He came from the same streets as mob bosses John Gotti & Vito Genovese. Before Scarface" " The Godfather" or " The Sopranos" there was Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin the citys steadiest & most accurate chronicler (Tom Robbins " Village Voice"). In " The Mafia Rat" Breslin shows us the people & places that defined the Mafia. Here are Sammy The Bull Gravano Tony Cafe Gaspipe Casso & woven throughout the tale of Burt Kaplan one of the most devastating turncoats of all time. Breslins famous station was at the bar of Pep Mc Guires alongside Jimmy Burke who paid with Lufthansa robbery notes & was played by Robert De Niro in Goodfellas. Capturing the moments in which the Mafia was made & broken Breslin combines the most recent the most memorable & the long-forgotten stories into a sharp-eyed portrait of the Mob as it lived & breathed in its heyday & as it struggles to survive." ...

In MAFIA REPUBLIC John Dickie Professor of Italian Studies at University College London & author of the international bestsellers COSA NOSTRA & MAFIA BROTHERHOODS shows how the Italian mafias have grown in power & become more & more interconnected with terrifying consequences. The Financial Times described John Dickie's MAFIA BROTHERHOODS as ' Powered by the sort of muscular prose that one associates with great detective fiction' & in MAFIA REPUBLIC John Dickie again marries outstanding scholarship with compelling storytelling. In 1946 Italy became a democratic Republic thereby entering the family of modern western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew so did the mafias. Sicily's Cosa Nostra the camorra from Naples & the mysterious 'ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest & bloodiest period of their long history. Italy made itself rich by making scooters cars & handbags. The mafias carved out their own route to wealth through tobacco smuggling construction kidnapping & narcotics. & as criminal business grew exponentially the mafias grew not just more powerful but became more interconnected. By the 1980s Southern Italy was on the edge of becoming a narco-state. The scene was set for a titanic confrontation between heroic representatives of the law & mafiosi who could no longer tolerate any obstacle to their ambitions. This was a war for Italy's future as a civilized country. At its peak in 1992-93 the 'ndrangheta was beheading people in the street & the Sicilian mafia murdered its greatest enemies investigating magistrates Giovanni Falcone & Paolo Borsellino before embarking on a major terrorist bombing campaign on the Italian mainl&. Today the long shadow of mafia history still hangs over a nation wracked by debt political paralysis & widespread corruption. While police put their lives on the line every day one of Silvio Berlusconi's ministers said that Italy had to 'learn to live with the mafia'; suspicions of mafia involvement still surround some of the country's most powerful media moguls & politicians. The latest investigations show that its reach is astonishing: it controls much of Europe's wholesale cocaine trade & representatives from as far away as Germany Canada & Australia come to Calabria to seek authorisation for their affairs. Just when it thought it had finally contained the mafia threat Italy is now discovering that it harbours the most global criminal network of them all. ...

In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for the British newspaper the Guardian". Within months mysterious agents from Russias Federal Security Service
- the successor to the KGB
- had broken into his flat. He found himself tailed by men in cheap leather jackets bugged & even summoned to Lefortovo the KGBs notorious prison. The break-in was the beginning of an extraordinary psychological war against the journalist & his family. Vladimir Putins spies used tactics developed by the KGB & perfected in the 1970s by the Stasi East Germanys sinister secret police. This clandestine campaign burst into the open in 2011 when the Kremlin expelled Harding from Moscow
- the first western reporter to be deported from Russia since the days of the Cold War. " Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia" is a brilliant & haunting account of the insidious methods used by a resurgent Kremlin against its so-called "enemies"
- human rights workers western diplomats journalists & opposition activists. It

Includes:: unpublished material from confidential US diplomatic cables released last year by Wiki Leaks which describe Russia as a "virtual mafia state". Harding gives a unique personal & compelling portrait of todays Russia two decades after the end of communism that reads like a spy thriller."





...

Unloved sons turn their aggression on the outside world. Unloved daughters destroy the people they love & then themselves. In this daring portrayal of Magda Goebbels
- wife of Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels
- Meike Ziervogel unveils an historical tale of abusive mother & daughter relationships that reaches a terrifying conclusion in the last days of Nazi Germany. Magda is born at the beginning of the 20th century the illegitimate child of a maidservant who feels burdened with a daughter she does not want. The girl grows up to become an ambitious woman desperate for love & recognition. When Magda meets Joseph Goebbels he appears to answer all her needs & together they have six children. Towards the end of the Second World War Magda has become physically & emotionally sick. As she takes her children into the Fuhrer's bunker her eldest daughter Helga experiences an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

...

Sabina Kane doesn't have the best track record when it comes to family. After all her own grandmother leader of the vampire race wants her dead. So when she arrives in New York to meet her mage relatives the reunion puts the fun in dysfunctional. Not only is mage culture completely bizarre but everyone seems to think she's some kind of ' Chosen' who'll unite the dark races. Sabina doesn't care who chose her she's not into destiny. But the mages aren't Sabina's only problem. In New York's Black Light District she has run-ins with fighting demons hostile werewolves & an opportunistic old flame. Sabina thought she'd take a bite out of the Big Apple
- but it looks like it wants to bite back.
...

Magenta has finally got it together with her neighbour
- & nearest thing to a best friend a boy can be
- Daniel. But nothing

...

Raised in Stepney the heart of London's East End Maggie Riley is the only child of an Irish widower. When she becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen she is delighted for it means she has captured her beloved Jim Burns. But life is a constant struggle
- to bring up her four sons to cope with a part-time husband to 'better herself'. & that struggle is set against critical events of the era: the Depression the Blackshirt marches the devastation of World War II & its aftermath. With the skill of a natural storyteller Lena Kennedy makes us share Maggie's life: we experience Maggie's hardships as she confronts poverty; we feel her grief when she sends her children off during the evacuation; we sympathise with her loneliness through the long years of the war; we share the impressions of her first trip abroad to South Africa & Australia. We rejoice in her triumphs & feel the sorrow of her tragedies.
...

It's 12 October 1984. An IRA bomb blows apart the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Miraculously Margaret Thatcher survives. In small-town Scotland eight-year-old Damian Barr watches in horror as his mum rips her wedding ring off & packs their bags. He knows he too must survive. Damian his sister & his Catholic mum move in with her sinister new boyfriend while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous Mary the Canary. Divided by sectarian suspicion the community is held together by the sprawling Ravenscraig Steelworks. But darkness threatens as Maggie takes hold: she snatches school milk smashes the unions & makes greed good. Following Maggie's advice Damian works hard & plans his escape. He discovers that stories can save your life &
- in spite of violence strikes AIDS & Clause 28
- manages to fall in love dancing to Madonna in Glasgow's only gay club. Maggie & Me is a touching & darkly witty memoir about surviving Thatcher's Britain; a story of growing up gay in a straight world & coming out the other side in spite of & maybe because of the iron lady.

...

Its 12 October 1984. An IRA bomb blows apart the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Miraculously Maggie Thatcher survives. In small-town Scotland eight-year-old Damian Barr watches in horror as his mum rips her wedding ring off & packs their bags. He knows he too must survive. Damian his sister & his Catholic mum move in with her sinister new boyfriend while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous Mary the Canary. Divided by sectarian suspicion the community is held together by the sprawling Ravenscraig Steelworks. But darkness threatens as Maggie takes hold: she snatches school milk smashes the unions & makes greed good. Following Maggies advice Damian works hard & plans his escape. He discovers that stories can save your life &
- in spite of violence strikes AIDS & Clause 28
- manages to fall in love dancing to Madonna in Glasgows only gay club. Maggie & Me is a touching & darkly witty memoir about surviving Thatchers Britain; a story of growing up gay in a straight world & coming out the other side in spite of & maybe because of the iron lady.

...

Moodily atmospheric full of verve & energy Maggie Cassidy" is Kerouacs poignant tale of teenage romance in New Engl&. The story of Jack & Maggie in love with the idea of being in love looking ahead to marriage with hope & trepidation is told with touching simplicity. It skillfully captures both the intensity & the ordinariness of adolescent life with its torments & complications & is a beautiful evocation of growing up in America." ...