nicky "Slick" DiPietro, New York City"I know Frankie D from when i was a kid living in South Brooklyn. It was hard reading about my father, Gennaro "Chitoz" Basciano, but I knew it was the truth. Frankie's book is dead on the money--I couldn't put it down." --Eddie Basciano, somewhere in Florida"It's been forty years since I've been with Frankie D doing our thing on President Street. This book was like a flashback, Frankie D nails it from beginning to the end. Bravo, from one of the President Street Boys." --Anthony "Goombadiel" DeLuca, Brooklyn, New York"As a neighborhood kid I grew up around President Street and know firsthand the lure of 'the life' as a police officer and as a kid that escaped the lure. I can tell you the blind loyalty that the crews had for their bosses--unbounded, limitless, and dangerous. As the Prince of President Street, Frank Dimatteo, is representative of a lost generation of Italian Americans. If any of this crew had been given a fair shot at the beginning they would have been geniuses in their chosen field." --Joseph "Giggy" Gagliardo, Retired DEA Agent, New York City"The President Street Boys takes me back as if it was a time machine. Its authenticity is compelling reading for those interested in what things were really like in those mob heydays; not some author's formulation without an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes. I loved the book because I was there, and know for sure readers will love it too." --Sonny Girard, author of Blood of Our Fathers and Sins of Our Sons

The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath


Philip Carlo - 2006
    The Butcher tells the riveting true story of a hit man who loved his work too much—a maniac believed responsible for more than sixty remarkably brutal murders—whom even organized crime’s most cold-blooded assassins feared. Another riveting journey into the darkest corners of the underworld, Carlo’s The Butcher is destined to be a true crime classic alongside Wiseguys by Nicholas Pileggi and Underboss by Peter Maas.

The Last Gangster


George Anastasia - 2004
    You'd have to be Ray Charles not to see it." —former New Jersey capo Ron Previte, on the mob today As a cop, Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster he was brutal. And in his final role, as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. The Last Gangster is his story—the story of the last days of the Philadelphia Mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down once and for all. For 35 years Ron Previte roamed the underworld. A six–foot, 300–pound capo in the Philadelphia–South Jersey crime family, he ran every mob scam and gambit from drug trafficking and prostitution to the extortion of millions from Atlantic City. In his own words, "Every day was a different felony." By the 1990s, Previte, an old–school workhorse, found himself answering to younger mob bosses like "Skinny Joe" Merlino, who seemed increasingly spoiled, cocky, and careless. Convinced that the honor of the "business" was gone, he became the FBI's secret weapon in an intense and highly personalized war on the Philadelphia mob. Operating with the same guile, wit, and stone–cold bravado that had made him a force in the underworld—and armed with only a wiretap secured to his crotch—Previte recorded it all; the murder, the mayhem, and even the story of mob boss Ralph Natale's affair with his youngest daughter's best friend. Previte and his FBI cronies eventually prevailed, securing the convictions of his nemeses, "Skinny Joey" Merlino and Ralph Natale.

My Life in the Mafia


Vincent Charles Teresa - 1973
    

Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano: Whitey Bulger's Enforcer and the Most Feared Gangster in the Underworld


Howie Carr - 2011
    Now radio talk show sensation, crime reporter, and Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr takes us into the heart of the life of gangster Johnny Martorano in Hitman.For two decades Martorano struck fear into anyone even remotely connected to his world. His partnership with Whitey Bulger and the infamous Winter Hill Gang led to twenty mob murders—for which Johnny would serve twelve years in prison. Carr also looks at the politicians and FBI agents who aided Johnny and Whitey, and at the flamboyant city of Boston which Martorano so ruthlessly ruled.A plethora of paradoxes, Johnny Martorano was Mr. Mom by day and man-about-town by night. Surrounded by fast-living politicians, sports celebrities, and show biz entertainers, Johnny was charismatically colorful—as charming as he was frightening. After all, he was, in the end…a hitman.The paperback edition of Howie Carr's riveting true-crime story includes a new epilogue detailing Whitey Bulger's dramatic June 2011 capture..

Honor Thy Father


Gay Talese - 1971
    . . Indispensable." Los Angeles TimesHere is the story of the rise and fall of the notorious Bonanno crime family of New York as only best-selling author Gay Talese could tell it.

Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI, and a Story of Betrayal


Sandra Harmon - 2009
    His son, Gregory, Jr., worshipped him and was slowly drawn into his dark world. What no one but father and son knew was that for 30 years, Scarpa, Sr. was an informant for the FBI. This is their story.

Capone: The Man and the Era


Laurence Bergreen - 1994
    Delving beyond the Capone mythology. Bergreen finds a paradox: a coldblooded killer, thief, pimp, and racketeer who was also a devoted son and father; a self-styled Robin Hood who rose to the top of organized crime. Capone is a masterful portrait of an extraordinary time and of the one man who reigned supreme over it all, Al Capone.

The Black Hand: The Epic War Between a Brilliant Detective and the Deadliest Secret Society in American History


Stephan Talty - 2017
    The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. Standing between the American public and the Black Hand’s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand’s activities spread far beyond New York’s borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country’s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino’s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand’s power would take him all the way to Sicily—but at a terrible cost.  Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.