Back to Where the War Began

⭐⭐⭐⭐ After loving the finale of the Danny Ryan trilogy, I circled back to the beginning with City on Fire—and it was fascinating to see how it all started. Set in Providence, Rhode Island in the late 1980s, the novel opens with a fragile peace between the Irish and Italian crime families that control the city. That peace shatters when a reckless romantic entanglement ignites a full-blown mob war. Danny Ryan, a dockworker who has tried to stay on the edges of the criminal world, finds himself pulled into the conflict through family loyalty and circumstance. As violence escalates and alliances shift, Danny begins a transformation that will shape the […]

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Don Winslow Bows Out with a Bang

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I literally couldn’t put down City in Ruins. Don Winslow caps off both his Danny Ryan trilogy and his career with a knockout of a finale that’s equal parts brutal, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Former dockworker and Irish mob soldier Danny Ryan has transformed into a Las Vegas casino mogul, swimming in wealth and respectability. Life finally seems golden—he has a son he adores, a woman he might love, and enough money to last several lifetimes. But when Danny tries to buy a prime piece of real estate to build his dream resort, he stirs up a hornet’s nest of corrupt Vegas power brokers, a ruthless FBI agent bent on revenge, […]

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