"All good comedy is based in reality.  Joe Bruno has taken real situations from "the old neighborhood," which happens to be New York's Little Italy, and stretched them into laugh-producing fiction (he takes the Fifth Amendment on the homicides).  If you've grown up in a neighborhood like Little Italy of any ethnic group, you'll feel like your back home and will laugh your ass off.  If you're not, you'll just laugh your ass off and look for another Joe Bruno novel."
~ Sonny Girard

"Find Big Fat Fanny Fast" by Joe Bruno is not only hilarious and well written but a time machine like  journey into the unforgettable world of Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan as it existed then and is now just an unbelievable memory".
~ Mathew J. Mari, Attorney At Law

Mob Wives - Fuhgeddaboudit!

This book consists of my "Joe Bruno on the Mob" blogs concerning "Mob Wives," along with the responses I've received from my readers, both on my blog and on my Facebook page "Mobsters, Gangs," where I also post my blog. 

Some of the responses are hysterical; some are dumb; and some are downright obscene. I've tried to clear up the obscenities and the bad English the best I could. 

Murder and Mayhem in the Big Apple - From the Black Hand to Murder Incorporated

In highlighting the most prolific killers in the history of New York City, if not the world, this book starts with the bloody Black Hand and then pitches forward a decade later to the Boys from Brownsville, who morphed into the greatest death machine in the history of America: Murder Incorporated, better known as Murder Inc.

So fire up your Kindle, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage, and enjoy the most vicious killers ever to prowl the streets of New York City.

However - a word of caution. While reading, stay away from rare roast beef sandwiches, dripping in blood.

Mobsters,Gangs,Crooks, and Other Creeps -
Vol 3 - New York City

2012 is the 100-year anniversary of the murder of small-time gambler Herman Rosenthal - the most celebrated murder of its time. Make no mistake, there are no good guys here, no innocent victims. The fact is an offensive and offensive-looking well-known criminal framed a crooked New York City police lieutenant for the killing of an odious stool pigeon. People in the underworld cheered the death of Herman Rosenthal; he was that much disliked. But that doesn't negate the fact that the wrong man sat in Sing Sing's electric chair for ordering Rosenthal's murder, while the man who framed him - and actually ordered the murder of Herman Rosenthal - walked away scot free, content in the knowledge that he was able to fool so many prominent law enforcement officials so easily.
This is how it all happened.

Read the first chapter on Joe's Blog!

Disasters are covered here too; in the essays on the Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876, and the General Slocum Paddleboat Fire of 1904. And if you are a fan of the Mafia, you won't be disappointed in the bios on Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Paul Castellano, and Carmine Galente, the last two of whom died in a hail of gunfire in public places; their gruesome death photos splattered on the front pages of the New York City daily newspapers.

Female reprobates are also featured. Like Sadie the Goat, who made a fine living rolling drunks on the Lower East Side docks, before she made the big-time as a riverboat pirate, plundering and pillaging along the Hudson River all the way to upstate New York. And let's not forget Evelyn Mittelman, called “The Kiss of Death,” because several of her boyfriends were murdered by her next boyfriend in line.
This book is not for the faint of heart. But if you like reading about murderers, crooks, disasters, and degenerates, you've come to the right place.

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Mobsters,Gangs,Crooks, and Other Creeps - Vol 2 - New York City

Read an Excerpt from
Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Vol 2

"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Volume 2- New York City" is not a continuation of "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Volume 1- New York City," but rather a complement to Volume I. Volume 2 starts in the time period of the early 1820's, and ends in the mid 1900's.

This is not a book about nice people. This is a book about the lowest forms of life ever to walk the face of the earth: Mafioso, murderers, con artists, prostitutes, base street thugs, crooked politicians; people who do deliciously decadent things to other people, as easily as stepping on a roachvcc . The exception is New York City Detective Joseph Petrosino, who took on the vicious Black Hand, but lost his life in Sicily because he wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Volume 2- New York City" is not for everyone. But if you enjoy reading about people who are so unaffected about what they do, they can eat a hot roast beef sandwich minutes after slitting some poor guy's throat, this book is definitely for you.

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Read the preface from
Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps - Vol 1

Having grown up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I've always been fascinated by my neighborhood's history. I spent the first years of my life living in Brooklyn, but when I was six, my parents moved to 134 White Street, the corner of Baxter, about 50 feet from the city prison called The Tombs. I spent the years before I went into the military service hanging out in Columbus Park (originally Mulberry Park), which was built in the late 1890s. Before Columbus Park existed, the area and the streets surrounding it were the site of the notorious Five Points, which was formed by the intersection of Cross (first Park, now Mosco), Anthony (now Worth), Little Water (no longer exists), Orange (now Baxter) and Mulberry streets.

"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" is written in alphabetical order, starting with "Ah Hoon - The Murder of Chinese Comedian Ah Hoon," and ending with Big Jack Zelig.

Listen to an interview with famed criminal attorney Mathew Mari, who wrote the introduction to,"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps Volume 1-New York City", was a guest on the Curtis Sliwa nationally syndicated radio show on 970 am in NY City.


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Read an Excerpt from
Find Big Fat Fanny Fast

Read Reviews

Since the start of the 20 th Century, the Italians and Chinese in the Little Italy/Chinatown area in New York City have endured an uneasy truce. In the first three quarters of the century, the Italians ruled the neighborhood with an iron fist. But starting in the 1970's, the dynamics began to change, as more Italians moved out and droves of Chinese began flowing into Chinatown from China. This did not bode well for Italian mob boss Tony Bentimova (Tony B), so he enlisted the help of his most trusted killer, Big Fat Fanny Fanelli, all six foot six inches and six hundred and sixty pounds of her, to ensure the Italians maintained control of all the illegal businesses in Little Italy, which was now starting to be called - Chinatown.

Tony B's chief nemesis was Hung Far Low, rotund Mayor of Chinatown and boss of all the Chinese gangs in New York City. After one of his men was killed by one of Tony's B's boys, Hung Far Low sent his most trusted killer Yuan Dum Fuk, to find out who did the killing and why, and to get revenge by whacking out Tony B's henchman. Yuan Dum Fuck ambushed the killer, and with the help of a Chinese hit-woman Peggy Soo, he got revenge for his boss.

In a surprising turn of events, Tony B's son Junior became romantically involved with Hung Far Low's daughter Lily. As the dead bodies on both sides began pilling up, Junior and Lily plotted a way to end the Chinese/Italian wars before their respective father's turned up dead.

A monkey wrench was thrown into their scheme by Keyshawn Blusterman, the corrupt police commissioner of New York City. Blusterman's police cohorts were shaking down businesses, both legal and illegal, throughout the city. But in order to keep his dozen, or so coke-addict girlfriends happy, Blusterman needed more money and he need it fast. He concocted a scheme to approach both Hung Far Low and Tony B separately, with the offer to eliminated their respective arch-enemy, for a one time payment of one hundred thousand dollars upon completion of the contract, and ten thousand dollar a month for infinity.

What happened next changed the dynamics of the Chinatown/Little Italy area for generations to come.

Read an excerpt from Find Big Fat Fanny Fast.

Read Reviews

Bargain - everyone loves a bargain, and Joe Bruno's Mobsters Six Volume Set is a bargain that's hard to beat.

This boxed set, consisting of six books by mob writer Joe Bruno, starts with Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps Volumes 1, 2, and 3 New York City. All three books were once ranked No. 1 in the now defunct Amazon book category Gangs, and all three are consistently ranked in the top 100 in Amazon's Organized Crime.

Finally, to cap off this six-book boxed set, there's Mob Wives Fuhgeddaboudit! a clever critique of the VH1 TV program Mob Wives. As L.L. McKenna said in her Amazon book review 'The Real of Reality TV', 'What a pleasure 'Mob Wives Fuhgeddaboudit!' is to read Mr. Bruno not only provides insight to the 'reality show' but includes his blogs and responses. While scripted or not, the only truth is the paycheck that the "characters" cash while exposing themselves to the viewers.

According to New York City criminal attorney Mathew J. Mari, 'Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps' is 'a composite of characters and events that entwines the denizens of New York City's underworld with the rich history of New York City from the early 1800's through the early 1900's.'

Read an excerpt from Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set.

Buy on Kindle - $.99

Print Edition - $9.99

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Angel of Death