True Organized Crime

Since 1994, South Africa has seen a worrying increase in the commercialization of murder – and has been rocked by several high-profile contract killings. Drawing on his research of over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders are used to exert a mafia-type control over the country’s legal and illegal economic activity. Contracted assassinations, and the organized criminal activity behind them, contain sinister linkages with the upper world, most visibly in relation to disputes over tenders and access to government resources.

Slava Pastuk made a decision that changed his life when he became involved in a global drug-smuggling conspiracy to import cocaine into Australia. Bad Trips is a story of crime, sex, drugs, and rap music, with a backdrop of one of the world’s hippest and most influential websites, VICE.

Widely known in the criminal underworld as the 'Black Widow', Linda Calvey spent the first half of her life running with the UK's top gangsters, robbing banks and rubbing shoulders with the Kray twins. That is, until, in 1990, her lover Robbie Cook was murdered at point-blank, and she found herself falsely convicted. Linda was sent away for decades, and would go on to become Britain's longest-serving female prisoner. This is her story of life inside, and how she learnt to survive the many years she spent behind bars.

Britain's most infamous criminals: the Kray twins. The extent of their activities has always been uncertain. But now, it is time for the conclusive account of their story, from their East End beginnings, to becoming the kingpins of London's underworld. This objective account, compiled by best-selling crime author and criminal lawyer James Morton, cuts through the conflicting versions of their stories and answers burning questions still being asked 50 years after their infamous conviction.

Thoroughbred racing was one of the first major sports in early America. Horse racing thrived because it was a high-status sport that attracted the interest of both old and new money. It grew because spectators enjoyed the pageantry, the exciting races, and, most of all, the gambling. In The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime, author Steven Riess fills a long-neglected gap in sports history, offering a richly detailed and fascinating chronicle of thoroughbred racing's heyday.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school’s venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking”. Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning.

Three very different men battle to control their destinies as they hurtle through the hall of mirrors of the global shadow economy. Each man, born in radically different circumstances in the 1960s, is in his own way grappling with the powerful and unstoppable forces that shape the world around us; forces which topple governments, send refugees fleeing across borders, and put guns in the hands of mercenaries and militias. Each has devoted his whole life to an institution - and each will eventually be destroyed or betrayed by the thing they believe in the most.

Italy's ultras are the most organised and violent fans in European football. Many groups have evolved into criminal gangs, involved in ticket-touting, drug-dealing and murder. A cross between the Hells Angels and hooligans, they're often the foot-soldiers of the Mafia and have been instrumental in the rise of the far-right. But the purist ultras say that they are insurgents fighting against a police state and modern football. Only amongst the ultras, they say, can you find belonging, community and a sacred concept of sport.

The Gambino family is a prime example of organized crime families and how their in-house fighting and varying styles of leadership have defined the age of the mob. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the family went through a series of names and leaders, but they always remained at the top of the New York mob regime and retained their Sicilian ties.

The Kray twins were Britain's most notorious gangsters. Ruling London's underworld for more than a decade, as gang lords they were among the most powerful and feared men in the city. Photographed by David Bailey and even interviewed for television, they became celebrities in their own right and are infamous to this day.

The Real Top Boys reveals the lives of the street gangs who have taken over, and now rule, dozens of corners of the UK's capital. Best-selling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us on a tour of the housing estates and volatile neighbourhoods where pride, rivalry and revenge are the codes people live and die by.

New York Times best-selling author T. J. English, the acclaimed master chronicler of the Irish Mob in America, offers a front row seat at the trial of one of the most notorious gangsters of all - Whitey Bulger - and pulls back the veil to expose a breathtaking history of corruption and malfeasance.

Buffalo has housed its fair share of thugs and mobsters. Besides common criminals and bank robbers, a powerful crime family headed by local boss Stefano Magaddino emerged in the 1920s. Close to Canada, Niagara Falls and Buffalo were perfect avenues through which to transport booze, and Magaddino and his Mafiosi maintained a stranglehold on the city until his death in 1974. Local mob expert Michael Rizzo takes a tour of Buffalo's mafia exploits everything from these brutal gangsters' favorite hangouts to secret underground tunnels to murder.

No es una pandilla, no es una célula de un grupo mayor ni tampoco una banda doméstica, sino un auténtico cártel que logró apoderarse del centro del país, justo en las narices de las más altas autoridades. ¿Cómo lo hizo? Ejerciendo una violencia como nunca se había visto, con el liderazgo de un hombre del que poco o nada se sabía, con una red de lavado poderosísima y la apatía de dos administraciones capitalinas.

Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family. As reporter Ali Watkins reveals, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small ragtag band of gunrunners in the United States.

Los señores del narco es una descarnada crónica sobre las alarmantes complicidades de los altos círculos políticos, policiacos, militares y empresariales con el crimen organizado. Este libro, en suma, se presenta como un impactante viaje al interior del mundo del narcotráfico para buscar los poderosos resortes que lo mueven, y los ha descubierto con nombre y apellido.

In 1957, as the Cold War raged, Ian Fleming took a respite from writing James Bond to craft a work of nonfiction every bit as tense as a Bond adventure. Aided by an ex-MI5 agent and International Diamond Security Organization operative going by the alias “John Blaize,” Fleming chronicled the IDSO’s infiltration of the “million-carat network”—the world’s most notorious diamond smuggling ring.

Step into a World of Shadows. Where every decision can be fatal. A true story of corporate espionage in the shadow of China’s rise. At the heart of modern power struggles, In the Shadow of Giants follows the extraordinary journey of Liam Monclair, a security and strategy expert. This gripping narrative, blending memoir and thriller, opens the door to a unique and little-known universe—corporate espionage, geopolitical manipulations, and cultural tensions—spanning from the skyscrapers of Shanghai to the streets of Jakarta and the vast deserts of the Middle East.

Today's extremist violence surges into our lives from what seems like every direction - vehicles hurtling down city sidewalks; cyber-threats levied against political leaders and backed up with violence; automatic weapons unleashed on mall shoppers, students, and the faithful in houses of worship. As varied as the violent acts are the attackers themselves - neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the alt-right, InCels, and Islamist jihadists, to name just a few.

As head of the Bonanno clan, Joey Massino was the last don, and ran his world with an iron hand - until he got hit with a murder rap, and turned on his own people. Here, for the first time, is his shocking true story - a glimpse inside the world of organized crime that we may never see again.