IN THE UNDERBELLY OF KANSAS CITY'S MOST LETHAL STREETS, ONE COP DESCENDS INTO A NIGHTMARE OF ADDICTION, BETRAYAL, AND LOST IDENTITY IN PURSUIT OF JUSTICE.

Detective Brent Cartwright seemed to have it all-a loving family, a promising police career, and a future full of possibilities. But the grind of everyday police work left him craving more-a deeper rush, bigger challenges, and higher stakes. His solution? Join the elite undercover unit, where he could chase the city's most dangerous criminals. But what started as a mission to do real police work transformed into a spiraling journey that would cost him everything.

Undercover Junkie is a raw, gut-wrenching plunge into the harrowing world of undercover policing where the boundaries between law and lawlessness blur. As Brent disappeared deeper into his alter ego-a street-hardened addict named Ricky-he became intoxicated by the chaos and the high of living on the razor's edge. Through high-stakes gun deals, drug operations, and the constant threat of being exposed, Brent's descent into darkness is as gripping as it is devastating.

More than a memoir, Undercover Junkie is an unflinching account that challenges the culture of silence that claims far too many of those who answer the call to serve, laying bare how a toxic environment can exact a toll on even the bravest among us. As Brent's story proves, without the proper safeguards, our heroes must sometimes sacrifice their own humanity in the name of duty-and the cost can be unimaginable.

For the first time in forty years, former New York Times editor Michael Cannell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia.

No episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese world of 1980s Brooklyn.

For more than ten years, Eppolito and Caracappa moonlighted as the mob's early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball: Whatever detectives knew, the mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Eppolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations lay dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow up by Tommy Dades, a cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Eppolito and Caracappa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly thirty years after their crimes took place.

Cannell's Blood and the Badge is based on entirely new research and never-before-released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy the Bull Gravano. Eppolito and Caracappa's story is more relevant than ever as police conduct comes under ever-increasing scrutiny.

From true-crime legend T. J. English, the epic, behind-the-scenes saga of Los Muchachos, one of the most successful cocaine trafficking organizations in American history--a story of glitz, glamour, and organized crime set against 1980's Miami.

Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges, and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon.

A Cuban exile whose family escaped Fidel Castro's Cuba when he was eleven years old, Falcon, as a teenager, became active in the anti-Castro movement. He began smuggling cocaine into the U.S. as a way to raise money to buy arms for the Contras in Central America. This counter-revolutionary activity led directly to Willy's genesis as a narco. He and his partners built an extraordinary international organization from the ground up. Los Muchachos, the syndicate founded by Falcon, thrived as a major cocaine distribution network in the U.S. from the late 1970's into the early 1990's. At their height, Los Muchachos made more than a hundred million dollars a year. At the same time, Willy, his brother Tavy Falcon, and partner Sal Magluta became famous as championship powerboat racers.

Cocaine, used by everyone from A-list celebrities to lawyers and people in law enforcement, came to define an era, and for a time, Willy Falcon and those like him--major suppliers, of whom there were only a few--became stars in their own right. They were the deliverers of good times, at least until the downside of persistent cocaine use became apparent: delusions of grandeur, psychological addiction, financial ruin. Thus, the War on Drugs was born, and federal authorities came after Falcon and his crew with a vengeance. Willy found himself on the run, his marriage and family life in shambles, the halcyon days of boat races and lavish trips to Vegas and parties at the Mutiny night club seemingly a distant memory.

T. J. English has been granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of Los Muchachos, sitting down with Willy Falcon and his associates for many lengthy interviews, and revealing never-before-understood details about drug trafficking. A classic of true-crime writing from a master of the genre, The Last Kilo traces the rise and fall of a true cocaine empire--and the lives left in its wake.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom--and almost got away with it

In 2011, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything--drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons--free of the government's watchful eye.

It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone--not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers--could buy and sell contraband detection-free. Spurred by a public outcry, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site's elusive proprietor, with no leads, no witnesses, and no clear jurisdiction. All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The Silk Road quickly ballooned into $1.2 billion enterprise, and Ross embraced his new role as kingpin. He enlisted a loyal crew of allies in high and low places, all as addicted to the danger and thrill of running an illegal marketplace as their customers were to the heroin they sold. Through his network he got wind of the target on his back and took drastic steps to protect himself--including ordering a hit on a former employee. As Ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren't sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet.

Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It's a story of the boy next door's ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, anonymous, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. But it's all too real.

For thirty years starting in the mid-1970s, the byline of Jim Dooley appeared on riveting investigative stories of organized crime and political corruption that headlined the front page of Honolulu's morning daily. In Sunny Skies, Shady Characters, James Dooley revisits highlights of his career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and, in later years, for KITV television and the online Hawaii Reporter. His lively backstories on how he chased these high-profile scandals make fascinating reading, while providing an insider's look at the business of journalism and the craft of investigative reporting.

Dooley's first assignment as an investigative journalist involved the city housing project of Kukui Plaza, which introduced him to the pay to play method of awarding government contracts to obliging consultants. In later stories, he scrutinized bloody struggles over illicit gambling revenue, the murder of a city prosecutor's son, local syndicate ties to the Teamsters Union, and the dealings of Bishop Estate. His groundbreaking coverage of the forays by yakuza into Hawaii and the continental United States were the first of its kind in American journalism.

As Dooley pursued stories from the underside of island society, names of respected public figures and those of violent criminals filled his notebook: entertainer Don Ho, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Governors George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano, Mayor Frank Fasi, and notorious felons Henry Huihui, Nappy Pulawa, and Ronnie Ching. Woven throughout is the name of Big Island rancher Larry Mehau--was he the godfather of organized crime in Hawaii as alleged by the FBI, or simply an ex-cop who befriended power brokers in the course of doing business for his security guard firm? The book includes a timeline of Mehau's activities to allow readers to judge for themselves.

Wiseguys called him the Keith Richards of the American Mafia and JFK hero Jim Garrison denounced him as one of the most notorious vice operators in the history of New Orleans ... but you can just call him MR. NEW ORLEANS. Mr. New Orleans tells the incredible story of Frenchy Brouillette, a redneck Cajun teenager who stole his big brother's motorcycle and embarked on a 60-year vacation to New Orleans, where he became a legendary gangster and the underworld political fixer for his cousin, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. Written by Crescent City native Matthew Randazzo V, the wickedly funny Mr. New Orleans is the first book to ever break the code of secrecy of the New Orleans Mafia Family, the oldest and most mysterious criminal secret society in America. Mr. New Orleans is a rollicking, disturbing ride through the underbelly of a bygone New Orleans, lined with moments of dark, side-splitting hilarity. If you're a fan of James Lee Burke, drop what you're reading and pick this one up. In an era when popular wisdom tells us T.V. has stolen all depth from the literary true-crime narrative, Matthew Randazzo has found a way to beat that trend mightily; he's gone straight to the source and captured the singular, confounding voice of the New Orleans' mafia's top political fixer with fast-paced, riveting prose and a fine journalist's eye for detail. Chris Rice, New York Times Bestselling Author Mr. New Orleans is a total knockout: Take everything you ever imagined about the sleazy good times to be had in New Orleans -- the sleazy good times capital of America -- and quadruple it, and you have a hint of what's inside these sticky pages. Bill Tonelli, Author of The Italian American Reader and Editor for Esquire and Rolling Stone

Informative, authoritative, and eye-opening, this is the first full-length book devoted exclusively to uncovering the hidden history of how the Mafia came to dominate organized crime in New York City during the 1930s through 1950s. Based on exhaustive research of archives and secret files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, author and attorney C. Alexander Hortis draws on the deepest collection of primary sources, many newly discovered, of any history of the modern mob. Shattering myths, Hortis reveals how Cosa Nostra actually obtained power at the inception. The author goes beyond conventional who-shot-who mob stories, providing answers to fresh questions such as: -Why did the Sicilian gangs come out on top of the criminal underworld? -Can economics explain how the Mafia families operated? -What was the Mafia's real role in the drug trade? -Why was Cosa Nostra involved in gay bars in New York since the 1930s? Drawing on an unprecedented array of primary sources, The Mob and the City is the most thorough and authentic history of the Mafia's rise to power in the early-to-mid twentieth century. This updated paperback edition includes a new chapter on noted gangster Joe Valachi based on recently opened files.

Gene Borrello's story isn't something that everyone has already heard, read about, or seen on various documentaries and dramatic cable shows about the history of the Mafia. His story is current, not something from the days of Bugsy Siegel, Albert Anastasia, and Mayer Lansky or a Mario Puzzo compilation of the old days. The Borrello saga is about a thirty-six-year-old mob enforcer who was born into the life with the true nitty-gritty, unglamorous street life that led to his being locked up for a third of his life until he finally said... enough.

Former ICE Special Agent Victor Avila's story of survival and courage is a harrowing must read. His dedication to obtaining justice for his partner, Jaime Zapata, who was murdered just inches away while on assignment in Mexico, is honorable and a reflection of his character. The government coverup of what happened and their retaliation against him for telling the truth is unforgivable. You won't be able to put this book down. -Katie Pavlich, Townhall Editor, Fox News contributor and Best-selling author Agent Under Fire: A Murder and a Manifesto is a true story of unprecedented corruption, international intrigue, human trafficking, money laundering, drug-running, mass murders, and government evasion. Chalk full of page-turning stories and revelatory insights into Mexico's criminal underworld, this book moves beyond the everyday true crime memoir and delves into the larger question of what it means for a family man to put his life on the line every day to topple some of the cruelest criminal organizations known to mankind. The book also serves as a manifesto, exploring solutions to misguided immigration policies and offering a unique perspective on what it will take to control our southern border and protect vulnerable American families. Victor Avila is a retired Supervisory Special Agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While on assignment in Mexico, Special Agent Avila suffered multiple gunshot wounds and survived a violent ambush by the Los Zetas drug cartel. Special Agent Jaime Zapata was killed. Mr. Avila has been recognized for Excellence in Law Enforcement by the ICE Hispanic Agents Association; and has received The Director's Award for Operation in Plain Sight in Mexico; Homeland Security Investigations Excellence in Public Service Award; The Valor Award by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA); and many other awards and honors. He is an advocate for border security, immigration reform, human trafficking awareness and the protection of our sovereignty - and has been featuredon FoxNews, i24News, Univision, OANN and various Radio and Podcast interviews.

A riveting history of the Mafia from 1860s Sicily to 1960s America--as narrated by a former heist expert and Gambino family mobster.

The culmination Louis Ferrante's exhaustive research delving deep into Sicily's socio-economic-political roots, Borgata: Rise of Empire will finally reveal exactly how and why this infamous secret society formed inside Sicilian culture. Ferrante then engages in the art of storytelling by carefully selecting stories about the mafia in Sicily that allow him to follow the main characters to America, where most arrive as fugitives from Italian justice.

Across the Atlantic, the storyline picks up in places like New York and New Orleans, where the clannish Sicilians quickly realize the importance of diversity as they forge new alliances with other recently arrived ethnic groups as the borgata becomes the premier organized criminal network in the country. After planting their flags in cities across America, the adolescent American mafia realizes how to corrupt America's police and political establishment, and they become experts at bribing public officials, allowing them to extend their tentacles into every level of American society.

In this first volume, Ferrante traces the mafia's phenomenal rise of empire through larger-than-life characters such as Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seigel, Albert Anastasia, and other legendary mobsters as they provide alcohol to the American public during Prohibition, penetrate industrial labor unions, practically take over the island of Cuba and, with extraordinary vision, create the gambling mecca of Las Vegas.

This epic three-volume history of the mafia continues with Borgata: Clash of Titans, covering 1960 to 1985, as the mob comes into conflict with the American political elite--and confronts internal wars that will shake the organization to its foundations.

The first serious external threat to the mafia's existence in America comes from U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who repeatedly expresses his desire to eradicate organized crime in America. Kennedy unleashes the full force of the U.S. Justice Department, including a slumbering FBI that Kennedy will drag into the fray, to the apparent dismay of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The mafia's unforgiving response is executed by Louisiana don Carlos Marcello along with Florida don Santo Trafficante, who together take aim at the attorney general's brother, the president of the United States.

With the president dead and the attorney general out of office, things return to normal for the mob--but internal problems begin to appear within a number of borgatas, shaking the mafia to its core. Mobster Joe Valachi becomes the first-ever public informant when he testifies before a senate sub-committee, while Brooklyn mobsters Larry, Albert, and Crazy Joe Gallo launch an insurrection against the founder and leader of their borgata, Joe Profaci. While the Gallo-Profaci civil war is winding down, don Joe Bonanno challenges the mafia's ruling body, the Commission, in a situation that decides if the Commission's central authority can overpower the autonomy of each individual boss.

As he did in the first volume of this epic history, Louis Ferrante continues to debunk myths while adding new insights into other mafia mysteries, such as the feud between mafia capo Anthony Tony Pro Provenzano and union leader Jimmy Hoffa, revealing the most plausible scenario of why Hoffa died, how he was killed, and what happened to his body.

NOW A MAX ORIGINAL SERIES. A riveting true-life tale of newspaper noir and Japanese organized crime from an American investigative journalist who pulls the curtain back on ... [an] element of Japanese society that few Westerners ever see (San Francisco Examiner).

Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back.

In Tokyo Vice he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.

The true story of FBI agent Mike Campi who led some of the most relentless and successful attacks on organized crime in American history.

A unique and unexpected set of circumstances caused former FBI agent Mike Campi to finally step forward and reveal himself. The result is this tour de force, which details his years operating deeply in the trenches to devastate the mafia. You will learn how he took down a staggering array of mob bosses, underbosses, consiglieri, capos, soldiers, and other legends from all five New York crime families. He takes you inside his investigative, critical, make-or-break moments, which he navigated to achieve astonishing success. Along the way, he provides you with insight into the external and internal forces often working to undermine him. And he lifts the curtain to reveal the untold treachery and hypocrisy underlying the real American mafia, as illustrated by the words of one crime boss who was recorded by Mike describing his underlings: They're suckers--we just use them.

Mafia Takedown, to be released on the anniversary of the infamous November 14, 1957, Apalachin meeting of top mafia leaders from the US and Italy, is chock-filled with an array of stunning facts and truths. A sample includes: the Catholic priest who fled America to save his life from the mob; mafia members recorded describing in their own words their innermost secrets; how Mike and federal prosecutors obtained the boss of all bosses Vincent the Chin Gigante's courthouse confession that his legendary crazy act was a fraud all along; what the Chin said when America was attacked on September 11, 2001; and the explosive, dark secret that almost undermined one of the most important undercover operations in the history of law enforcement.

You'll learn so much more: such as how and why the most important undercover mafioso in history wanted to work with Mike, and only with Mike; and how the Chin was only months away from escaping justice entirely. For fans of organized crime, of true crime, or simply of engaging and enjoyable stories--this book is an absolute must read.

In his second memoir, David Alan Arnold takes us on a Life and Death Adventure, in his helicopter, flying for Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch. But, he also gets into adventures at home, picking a fight with an Organized Crime Ring that took over a school bus stop. David's town has so few residents that good people are afraid to speak about the crime ring, for fear of reprisal. When killers and dirty cops out-number town residents, it's wise to stay out of harm's way. But, David is famous for being Thick-as-a-Brick. So, here we go, on what David calls an ill-planned journey--straight into a fight, that left a trail of human remains in the woods behind the school bus stop. Hard to believe?--Not according to FBI agents who asked to read advanced copy of this book. Buckle-up for a wild ride in the sky above Monday Night Football, Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, but also a True Crime Story that brought kidnappers and killers to a school bus stop.

The New York Times bestseller chronicling the history of NYC's infamous five mafia families is now the basis for the upcoming The HISTORY(R) Channel documentary series American Godfathers: The Five Families.

For half a century, the American Mafia outwitted, outmaneuvered, and outgunned the FBI and other police agencies, wreaking unparalleled damage on America's social fabric and business enterprises while emerging as the nation's most formidable crime empire. The vanguard of this criminal juggernaut is still led by the Mafia's most potent and largest borgatas: New York's Five Families.

Five Families is the vivid story of the rise and fall of New York's premier dons, from Lucky Luciano to Paul Castellano to John Gotti and others. This definitive history brings the reader right up to the possible resurgence of the Mafia as the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies turn their attention to homeland security and away from organized crime.

This updated tenth-anniversary edition features a new preface by the author.

A darkly comic sequel to Tokyo Vice that is equal parts history lesson, true-crime exposé, and memoir.

It's 2008, and it's been a while since Jake Adelstein was the only gaijin crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The global economy is in shambles, Jake is off the police beat but still chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and Tadamasa Goto, the most powerful boss in the Japanese organized crime world, has been banished from the yakuza, giving Adelstein one less enemy to worry about--for the time being. But as he puts his life back together, he discovers that he may be no match for his greatest enemy--himself.

And Adelstein has a different gig these days: due diligence work, or using his investigative skills to dig up information on entities whose bosses would prefer that some things stay hidden.

The underworld isn't what it used to be. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlors are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Korean Japanese and North Korean extortion plots. TEPCO, the electric power corporation keeping the lights on for all of Tokyo, scrambles to hide its willful oversights that ultimately led to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. And the Japanese government shows levels of corruption that make the yakuza look like philanthropists in comparison. All this is punctuated by personal tragedies no one could have seen coming.

In this ambitious and riveting work, Jake Adelstein explores what it's like when you're in too deep to distinguish the story you chase from the life you live.

In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York's Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people.

Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it's all true. --Time

Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping's complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.

Long before Brooklyn was known as the world's hippest neighborhood, it was the deadliest - the seedy, dangerous underbelly of New York City, where mobsters and gangs could commit murder and dump dead bodies without getting caught.

For more than a hundred years, the Red Hook section of Brooklyn was Ground Zero for organized crime. Whoever controlled the piers controlled everything. From the infamous Irish gang known as The White Hand at the turn of the century, to the notorious Italian Gallo brothers who ran President Street--and everything else--generations later, the blood-soaked history of Red Hook is the story of American crime at its most powerful, corrupt, and coldly efficient.

It's all here: the brutal mob hits, bullet storms, and backstabbings of the most colorful cutthroats to ever terrorize the streets. A rogue's gallery of killers with nicknames like The Mad Hatter, The Executioner, Wild Bill, and Peg Leg. The Brooklyn bar fight that gave Al Scarface Capone his legendary scars. The godfather of America's first Sicilian crime family whose gruesomely mangled hand could scare men half to death. And, to bring it all home, the author's own eyewitness account of multiple shootings growing up as the son of a Mafia bodyguard.

Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafia's way of life, and shocking portraits of America's most wanted crime families, Red Hook is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.