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  Stealing Manhattan - The Untold...

  Burl Barer, Punch Stanimirovic

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  The true crime story of a family of altruistic jewel thieves and four decades of daring capers and sweet escapes, including a 1992 New York mega-heist. 
   
  Punch Stanimirovic insists: “My father, known as Mr. Stan, is the greatest gentleman thief who ever lived—a true genius.” 
   
  Punch was raised to be an exceptional diamond thief. He could work magic on a safe that would have sent Mandrake the Magician back to the novelty store, and Dr. Strange back to medical school. He and his family risked it all to make the patriarch, Mr. Stan, proud. 
   
  Punch’s pop culture sensibilities, his father’s proven skills, and his mother’s artistic input merged to create cinema-style capers—elaborately planned and executed, including a spectacular 1992 New York mega-heist of over one billion dollars in diamonds, gold, and precious gems—and they got away with it. 
   
  Many of the crew members went on to invest in real estate, helping to “build the New York skyline”, while others moved to Europe and became the Pink Panthers. 
   
  They had one rule: No One Gets Hurt. From daring heists to the ultimate escape, discover the true story of Punch, his extraordinary crew, and his high-society family . . . 
   
  Edgar Award winner and New York Times–bestselling author Burl Barer brings to light the remarkable story of four decades and two generations of America’s First Family of kind and generous “altruistic outlaws” in Stealing Manhattan: The Untold Story of America’s Billion Dollar Gem Heist Masterminds. 
   
  Praise for Stealing Manhattan 
   
  “Barer has that all-important knack for seeking and finding hidden truth. In Stealing Manhattan, those who pulled off this caper were professionals who knew how to keep their mouths shut. And lucky for us, some of these mouths have recently opened to Barer . . . now the world can know the truth. You will not want to miss this “gem” of a book!” —Kevin Sullivan, author of The Bundy Murders: The Yearly Journal

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  Tong Wars - The Untold Story of...

  Scott D. Seligman

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  Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not throwing Chinese offenders into prison. Not even executing them. The New York DA was running out of ideas, and more people were dying every day as the weapons of choice evolved from hatchets to automatic weapons and even bombs. Welcome to New York City's Chinatown in 1925.The Chinese in turn-of-the-last-century New York were mostly immigrant peasants and shopkeepers who worked as laundrymen, cigar makers, and domestics. They gravitated to lower Manhattan and lived as Chinese an existence as possible, their few diversions-gambling, opium, and prostitution-available but, sadly, illegal. It didn't take long before one resourceful merchant saw a golden opportunity to feather his nest by positioning himself squarely between the vice dens and the police charged with shutting them down.A mesmerizing true story, Scott D. Seligman's Tong Wars roars through three decades of turmoil, with characters ranging from gangsters and drug lords to reformers and do-gooders to judges, prosecutors, cops, and politicians of every stripe and color.

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  Five Points - The 19th-Century...

  Tyler Anbinder

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  Nineteenth-century NYC’s most dynamic and dangerous neighborhood comes vividly to life in this “careful, intelligent, and sympathetic history” (The New York Times Book Review). 
   
  Located in today’s Chinatown, Five Points was home to poor immigrants and other marginalized communities. It witnessed more riots, scams, prostitution, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in America. But at the same time it was a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters, dance halls, and boxing matches. It was also the home of meeting halls for the political clubs and the machine politicians who would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics. 
   
  Drawing from letters, diaries, newspapers, bank records, police reports, and archaeological digs, Anbinder has written the first-ever history of Five Points, the neighborhood that was a microcosm of the American immigrant experience. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America’s immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich. 
   
  A New York Times Notable Book

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  Murder in Linn County Oregon -...

  Cory Frye

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  This true crime account of a Prohibition liquor raid gone wrong illuminates “a dark and violent stretch in Linn County history” (Corvallis Gazette-Times).   On June 21, 1922, Linn County sheriff Charles Kendall and Reverend Roy Healy drove out to the town of Plainview to arrest a moonshining farmer named Dave West. By the end of the day, all three men were dead. First responders found Sheriff Kendall facedown with his pistol still holstered. The court appointed William Dunlap as the new sheriff, but within a year, someone killed him, too. Author and journalist Cory Frye delivers a riveting, detailed account of these shocking and tragic crimes that haunted Linn County for decades.   Includes photos!

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  Serpentine - Charles Sobhraj's...

  Thomas Thompson

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  New York Times Bestseller: This in-depth account of Charles Sobhraj, the serial killer portrayed in Netflix miniseries The Serpent, is “compulsive reading” (The Plain Dealer). There was no pattern to the murders, no common thread other than the fact that the victims were all vacationers, robbed of their possessions and slain in seemingly random crimes. Authorities across three continents and a dozen nations had no idea they were all looking for same man: Charles Sobhraj, aka “The Serpent.”   A handsome Frenchman of Vietnamese and Indian origin, Sobhraj targeted backpackers on the “hippie trail” between Europe and South Asia. A master of deception, he used his powerful intellect and considerable sex appeal to lure naïve travelers into a life of crime. When they threatened to turn on him, Sobhraj murdered his acolytes in cold blood. Between late 1975 and early 1976, a dozen corpses were found everywhere from the boulevards of Paris to the slopes of the Himalayas to the back alleys of Bangkok and Hong Kong. Some police experts believe the true number of Sobhraj’s victims may be more than twice that amount.  Serpentine is the “grotesque, baffling, and hypnotic” true story of one of the most bizarre killing sprees in modern history (San Francisco Chronicle). Edgar Award–winning author Thomas Thompson’s mesmerizing portrait of a notorious sociopath and his helpless prey “unravels like fiction, but afterwards haunts the reader like the document it is” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland).  

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  The Brass Wall - The Betrayal of...

  David Kocieniewski

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  In the tradition of Serpico and Prince of the City, a brilliantly reported true story of power and betrayal in the NYPD set against the worlds of the Mafia and big-city politics 
  In 1993, Vincent Armanti, Undercover Detective #4126 agreed to infiltrate a branch of the Luchese family responsible for the homicide of a beloved fireman. Already a legend for successfully posing as a hit man and arms smuggler, Armanti transformed himself into Vinnie "Blue Eyes" Penisi—a veteran hood with an icy stare. Yet, once under cover, Armanti found that the wise guys he was chasing had access to classified police information. Stakes accelerated when the informant was revealed to be the son of the commander of NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau. Again and again, IAB's detectives compromised Armanti, to protect the powerful man's son, but even the Police Commissioner ignored the situation. But, like the fireman who takes an oath to serve, Armanti stayed on the job, even when it was clear his life was endangered. 
  David Kocieniewski, former New York Times Police Bureau Chief, reveals every moment of Armanti's effort to break through the wall enforced by the cops' top brass. Here, with all its compromises, is the city of New York. Here, in all his humanity, is an unforgettable hero, battling for his honor and survival. Here is a remarkable story that ranks with the greatest police classics.A Macmillan Audio production.

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