It kind of depends on what you want.  I'm not trying to completely bag on "Five Familes."  It's a fairly good overview and will at least get you a baseline of knowledge.  I just think it's far too weighted to post-Apalachin mob versus pre-Apalachin mob.  

Cosa Nostra by John Dickie is a pretty good look at the history of the Sicilian mafia.  

Both Wiseguy and Casino by Nicholas Pileggi are must reads.  Obviously the basis for the films Goodfellas and Casino.  

The Valachi Papers is historically important so it's a worth a look.  

I've got a few that I haven't read coming up (within the next three to four years) including Laurence Bergreen's biography of Al Capone; T.J. English's Havana Nocturne about the mobs ties to Cuba and then the revolution and also his Paddy Whacked, about the Irish Mob; Michael Bensen's Gangsters vs. Nazis, which looks at how the mob helped against Nazi's at home and abroad; and Al Moe's Vegas and the Mob.  I can't say how any of them are yet though.  

Death to the French, aka Rifleman Dodd by C. S. Forester. 

This is the first book by Forester that I've read.  It won't be the last because I have the Hornblower books coming up, along with a few of his other stand-alones.  All I can say is that I hope they're better.  

Matthew Dodd is a private soldier in the 95th Regiment of Foot (The Rifle Brigade) in the Peninsular Wars.  This particular tale centers around the fighting at the Lines of Torres Vedras during the Invasion of Portugal.  Dodd is cut off from his brigade during the British retreat to Lisbon and finds himself behind French lines.  He tries to find his way back to the British lines and spends time fighting a guerilla action along with Portuguese irregulars.  Ultimately, as history will tell us, the French retreat from Portugal and the entire peninsula.  

I didn't hate this book.  I also didn't love it.  It is very much of another time.  It feels a bit like a "boys own adventure" book, but there's enough violence and more than enough hints at the fate of Portuguese women who fell in to French hands to keep it from being a juvenile.  But Dodd is all duty and really nothing else.  We get no indication that he, or any of his companions, or any of his adversaries, have any thoughts or feeling beyond hunger and war.  The story is told in the third-person, so it's not as if we have a stoic self-narration.  It appears that Forester simply has no interest in making any of his characters anything but cardboard cutouts in wargames.  It also adds to the issue that the book has complete contempt for the Portuguese people, at that point Britain's longest and most steadfast ally.  So what you get is a very dated, very colonial book, that is a fairly interesting adventure story and little else.  

World Gone Mad (Perry Rhodan #29)
Clark Darlton


Looks like the Springers weren't quite beat yet, and of course they had another amazing ship lying around waiting for the good guys to steal.

I'm not sure if it's going to be an ongoing theme or what, but we also got another near-omnipotent mysterious energy being in this one... not grate that only 29 stories out of hundreds in and they are already recycling plots.

Some fun stuff with Pucky on in this one that really saved it though.

If you've never read them, try Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, featuring Richard Sharpe, a rifleman promoted from the ranks.  It goes through the Peninsula War, up to Waterloo, then goes back to explore Sharpe's past, in India, as well as expands on some of the Napoleonic stuff.  Well done, well researched, great characters.  It was adapted into the tv series, with Sean Bean (he survives!).

I'm in the middle of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula 1999: Daikaiju. It is part of his Anno Dracula series, set in a world where Dracula survived the events of the Stoker novel and became Prince Consort to Quenn Victoria, before being driven out by agents of the Diogenes Club (from the Sherlock Holmes stories, the club where brother Mycroft was a member). The series then progresses through other periods. This one is set at New Years Eve 1999, in Japan, as it picks up some characters from One Thousand Monsters, the previous volume. That story was set during Dracula's reign, as a group of vampires comes to Japan, to settle, but are placed with the Japanese vampires, in a segregated area. Now, in 1999, that area, which was self-governing, is about to rejoin Japan (much like the hand over of Hong Kong, to China). The leader of the vampire society, Christina Light, who has a massive entertainment conglomerate, is throwing a big bash, at her corporate building, which is shaped like a giant dragon (Godzilla). A group of Aum Draht terrorists are out to disrupt things.

Newman mixes in references from literature, film, tv, comic books and more. He is a film writer & critic, as well as prose writer and pulls from various sources, while also satirizing various subjects. They are always well written, but they also have great humor and half the fun is picking out the easter eggs. There is a police detective, named Azuma, which was the identity of the Japanese anime hero 8Man, a cyborg superhero. The government has an emergency response unit, patterned after the G-Force of Godzilla and the various agencies of the Ultraman series, called Earth Guard. One of the partygoers is a Senator John Blutarski (R-Illinois), who is John Belushi's character, from Animal House. Newman has him doing some of his SNL antics, at the party.

Newman has built a whole little universe, which sort of has sub-branches that cross over or run parallel. When he was in school, he created a paranormal investigator, called Richard Jeperson, who was a mix of the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who and the character Jason King (played by Peter Wyngarde, of Flash Gordon), from Department S and his own series. He had a female sidekick, Vanessa, who was an Emma Peel-type. That was set in the 70s. Now, Jeperson is much older and at the party, representing the Diogenes Club, where he has the senior position. The Diogenes Club, in Newman's work, first appears in Anno Dracula, where Mycroft Holmes is running a secret war against Dracula and his vampire regime. In that first novel, a serial killer is murdering vampire prostitutes, in Whitechappel, with a silver knife. Diogenes Club agent Charles Beauregard investigates and meets vampire doctor Genevieve Dieudonne. Genevieve was created by Newman (using the pen name Jack Yorvil) for a group of books for the Warhammer series. That book is followed by The Bloody red Baron, where Dracula is leading the forces of the Kaiser, in WW1, aided by Robur the Conqueror and Count Orlock. The Red Baron transforms into a giant bat and attacks Allied flyers. Several pulp novel heroes appear, as many had backstories as pilots, in WW1, including the Shadow and the Spider, as well as radio hero Captain Midnight and the British boys fiction hero Biggles. There is even a plausible easter egg for Snoopy! Dracula Cha Cha Cha is next, set in the late 50s, as Dracula is about to marry a Balkan princess, in Rome, during the height of Italian cinema and La Dulce vita. Characters from film apepar, including the Crimson Executioner, a figure who is murdering vampires.

Newman jumped ahead to the 70s, with Johnny Alucard, as a Romanian teen, who is a translator for Francis Ford Coppola's production unit, filming the story of Dracula, in Romania (with it following parts of Apocalypse Now and its filming) comes to America and New York, in the disco craze and becomes a major figure at Studio 54 and with Warhol's bunch, dispensing "Drac," a blood narcotic which bestows temporary vampire abilities. He then goes to Hollywood to become a producer and conquer America. Lots of Easter eggs and characters like Orson Welles (who is trying to fund his own Dracula film), Lt Columbo, Superfly, a government team of vampire super soldiers (mixing Captain America and the X-Men) and various real people.

Newman also has a series of Diogenes Club books, but in an alternate universe from Anno Dracula. Charles Beauregard appears, as well as a sort of Nick and Nora Charles duo, Edwin Winthrop and Catriona Kay (seen in Bloody red Baron and a horror novel, An English Ghost Story) and then Richard Jeperson, with each covering a different time period. They deal with weird events and Genevieve Dieudonne turns up, at one point. Now, Newman has kind of folded some of that into the Diogenes Club of Anno Dracula. he also did a book, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, about a girls boarding school, where many of the girls have extraordinary talents or come from extraordinary families. The POV character was introduced in a Diogenes Club story, as an adult superhero, Kentish Glory, with a moth motif. This is her as a youth, coming to the school. Other students will ebcome detectives, master criminals, government agents, scientists, etc. It mixes school stories with pulp adventure and horror. One of the characters in Daikaiju is a Japanese girl, who is several hundred years old and a vampire, is a student there and is acting as Richard Jeperson's bodyguard, paralleling the Japanese schoolgirl heroines of manga and anime.

Newman's stuff is addictive fun, clever as hell, and extremely well written and entertaining. He is a longtime friend of Neil Gaiman and they broke into writing together, though Newman made a sale first. They collaborated on Don't Panic, A Guide to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Newman is a bit more prolific than Gaiman, though Gaiman kind of evened the score with his comics work.

Newman also has a book, The Angels of Musik, which grew out of a pair of stories he wrote for Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier's tales of the Shadowmen anthologies, from their Black Coat Books. Those stories feature characters from french pulp literature, like Fantomas and Arsene Lupin, as well as secret agent OSS 117 (the inspiration for the pair of jean Dujardin spy spoofs), villainess Madam Atomos, time traveler Doctor Omega, cinematic figures Judex and Irma Vep (both from serials by Louis Feuillade, who adapted Fantomas into its first silent serial), and characters from other works. Newman took the concept of Charlie's Angels, made Charlie the Phantom of the Opera and the Angels Irene Adler ("A Scandal in Bohemia"), Chistine Daae (Phantom of the Opera) and Trilby O'Farrel (from the eponymous novel), who then battle Josephine Balsamo (enemy of Arsene Lupin). In a second story, they deal with a conspiracy at the Royale les Eaux Casino (from Casino Royale), owned by Charles Foster Kane, as he seeks to set up a global criminal empire. The Angels are Eliza Doolittle (Pygmalion/My Fair Lady), Gigi and Rima the Jungle Girl (the Green Mansion and the DC comic). The Persian, the mysterious figure in Phantom of the Opera, operates as the Phantom's "Bosley." Newman expanded on those stories, added some more Angels, then climaxes the story with a mystery surrounding the Grand Guignol theater, known for its gory an horrific productions.

Newman reuses characters, which gives his work a "shared universe" feel, even when it is more of an alternate universe. Working out continuity will give you a headache and you just have to approach it as Anno Dracula is one continuity, the Diogenes Club Books have their continuity and the other works have their own; but, sometimes, they have parallel figures and events, like the duplicate JLA/JSA members of Earth 1 and Earth 2 and sometimes they are part of the same world.

Newman also has a Holmes pastiche, revolving around prof Moriarty and his agent, Col Sebastian Moran, where they act as "consulting criminals." They parallel and parody the style of the Holmes stories, with Moran acting as Watson to Moriarty's Holmes. The book is The Hound of the D'Urbevilles. There are also stories that are nods to The War of the Worlds, as well as other Holmes stories.

As if that wasn't enough, Newman has a regular feature in Total Film magazine and contributes to SFX and other British media magazines, as well as film essays and commentary. He features a lot of schlock cinema, as well as the good stuff, with equal enthusiasm; so, he is no film snob, when it comes to genres or budgets.

I'm a big Kim Newman fan and I love the Anno Dracula books.  I will say that the last couple didn't resonate with me in the way that the earlier ones did, simply because I really am not that in to Japanese mythology and popular culture.  But they were still certainly entertaining.  I'd read the first two Diogenes Club books and the third is coming up fairly soon.  Excellent stuff.