The mafia has been given many names since it was founded one hundred and forty years ago: the Sect, the Brotherhood, the Honoured Society, and now Cosa Nostra. Yet as times have changed, the mafia’s subtle and bloody methods have remained the same. Now, for the first time, COSA NOSTRA reconstructs the complete history of the Sicilian mafia from its origins to the present day, from the lemon groves and sulphur mines of Sicily, to the streets of Manhattan.
The mob genre has finally grown up.

John Dickie is both an academic cultural historian and an advertising copywriter and researcher for several major international companies. He is Senior Lecturer in Italian at UCL and has written articles and books on many aspects of Italian history.

Elizabeth George is one of the most successful writers of crime fiction in the world. Her twelve novels have appeared on bestseller lists in the UK, USA and Australia, and several of them have been dramatised by BBC Television as the Inspector Lynley Mysteries. She has also written a collection of short stories and edited a crime anthology.
Now she shares this wealth of experience with would-be novelists, and with crime fiction fans. Drawing extensively on her own work, and that of other bestselling writers including Stephen King, Harper Lee, Dennis Lehane and many others, she illustrates her points about plotting, characterisation and technique with great clarity.
She also includes extracts from her own Journals – the diaries she keeps as writes each of her novels – and these give us an unprecedented insight into the creative mind, with all its highs and lows.

Elizabeth George is the author of highly acclaimed novels of psychological suspense. Her first novel, A Great Deliverance, was honoured with the Anthony and Agatha Best First Novel awards in America and received the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France; Well-Schooled in Murder was awarded the prestigious German prize for international mystery fiction, the MIMI (1990). Her novels have now been adapted for television by the BBC. An Edgar and Macavity Nominee as well as a New York Times and international bestselling author, Elizabeth George divides her time between California and Kensington, London.

Sarah Mullen is a beautiful child who at seven years old is put into care by her drug-addicted mother. Trying to live with the rejection is bad enough, but no one could have prepared her for the pain that was yet to come.
Harry Shaw is the boy that everyone bullies, the kid whose own mother locked him in a cupboard so she wouldn’t have to look at his face, and then left him there.
When he meets Sarah for the first time, a friendship is instantly forged. And out of a desire to be loved an alliance is born.
Then into their lives comes Vinnie Walker, a good-looking and calculating thirteen-year-old who will change both their lives forever.

Mandasue was born in Cheshire and moved to Manchester in 1982. She spent ten years living in the notorious Hulme Crescents which have since become the background to her novels. Not only is she a talented writer, but she has also sung in cabaret and rock groups, seventies soul cover bands and blues jam bands.

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. Working for an elite undercover squad he has lied, cheated and conned in order to bring Britain’s most wanted criminals to justice.
But when a powerful drugs baron starts to kill off witnesses to his crimes, Shepherd is given his most dangerous assignment yet. He has to go undercover in a top security prison, a world where one wrong move will mean certain death.
As Shepherd gambles everything to move in on his quarry, he soon realises that the man he is hunting is even more dangerous than the police realise. And that he is capable of striking outside the prison walls and hitting Shepherd where it hurts most.

Stephen Leather was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He began writing full-time in 1992 and has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series.

Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are bored and disillusioned after a decade as Washington senior staffers, and the clandestine Zero Game sounds like good fun. But when someone close to them ends up dead, they realise the game is far more sinister, and soon they're running for their lives.

`Like Chandler's Marlowe, Corvinus wisecracks his way through a weary world of murder and intrigue until he hunts down the truth. A taut thriller in which ancient Rome springs to life' The Times
`Innate humour and pace carry one through to the tragi-comic climax' Irish Times
`It is evident that Wishart is a fine scholar and perfectly at home in the period' Sunday Times
`Wishart creates a pungent, throbbingly vibrant Rome' Highland News