Despite what Scarface might lead one to believe, violence was not the dominant characteristic of the cocaine business. It was corruption: the dirty cops, agents, lawyers, judges and politicians who made the drug world go round. And no one managed that carousel of dangerous players better than Willy Falcon. Los Muchachos, the syndicate founded by Falcon, thrived as a major cocaine distribution network in the US from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. At their height, Los Muchachos made more than a hundred million dollars a year. T. J. English has been granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of Los Muchachos, sitting down with Willy Falcon and his associates for many lengthy interviews, and revealing never-before-understood details about drug trafficking.

In 1958, Manchester United was flying high. The best-known soccer team in the world and reigning English champions, the team was led by a bright young group of star players nicknamed the “Busby Babes” after their charismatic manager Matt Busby. But on a snowy afternoon that February, a plane carrying the team back from a European Cup match crashed on takeoff in Munich, killing 23 people --- including eight Manchester United players and three team officials. The accident destroyed the team, traumatized fans all over the world, and devastated the tight-knit community in Manchester. In MUNICHS, renowned novelist David Peace reimagines the crash and its aftermath, dramatizing the deep scars it left on British society.

After years apart from his criminal family, young Luke Crosswhite returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed. Now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises. A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of “home,” and the loyalties to his cousin, Callie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend, Pretty Baby, to escape the control of the gang, the Combine. Hanging over these desperate, lonesome parties is the gang’s motto, tattooed indelibly across the heart: Blood is Love.

During his years as a wheelman for the Armenian mob in Los Angeles, Shake Bouchon didn’t think of himself as the settling-down type. But now he’s happily married to Gina, the love of his life --- and former adversary --- in Indiana, of all places. The great thing about Bloomington, for two people with checkered pasts, is that everyone is nice and no one knows them. Until the day a brutal Armenian thug shows up in his backyard. He demands that Shake help him find his missing mob boss, Alexandra “Lexy” Ilandryan, who also happens to be Shake’s ex-girlfriend. Shake reluctantly agrees to travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where Lexy was last seen. Once there, he finds himself tangled in an underworld of Cambodian gangsters, mob politics and opportunistic expats, where the stakes aren’t clear and everyone is looking to score.

The best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal. Doesn’t it? In SHOCK INDUCTION, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite.

Born into poverty in rural Alabama, John Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations. He may be best remembered as the victim of a vicious beating by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he nearly died. David Greenberg’s biography traces Lewis’ life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South.

First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens --- the “smart cookies” who saw that making money, lots of it, might be within their grasp. Then came the first female Harvard Business School graduates, who were in for a rude awakening because an equal degree did not mean equal opportunity. But by the 1980s, as the market went into turbodrive, women were being plucked from elite campuses to feed the belly of a rapidly expanding beast, playing for high stakes in Wall Street’s bad-boy culture by day and clubbing by night. In SHE-WOLVES, award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of how women infiltrated Wall Street from the swinging '60s to 9/11 --- starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of its luncheon clubs and (more discretely) inside its brokerage houses and investment banks.

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years, Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures. As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves when he is visited by someone who always has been bent on tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if he can trust that his mother is telling the truth --- and what her ulterior motive may be. He gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again --- his mother.

For childhood friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul and Bimbo, death has always been close. Hurricanes. Car accidents. Gang violence. Suicide. Estamos rodeados de fantasmas was Gabe’s grandmother’s refrain. We are surrounded by ghosts. But this time is different. Bimbo's mom has been shot dead. We’re gonna kill the guys who killed her, Bimbo swears. And they all agree. Feral with grief, Bimbo has become unrecognizable, taking no prisoners in his search for names. Soon, they learn Maria was gunned down by guys working for the drug kingpin of Puerto Rico. No one has ever gone up against him and survived. As the boys strategize, a storm gathers far from the coast. Hurricanes are known to carry evil spirits in their currents and bring them ashore, spirits that impose their own order.