Organized Crime Sports

Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell is surfer and former war reporter Chas Smith's wild and unflinching look at the high-stakes world of surfing on Oahu's North Shore - a riveting, often humorous, account of beauty, greed, danger, and crime. For two months every winter, when Pacific storms make landfall, swarms of mainlanders, Brazilians, Australians, and Europeans flock to Oahu's paradisiacal North Shore for surfing's Triple Crown competition. Smith reveals how this influx transforms a sleepy strip of coast into a lawless, violent, drug-addled, and adrenaline-soaked mecca.

Read the complete Exotic Desires series in this box set. No Cliffhanger. After having lost the only woman he’d ever loved, twenty-seven year-old Reed Stirling rejects his parents' plans for him to take over the family business and travels to Europe, searching for a revelation as to what he's supposed to do with his life. What he finds instead is something else entirely. Don't miss the Sinful Desires steamy spin-off series, Exotic Desires by best-selling author M.S. Parker.

SUPER BOWL THRILLER FROM EDGAR NOMINEE PAUL LEVINE Bobby Gallagher had it all and lost it.. Now, to reclaim his life, all he has to do is... Rig the Super Bowl, win a huge bet...and avoid getting killed. Aided by his 12-year-old son, Gallagher takes on an improbable task: beat the mob at its own game...and fix the Super Bowl. "The plot kept me hooked from beginning to end. A great mystery read, a fun romantic read, and a huge Big Guy vs. Little Guy book!" -- Amazon 5-star review

My wedding day was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. Instead, my heart was shattered into a million pieces. When twenty-five year-old Bree Gamble was left at the altar by her long-time boyfriend, she’d no idea where to go from there. Her friends is now trying to help by setting her up on blind dates, telling her she needs a casual encounter to move on. When a mysterious stranger comes to her rescue from a disastrous date from hell, Bree thinks that maybe she's met the one person who can help heal her broken heart. What she doesn't know is that her handsome hero isn't the white ...

According to investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, for decades the National Football League has had a strong and unspoken understanding with a dangerous institution: Organized crime. In his classic expos, Interference, Moldea bares the dark, sordid underbelly of America's favorite professional team sport, revealing a nest of corruption that the league has largely ignored since its inception.

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.

He’s a walking scandal. Lakelyn The NFL superstar Wyatt Oakley is injured. Sports medicine is my specialty. I can’t assist. I’ve only crushed on the man forever. He’s eyed me, and I’ve done the same over the years. He’s off limits and so am I. I’m his best friend’s sister. He’d never cross that line. Wyatt I’ve known Lakelyn, my best friend’s kid sister, all my life. There isn’t another woman who can crawl under my skin like her. I want to rule that sassy mouth with my tongue. There was a time I could’ve made her mine. Then I went pro. ...

Bobby Gunn has been fighting for his existence since a childhood spent living under the hand of his volatile father, and would do anything to give his seven-year-old daughter a better life—including betting on himself in the underground world of bare-knuckle boxing. In 1984, Gunn was an eleven-year-old boxer in Ontario when his father woke him in the middle of the night to fight grown men in motel parking lots for money, his old man pocketing the cash.

Considered by Ty Cobb as the "finest natural hitter in the history of the game," "Shoeless Joe" Jackson is ranked with the greatest players to ever step onto a baseball diamond. With a career .356 batting average - which is still ranked third all-time - the man from Pickens County, South Carolina, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the sport's history. That is until the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, which shook baseball to its core.

Known as the "beautiful game," soccer is the world's most popular sport, crossing borders and language barriers to entertain billions. But underneath it all - the raucous fans in the stadiums; the beloved players; and FIFA, the international governing body with a membership of 209 national associations - is a scandal that threatens to make soccer the ugliest sport in the world. Filled with headline-making revelations, The Big Fix is a must-hear for soccer fans and true crime aficionados.

The dramatic true story of two brothers living parallel lives on either side of the US-Mexico border - and how their lives converged in a major criminal conspiracy.

Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens - even, possibly, a beloved athlete.

More than any other sport, boxing has a history of being easy to rig. There are only two athletes and one or both may be induced to accept a bribe; if not the fighters, then the judges or referee might be swayed. In such inviting circumstances, the mob moved into boxing in the 1930s and profited by corrupting a sport ripe for exploitation. In Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science, Jeffrey Sussman tells the story of the coercive and criminal underside of boxing, covering nearly the entire 20th century.

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.

This is the unbelievable, unforgettable, unparalleled story of an ordinary guy whose attempts to become famous doing the thing he wanted most—become a world class race car driver—devolved into a you-can’t-make-this-up tale of one of the biggest crime rings and drug scandals of the 1980s. Now, with the help of New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime, Randy tells the whole truth for the first time ever, a gripping narrative unlike any other, a sports story for the ages, and shocking a true crime epic.

In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.

While trying to complete a top-secret corporate acquisition project at National Airlines, Lonny Jones’ life is turned upside down as sensitive negotiating information is leaked to the competition and his boss begins to exhibit questionable behavior. Lonny’s life is further complicated by his former best friend, Jack Heygood, who parlays the promise of testimony in the retrial of a Tropical Investment, Inc. kingpin — previously convicted of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme — into release from prison. Once on the loose, Jack’s suspicious business dealings wind through Dallas, the ...

Ultras are football fans like no others. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time.

Most of us think of bowling as a "sport" in quotation marks, and bowling alleys are places with disco balls, matching shirts, and funny shoes. But in the 1960s, New York City was the center of "action bowling", a form of high-stakes gambling in which bowlers - often teenagers - faced off for thousands of dollars every night. When money like that is changing hands, you can bet the pressure is on (and the balls are rigged), and losses come with dire consequences.

Dangerous Odds - a true crime thriller memoir - is the explosive, never-been-told, behind-the-scenes look into the world of illegal sports betting, revealed by an insider. Marisa Lankester, a young beauty with a privileged New York upbringing, stumbles into the back door of the largest illegal sports betting organization in the US, run by Ron (The Cigar) Sacco. Marisa, a thrill-seeker, maneuvers herself into this mob-run men-only bookmaking operation and becomes a trusted insider.