Japanese Rules

This book traces the Mafia’s beginnings from an underground patriotic society which sprang up six hundred years ago in Sisily, through the group of Italian immigrants – the Black Hand – Who savagely tore control of New York’s waterfronts away from Irish racketeers, to the Mob which went on to run organized crime throughout Italy and America. Drawing on previously unavailable information and nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo – great-nephew of the first godfather – and George Carpozi Jr. trace the Black Hand’s coalescence into an organization whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic and into a presidential administration. And they go behind the headlines to reveal with chilling clarity the true extent of the Mafia’s influence today.

Many lives and stories interest in this compelling novel: the passionate Mattie Jones bears a horrifying secret; Tama Mananui makes the most of an arranged marriage with a woman twenty years older; Nani Paora holds the key to the past and a history filled with bloodshed: and his grandson Pene may well be the key to future.

Fiona Sweeney wants to do something that matters, and she chooses to make her mark in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya. By helping to start a traveling library, she hopes to bring the words of Homer, Hemingway, and Dr. Seuss to far-flung tiny communities where people live daily with drought, hunger, and disease. Her intentions are honorable, and her rules are firm: due to the limited number of donated books, if any one of them is not returned, the bookmobile will not return.

But, encumbered by her Western values, Fi does not understand the people she seeks to help. And in the impoverished small community of Mididima, she finds herself caught in the middle of a volatile local struggle when the bookmobile’s presence sparks a dangerous feud between the proponents of modernization and those who fear the loss of traditional ways.