Bagels & Books: Button Man

Description

About the Book:

After a string of New York Times bestselling suburban thrillers, Andrew Gross has reinvented himself as a writer of historical thrillers.

Now, Gross delivers a stirring story of an immigrant family torn apart brought together and torn apart by the birth of organized crime in New York City in the 1930s. Morris, Sol, and Harry Rabinowitz grew up poor but happy in a tiny flat on the Lower East Side, until the death of their father thrust them into having to fend for themselves and support their large family. Morris apprenticed himself at twelve years old to a garment cutter in a clothing factory; Sol headed to college and became an accountant; and Harry, the youngest, fell in with a gang as a teenager and can't escape.

Morris steadily climbs through the ranks at the factory until he's running the place and buys out the owner, and Sol comes to work with him. But Harry can't be lured away from the glamour, the power, and the money that comes from working for mobster Louis Buchalter, an old bully from the neighborhood. And when Louis sets his sights on the unions that staff the garment makers' factories, a fatal showdown is inevitable, and puts brother against brother. This new novel is equal parts historical thriller, rich with the detail of a vibrant New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, and family saga, based in part on Andrew Gross's family history, and will cement his reputation as today's most atmospheric and original historical thriller writer.

About the Author: Andrew Gross is the author of eight New York Times and international best-selling thrillers. He is also the co-author of five number one bestsellers with James Patterson, including Judge & Jury and Lifeguard. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Gross's recent books have been historical thrillers, with The One Man based on family stories in the Holocaust, and The Saboteur fictionalizing an Allied raid to prevent Nazi Germany's development of an atomic bomb. Button Man, based on his grandfather's experiences in New York's garment industry during the Depression, is his latest novel.