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Pete Earley

Pete Earley is an American journalist and writer of non-fiction books and novels.

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Ebooks

The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison

A stunning account of life behind bars at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where the nation’s hardest criminals do hard time.

“A page-turner, as compelling and evocative as the finest novel. The best book on prison I’ve ever read.”—Jonathan Kellerman

The most dreaded facility in the prison system because of its fierce population, Leavenworth is governed by ruthless clans competing for dominance. Among the “star” players in these pages: Carl Cletus Bowles, the sexual predator with a talent for murder; Dallas Scott, a gang member who has spent almost thirty of his forty-two years behind bars; indomitable Warden Robert Matthews, who put his shoulder against his prison’s grim reality; Thomas Silverstein, a sociopath confined in “no human contact” status since 1983; “tough cop” guard Eddie Geouge, the only officer in the penitentiary with the authority to sentence an inmate to “the Hole”; and William Post, a bank robber with a criminal record going back to when he was eight years old—and known as the “Catman” for his devoted care of the cats who live inside the prison walls.

Pete Earley, celebrated reporter and author of Family of Spies, all but lived for nearly two years inside the primordial world of Leavenworth, where he conducted hundreds of interviews. Out of this unique, extraordinary access comes the riveting story of what life is actually like in the oldest maximum-security prison in the country.

Praise for The Hot House

“Reporting at its very finest.”—Los Angeles Times

“The book is a large act of courage, its subject an important one, and . . . Earley does it justice.”—The Washington Post Book World

“[A] riveting, fiercely unsentimental book . . . To [Earley’s] credit, he does not romanticize the keepers or the criminals. His cool and concise prose style serves him well. . . . This is a gutsy book.”—Chicago Tribune

“Harrowing . . . an exceptional work of journalism.”—Detroit Free Press

“If you’re going to read any book about prison, The Hot House is the one. . . . It is the most realistic, unbuffed account of prison anywhere in print.”—Kansas City Star

“A superb piece of reporting.”—Tom Clancy

Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness

Pete Earley

“A magnificent gift to those of us who love someone who has a mental illness…Earley has used his considerable skills to meticulously research why the mental health system is so profoundly broken.”—Bebe Moore Campbell, author of 72 Hour Hold

Former Washington Post reporter Pete Earley had written extensively about the criminal justice system. But it was only when his own son—in the throes of a manic episode—broke into a neighbor's house that he learned what happens to mentally ill people who break a law.

This is the Earley family's compelling story, a troubling look at bureaucratic apathy and the countless thousands who suffer confinement instead of care, brutal conditions instead of treatment, in the “revolving doors” between hospital and jail. With mass deinstitutionalization, large numbers of state mental patients are homeless or in jail-an experience little better than the horrors of a century ago. Earley takes us directly into that experience—and into that of a father and award-winning journalist trying to fight for a better way.

Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program

Pete Earley

For decades no law enforcement program has been as cloaked in controversy and mystery as the Federal Witness Protection Program. Now, for the first time, Gerald Shur, the man credited with the creation of WITSEC, teams with acclaimed investigative journalist Pete Earley to tell the inside story of turncoats, crime-fighters, killers, and ordinary human beings caught up in a life-and-death game of deception in the name of justice.

WITSEC
Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program

When the government was losing the war on organized crime in the early 1960s, Gerald Shur, a young attorney in the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, urged the department to entice mobsters into breaking their code of silence with promises of protection and relocation. But as high-ranking mob figures came into the program, Shur discovered that keeping his witnesses alive in the face of death threats involved more than eradicating old identities and creating new ones. It also meant cutting off families from their pasts and giving new identities to wives and children, as well as to mob girlfriends and mistresses.

It meant getting late-night phone calls from protected witnesses unable to cope with their new lives. It meant arranging funerals, providing financial support, and in one instance even helping a mobster’s wife get breast implants. And all too often it meant odds that a protected witness would return to what he knew best–crime.

In this book Shur gives a you-are-there account of infamous witnesses, from Joseph Valachi to “Sammy the Bull” Gravano to “Fat Vinnie” Teresa, of the lengths the program goes to to keep its charges safe, and of cases that went very wrong and occasionally even protected those who went on to kill again.

He describes the agony endured by innocent people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up in a program tailored to criminals. And along with Shur’s war stories, WITSEC draws on the haunting words of one mob wife, who vividly describes her life of lies, secrecy, and loss inside the program.

A powerful true story of the inner workings of one of the most effective and controversial weapons in the war against organized crime and the inner workings of organized crime itself–and more recently against Colombian drug dealers, outlaw motorcycle gang members, white-collar con men, and international terrorists–this book takes us into a tense, dangerous twilight world carefully hidden in plain sight: where the family living next door might not be who they say they are. . .

Treason: A Novel

Newt Gingrich

Major Brooke Grant must track down the double agent who is infiltrating the U.S. government in this international thriller from influential politician Newt Gingrich and Pulitzer Prize finalist Pete Earley.

Brooke Grant has been waging war against terrorism since her parents were murdered during 9/11, keenly aware that violence transcends borders. But after a coordinated attack on the president at a Washington power broker's funeral, she realizes that the enemy is closer than she'd ever imagined, hiding in plain sight. The Falcon has gained a weapon no terrorist has ever wielded before: an American-born traitor burrowed inside the U.S. government itself.

Major Grant's deadly chess match with the Falcon turns personal when he issues a fatwa against her and those she loves. Can she unmask the traitor and stop the Falcon's most skilled assassin sent to kill her before he strikes? Or will she fall victim to betrayal by a false friend in this gripping story of treachery, courage, and the patriotic fight against evil?

In this realistic tale of modern-day treason, a nation fights for its life against an internal threat: a fanatical jihadist who uses liberty as a shield while trying to destroy the civilization created in its image. With decades of knowledge in national security and politics, only Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley could spin such a vivid mix of reality and fiction -- a page-turner that dares readers to guess where the line between the two is crossed.

The Serial Killer Whisperer: How One Man's Tragedy Helped Unlock the Deadliest Secrets of the World's Most Terrifying Killers

Pete Earley

From New York Times bestselling author Pete Earley—the strange but true story of how a young man’s devastating brain injury gave him the unique ability to connect with the world’s most terrifying criminals.

Fifteen-year-old Tony Ciaglia had everything a teenager could want until he suffered a horrific head injury at summer camp. When he emerged from a coma, his right side was paralyzed, he had to relearn how to walk and talk, and he needed countless pills to control his emotions.

Abandoned and shunned by his friends, he began writing to serial killers on a whim and discovered that the same traumatic brain injury that made him an outcast to his peers now enabled him to connect emotionally with notorious murderers. Soon many of America’s most dangerous psychopaths were revealing to him heinous details about their crimes—even those they’d never been convicted of.

Tony despaired as he found himself inescapably drawn into their violent worlds of murder, rape, and torture—until he found a way to use his gift. Asked by investigators from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to aid in solving a murder, Tony launched his own searches for forgotten victims with clues provided by the killers themselves.

The Serial Killer Whisperer takes readers into the minds of murderers like never before, but it also tells the inspiring tale of a struggling American family and a tormented young man who found healing and closure in the most unlikely way—by connecting with monsters.

Super Casino: Inside the New Las Vegas

Pete Earley

In this lively and probing book, award-winning author Pete Earley traces the extraordinary evolution of Las Vegas -- from the gaudy Mecca of the Rat Pack era to one of the country's top family vacation spots. He revisits the city's checkered history of moguls, mobsters, and entertainers, reveals the real stories of well-known power brokers like Steve Wynn and legends like Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel, and offers a fascinating portrait of the life, death, and fantastic rebirth of the Las Vegas Strip.

Earley also documents the gripping tale of the entrepreneurs behind the rise and fall and rise again of one of the largest gaming corporations in the nation, Circus Circus -- to which he was given unique access. In his trademark you-are-there style, he takes us behind the scenes to meet the blackjack dealers and hookers, the heavy hitters and bit players, the security officers, cabbies, and showgirls who are caught up in the mercurial pace that pulses at the heart of this astounding city.

Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold W ar

Pete Earley

When the Cold War ended, the spying that marked the era did not. An incredible true story from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated New York Times bestselling author of Crazy.

Between 1995 and 2000, "Comrade J" was the go-to man for SVR (the successor to the KGB) intelligence in New York City, overseeing all covert operations against the U.S. and its allies in the United Nations. He personally handled every intelligence officer in New York. He knew the names of foreign diplomats spying for Russia. He was the man who kept the secrets.

But there was one more secret he was keeping. For three years, "Comrade J" was working for U.S. intelligence, stealing secrets from the Russian Mission he was supposed to be serving. Since he defected, his role as a spy for the U.S. was kept under wraps-until now. This is the gripping, untold story of Sergei Tretyakov, more commonly known as "Comrade J."

The Apocalypse Stone

Pete Earley

"Judge not, lest ye be judged."
These words have rarely if ever crossed the mind of Aberlene county judge Evan Spencer. From a middle class background, he graduated law school, married into wealth, and now has his eye on a Supreme Court seat. All seemed to be going well for Judge Spencer, until he received a package from an old college friend he hadn't heard from in years containing a cryptic note and a small stone. But in trying to track down his old friend, Spencer learns of the man's suicidal leap from the roof off a 20-story balcony.
Evan Spencer now has control of an object whose power is beyond anything he could possibly imagine—an object whose very existence has been kept under wraps by the Vatican for decades. Spencer has been given the Apocalypse Stone: the actual stone Christ used when he stated "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone." Throughout history this stone has been passed along, inflicting its possessor with stigmatic wounds and vivid visions of their sinful life.
Enlisting the help of Reverend Angelo Grasso, a seventy-two year-old expert on the history of stigmatic cases, Spencer must uncover the secrets behind this strange stone, or watch his family, career, and possibly his life be destroyed.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lethal Secrets: A Novel

Pete Earley

It was thought that during the height of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, the KGB may have cleverly smuggled a nuclear bomb into the very heart of Washington D.C. In Pete Earley's new thriller, Lethal Secrets, this bomb is in the hands of a band of Chechen rebels, lead by an insane terrorist, Movladi 'the Viper' Islamov, who's threatening to detonate it unless his demands are met.

The fate of the city rests in the hands of a disgraced deputy U.S. Marshal, Wyatt Conway, who is reluctantly called into action by his FBI and CIA rivals because he was once a friend of Islamov's, before the freedom fighter turned into an international terrorist.
But to stop Islamov, Conway must trust Vladimir Khrenkov, a possibly corrupt Russian intelligence agent, and Kimberly Lodge, a skeptical CIA beauty. Conway suspects Khrenkov of being the man who executed a top Russian mobster that Conway was protecting in federal witness protection program. And the CIA's Lodge isn't all that certain Conway is capable of outwitting the terrorists and protecting the capital of the free world.

With time running out, Conway must find a way to manipulate and expose Khrenkov, keep Lodge and her bureaucratic cronies off his back, and prevent Islamov from igniting the spark for Armageddon.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Big Secret: A Novel

Pete Earley

Federal Chief Investigator Nick LeRue is an expert on unraveling a crime; he's brought down some of the smoothest operators on Capitol Hill and uncovered dangerous secrets in politicians' pasts. In his personal life, however, his commitment to his job has left him unlucky in love. When his ex-girlfriend, investigative journalist Heather Cole, appears after a long period of silence, things start looking up. But Nick is about to learn that nothing is ever what it seems.

Surprisingly, the woman who approaches Nick isn't his ex at all, but her twin sister, Melanie Cole. The two sisters share an unusually strong bond, one that allows them to sense when the other is in danger and even visit one another in their dreams. Melanie has been seeing images of her sister being held captive by an unseen man; somehow she knows that time is running out for Heather.

Though skeptical of the sisters' connection, Nick follows Heather's trail to Pushmataha, Mississippi. It appears that she was close to uncovering the town's darkest and bloodiest secret---the beating and lynching of a young black man in the 1955 when she mysteriously vanished. A photograph of the event reveals that all but two of the mob have already died. One of the survivors is Jeb Rogge, the town's most powerful and dangerous man. But why would Jeb get involved in a crime that would obviously point to him?

The town's residents seem to know something they're not telling Nick, and Melanie's dreams are becoming more and more intense. As more and more of the pieces fly together, it becomes all too clear that whoever has covered up the racial murder is willing to keep it hidden at any cost, even if it means killing again.

Combining an intense paranormal thriller with edge-of-your seat mystery fiction, Pete Earley's The Big Secret will keep you guessing until the unbelievable end.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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