About the Author Each of these ladies has gained, earned, acquired, sweated, cried, laughed, and mostly smiled through their over 25 years of experience in navigating suburbia. Through those years, they each stepped up to a multitude of varying roles as suburban moms: everything from Girl Scout leader to room mom, volunteer, school auction chair, to committee member, sports volunteer, and food drive chair, event chair, travel agent, tennis player, game night hostess, hosting a girl's trip, book club member... the list goes on. You name it, and these gals have probably done it, gaining wisdom, experience and joy along the way. Each author has their own "Suburban Mafia" of cherished friends reaching far and wide looking out for their best interest as well as their family's well-being! May this book - the culmination of their experiences and learnings - extend to all of their dear ones, on to their dear ones, and so on and so on...

Suburban Gangsters By: Michael P. Dineen Sometimes in life the direction you choose could come down to making a choice that at the time didn’t seem like a big deal, only looking back you knew it wasn’t smart. Had his conversation gone differently with his father in the spring of 1985, Patrick may never had become a criminal. While shooting hoops with his old man that breezy afternoon in April, they struck up a conversation. Patrick had been kicked out of Walt Whitman High School a few months earlier, but had been working full-time ever since. He was working hard at the time and would have kept at it. But his dad’s rejection, and the way he did it, burned Patrick badly. Patrick doesn’t blame his dad for becoming a criminal, but that was the final straw. Somehow, he was determined to find a way to get that Mustang GT his dad wouldn’t cosign for him. Selling cocaine would help him to achieve that. That’s when he began hustling. This was just the beginning of Patrick’s drug selling days. He sold and trained and trained and sold. He worked with the cops, the FBI, and the DEA. It may feel like a quick high. You may think just one more big sale and you can get out. But you’ll learn that the life of drugs and crime doesn’t pay.

"Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority populations, an extension of the federal war on black street crime and the foundation for the "new Jim Crow" of mass incarceration as key characteristics of the U.S. in this period. But as the Nixon White House understood, and as the Carter and Reagan administrations also learned, there were not nearly enough urban heroin addicts in America to sustain a national war on drugs. This book argues that the long war on drugs has reflected both the bipartisan mandate for urban crime control and the balancing act required to resolve an impossible public policy: the criminalization of the social practices and consumer choices of tens of millions of white middle-class Americans constantly categorized as "otherwise law-abiding citizens."" That is, the white middle class was just as much a target as minority populations. The criminalization of marijuana - the white middleclass drug problem - moved to the epicenter of the national war on drugs during the Nixon era. White middle-class youth by the millions were both the primary victims of the organized drug trade and excessive drug war enforcement, but policymakers also remained committed to deterring their illegal drug use, controlling their subculture, and coercing them into rehabilitation through criminal law. Only with the emergence of crack cocaine epidemic of the mid-1980s did this use of state power move out of suburbs and remgaged more dramatically in urban and minority areas. This book tells a history of how state institutions, mass media, and grassroots political movements long constructed the wars on drugs, crime, and delinquency through the lens of suburban crisis while repeatedly launching bipartisan/nonpartisan crusades to protect white middle-class victims from perceived and actual threats, both internal and external. The book works on a national, regional, and local level, with deep case studies of major areas like San Francisco, LA, Washington, and New York. This history uses the lens of the suburban drug war to examine the consequences when affluent white suburban families serve as the nation's heroes and victims all at the same time, in politics, policy, and popular culture"--

As an exotic dancer at The Great Alaskan Bush Company in Anchorage, Mechele Hughes Linehan knew how to captivate men. Three of them were convinced she was engaged to them. Then one spring morning in 1996, one man, Kent Leppink, was found in the snow, shot in the head... Days before his death, Kent had removed Mechele's name from his million-dollar life insurance policy. He wrote a letter to his family stating that, should he meet foul play, Mechele would likely be among those involved. But she wasn't charged with Kent's death. She married a doctor, moved to Olympia, Washington, and began a new life. For years, Mechele's suburban friends never suspected a thing. She went to school meetings, hosted backyard barbeques, and was beloved by her neighbors. But authorities eventually found enough evidence to mount a case against her and an alleged accomplice. Did Mechele conspire to kill her ex-fiancé? Or is she the innocent victim as she claims? Seduced by Evil is the shocking true story about a love triangle that ended in mystery—and murder...

Finally, a home theater companion that understands what we’ve all known for years–our favorite TV shows are more than an escape, they’re best friends and a form of therapy that can help us cope with everything from a bad hair day to a nuclear family meltdown. Life getting boring in your cul-de-sac? Indulge in some Diva TV like Desperate Housewives and take a walk on the wild side of Wisteria Lane. Need a place where everybody knows your name? Drop in for a little You’ve Got a Friend TV like Cheers and order some fun on the rocks without having to face the hangover in the morning. White-knuckling the armchair of life? Let go with a little Anti-Anxiety TV like In Living Color and laugh at your fears. Got a bad case of the codependent blues? Indulge in a little Codependent TV like Nip/Tuck and reassure yourself that things could definitely be worse! So whether you’re on the verge of your nineteenth nervous breakdown, looking for an excuse to throw a TV party, or searching for deeper meaning–TVTHERAPY: The Television Guide to Life will give you the guidance you need to find the right television prescription to match your mood, cure your malaise, or make your night without ever getting up off the couch. PLUS: Recipes from Bev’s TV tray, including food facials for staying as cool as a cucumber…Jason’s Minibar, featuring drinks to wet your inner whistle…and timeless quotes from TV sages down through the ages who can teach us all a thing or two about life on and off the air.

This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Robert M. Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread "alien conspiracy" theory, organized crime evolved in a linear fashion beginning with the Mafia in Sicily, emerging in the form of the Black Hand in America's immigrant colonies, and culminating in the development of the Cosa Nostra in America's urban centers. Looking beyond this Mafia paradigm, this volume argues that the development of organized crime in Chicago and other large American cities was rooted in the social structure of American society. Specifically, Lombardo ties organized crime to the emergence of machine politics in America's urban centers. From nineteenth-century vice syndicates to the modern-day Outfit, Chicago's criminal underworld could not have existed without the blessing of those who controlled municipal, county, and state government. These practices were not imported from Sicily, Lombardo contends, but were bred in the socially disorganized slums of America where elected officials routinely franchised vice and crime in exchange for money and votes. This book also traces the history of the African-American community's participation in traditional organized crime in Chicago and offers new perspectives on the organizational structure of the Chicago Outfit, the traditional organized crime group in Chicago.

Gallo made millions for New York's Colombo Mafia family before becoming an undercover FBI informant. In "Breakshot," he captures the American underworld in all its tawdry spectacle.

The Mafia has maintained an enduring hold on the American cultural imagination--even as it continues to wrongly color our real-life perception of Italian Americans. Journalist and cultural critic De Stefano takes a look at the origins and prevalence of the Mafia mythos in America. Beginning with a consideration of Italian emigration in the early twentieth century and the fear and prejudice--among both Americans and Italians--that informed our earliest conception of what was the largest immigrant group to enter the United States, De Stefano explores how these impressions laid the groundwork for the images so familiar to us today and uses them to illuminate and explore the variety and allure of Mafia stories. At the same time, he addresses the lingering power of the goodfella cliché, which makes it all but impossible to green-light a project about the Italian American experience not set in gangland.--From publisher description.

As punishment for some of his high school misadventures, Will has to write a thesis about someone he finds interesting. Choosing himself, Will shares an introspective glimpse into his struggle to find himself in the confusing and contradictory world of growing up.