A collection of prize-winning short stories from the author of The Family Corleone. Whether writing about a 22-year-old Wisconsin boy in London who’s having misgivings about becoming a drug smuggler, or an aging actor trying to seduce his friend’s wife, Falco’s stories are always interested in the choices his characters make and in the inevitable consequences of those choices. The stories in Acid were first published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Best American Short Stories, The Missouri Re...

From discursive essay-poems to tightly constructed lyrics, Ed Falco’s X in the Tickseed examines a world that reveals itself through its mysteries, reflecting upon the ephemeral nature of all things. In the series of poems that bookend the collection, a speaker identified only as X reviews personal history and relationships, speculating, pondering, and questioning in the face of a baffling universe. Peppered between the X poems, artists as varied as Artemisia Gentileschi, Frank O’...

Set during the Great Depression and based in part on real characters and a series of historical events, Toughs follows the story of Loretto Jones as he finds his life intertwined with the fate of Vince Coll, a 23-year-old Irish gangster who for a brief moment rose to the level of a national celebrity during his war with Dutch Schultz, Owen Madden, and Lucky Luciano. Tagged Mad Dog Coll” after killing five-year-old Michael Vengelli in a botched assassination attempt, Coll was the ...

In Wolf Moon Blood Moon, Ed Falco considers love and the loss of love, what we have today and what we remember of yesterday, the promise of youth and the disappointments and pleasures of aging. By turns whimsical, meditative, and poignant, these poems examine the joys and sorrows of living.The first section offers a meditation on loss, as the author explores bereavements both personal and remote. From an elderly mother and her stroke-impaired son struggling to have a simpl...

An exhilarating and profound novel of tradition, violence, loyalty, and betrayal—a prequel to The Godfather.New York, 1933: The city and the nation are in the depths of the Great Depression. The crime families of New York have prospered in this time, but with the coming end of Prohibition, a battle is looming that will determine which organizations will rise and which will face a violent end.For Vito Corleone, nothing is more important that his fam...

The third, and final, installment in Mario Puzo's epic chronicle of the Corleone crime family—one of the most enduring lineages in American literature and cinema—achieves a stunning crescendo with a story that imagines the role of the Mafia in the assassination of a young, charismatic president.It's impossible to overstate the influence of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which has become an essential part of our cultural lexicon. Puzo's novel about the secret world of orga...

THE MISSING YEARS FROM THE GREATEST CRIME SAGA OF ALL TIMEThirty-five years ago, Mario Puzo’s great American tale, The Godfather, was published, and popular culture was indelibly changed. Now, in The Godfather Returns, acclaimed novelist Mark Winegardner continues the story–the years not covered in Puzo’s bestselling book or in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic films.It is 1955. Michael Corleone has won a bloody victory in the war among New York’s crime famil...

“A splendid piece of crime fiction . . . a fitting cap to a tremendous career . . . Through it all, Puzo keeps the heat on and keeps the reader enthralled with his characters and his story.”—The Denver PostTo Don Raymonde Aprile’s children, he was a loyal family member, their father’s adopted “nephew.” To the FBI he was a man who would rather ride his horses than do Mob business. No one knew why Aprile, the last great American don, had adopted Astorre Viol...

Two-time Academy Award winner Mario Puzo is known around the world for his brilliant book The Godfather, widely considered the finest novel ever written about the Mafia. Two years before Puzo published that iconic work, he released Six Graves to Munich under the pseudonym Mario Cleri. During World War II , intelligence officer Michael Rogan lost everything-including his family-to brutal Nazi interrogators. Now 10 years have passed, and Michael is returning to Europe to exact his revenge.

Before The Godfather and The Last Don, Mario Puzo wrote The Fortunate Pilgrim, a novel many believe to be one of the classics of Italian-American fiction. In this special edition, Mario Puzo's legions of fans will discover a different side of this legendary author, writing for the first time about an Italian family in which a woman holds the power.Lucia Santa has traveled three thousand miles of dark ocean, from the mountain farms of Italy to the streets ...

In this entertaining and insightful essay, Mario Puzo chronicles his rise from struggling writer to overnight success after the publication of The Godfather.With equal parts cynicism and humor, Puzo recounts the book deal and his experiences in Hollywood while writing the screenplay for the movie. Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, Peter Bart, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino all make appearances-as does Frank Sinatra, in his famous and disastrous encounter w...

"Read this man's book." --James EllroyGangster Squad presents a harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels—the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Brothers film starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.GANGSTER SQUAD chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums fro...