Book suggestions for The Irishman

Sicily, 1879: After successfully smuggling a severed human ear past the police, Silvio Randazzo completes his dangerous first rite of passage—from peasant boy to Mafia soldier. The ear is a chilling ransom demand from Antonino Greco, Italy’s most famous and feared Mafioso. But it’s not until Randazzo commits his first vendetta killing that he truly “makes his bones” as a worthy member of the society that values honor above all . . . and rewards betrayal with death.

A target’s wife makes a cold-hearted assassin question his work The hitman adjusts his rifle sight in an apartment across the street from his mark. For thirty minutes he peers through his scope, watching the man he is about to kill. He waits patiently, for assassinations demand focus. One bullet is all he needs. When the job is done, he disappears. This is an ordinary working day for Richard Breckner, a hired gun on the payroll of one of America’s enemies. He kills for the money, holding no allegiance to his country and no scruples about murder. He will kill anyone, no matter whom, from an American reverend in Miami to his superior at the department. But then, on a job in Geneva, he kills a target who dies unafraid. Unnerved by the dead man’s steely confidence, Breckner turns on his employers. If he wishes to survive, the world’s finest assassin must remember how to care. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

After he stops killing for money, Sidney Holden tries to live discreetly. He takes a Manhattan apartment in the Copenhagen building, a few blocks from where John Lennon died, and attempts to make a new life with his fiancee, Fay, former daughter-in-law of the district attorney. But as the quiet months pass, Fay grows distant and suicidal, and finally disappears, removed by the district attorney to a mental hospital where Holden cannot reach her. Hungry for a last taste of action, a billionaire ex-gangster named Phipps offers to help Holden get her back. The ninety-two-year-old Phipps hires Holden to run a counterfeiting scheme, using Fay’s whereabouts as bait. But the closer Holden gets to Phipps’ operation, the less he trusts the old man. And with the DA and the mafia closing on him, Holden may not stay alive long enough to rescue his darling from her prison.

To what extent was Rosario “Russell” Bufalino involved in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975? In the CIA’s recruitment of gangsters to assassinate Fidel Castro? In organizing the historic meeting of crime chieftains in 1957? Even in the production of The Godfather movie? Secretive—even reclusive—Russell Bufalino quietly built his organized crime empire in the decades between Prohibition and the Carter presidency. His reach extended far beyond the coal country of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and quaint Amish farms near Lancaster. Bufalino had a hand in global, national, and local politics of the largest American cities, many of its major industries, and controlled the powerful Teamsters Union. His influence also reached the highest levels of Pennsylvania government and halls of Congress, and his legacy left a culture of corruption that continues to this day. A uniquely American saga that spans six decades, The Quiet Don follows Russell Bufalino’s remarkably quiet ascent from Sicilian immigrant to mob soldier to a man described by a United States Senate subcommittee in 1964 as “one of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia in the United States.” INCLUDES PHOTOS