Organized Crime Sports

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.

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.

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 ...

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

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.

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.

Why in the world did I go home for my five-year reunion when I hate pretty much all of my classmates? Right, because I'm an idiot. When Las Vegas dancer, Piper Black, goes back to Philadelphia for her reunion, she knows it's not going to be an enjoyable experience, and she's right...until she ends up sleeping with her high school crush. What she doesn't know is that Reed Stirling has a secret that ruins everything. Can he make things right? And even if he does, will Piper be able to forgive him? Download and read the complete series in one single volume today.

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.

As featured on Netflix’s “Bad Sport,” the high-octane, Seabiscuit-meets-Scarface story of how Randy Lanier became a 1980s international sports star, soaring through the ranks of car racing while holding a dark secret: he was also one of the biggest pot smugglers in American history As a...

Can the sting of lust and betrayal bring down the house….Masquerading as Trent Michaels, Michael Trent returns to the U.S. after a covert escape in Eastern Europe, ready to reignite his dark empire. He sets his sights on the opulent Diamond Oasis Pickleball Club in Las Vegas, where he ingratiates himself with the elite, targeting their hidden secrets. Amidst the lavish surroundings, he becomes entangled with Charlotte Hayes, a rising pickleball star with a double identity. As Michael’s feelings for Charlotte deepen, he finds himself ensnared in a web of deception. Meanwhile, Sarah ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

Every small town needs a big hero. Silas Tucker is the biggest football hero Cross Rivers, North Carolina, ever produced. But his town is in big trouble. The All-American quarterback returns—not to play ball, but to solve a mystery. Who's making one local after another disappear? Silas has...

THE MOB BLACKMAILS TWO SPORTS ICONS WHO MURDER A YOUNG COCKTAIL WAITRESS. An innocent man is in jail for the crime they committed. A media giant has that part of the story, but is afraid to publish without ironclad proof. They hire a dogged investigator to get it. Meanwhile, the woman freelancer who uncovered the injustice can’t leave it alone. All hell breaks loose, as great detective work reveals a plot far worse than anyone imagined! ***“De Maria is a talented writer who has produced a body of work that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. His novels are sure to please fans of...

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.