Books like Layer cake by J. J. Connolly

Charles Dickens’ landmark historical novel, set in London and Paris during the French Revolution, follows Doctor Manette’s 18‑year imprisonment, his release, and his reunion with daughter Lucie amid looming terror.

A Christmas Carol is Charles Dickens’ allegorical novella about Ebenezer Scrooge, whose miserly ways are transformed through visits from Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens’s 1837-39 social novel, follows an orphan raised in a workhouse who flees to London, joins a gang of pickpockets, and uncovers family secrets while exposing child labour and exploitation.

James Ellroy’s hard‑boiled crime novel follows detectives as they unravel Los Angeles’s darkest mystery, the unsolved murder of the Black Dahlia, blending gritty police work with atmospheric noir.

Mob-connected loanshark Chili Palmer leaves Miami for Hollywood, chasing a deadbeat client and an opportunity to make a killer movie, only to find the glitter‑filled film world is as treacherous as any mob killing.

In The Big Nowhere, three men become entangled in a vast web of ambition, perversion, and deceit amid the gritty backdrop of Los Angeles.

James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential is a hard‑boiled crime novel set in 1950s Los Angeles, following a trio of detectives as they uncover a web of corruption and homicide within the police department.

Michael Corleone returns from a three‑year exile in Sicily to re‑enter America alongside young bandit Salvatore Giuliano, whose reckless acts have upset the Sicilian Mafia.

Pulp is a hard‑boiled mystery set in Los Angeles, following a private investigator named Nick Belane as he navigates the city's gritty underworld in Charles Bukowski’s gritty prose.

Eddie Coyle, a small‑time gun runner in Boston, must decide whether to betray his boss, Jimmy Scalisi, when police officer Foley presses him for cooperation while bartender‑turned contract killer Dillon pretends to be his ally.

185 pages ; 20 cm

The Spanish translation of Mario Puzo’s crime‑fiction classic "Omerta," a tale of mafia honor and its breach.

Investigative journalist Phoebe Eaton separates man from myth, journeying past cartel checkpoints up to El Chapo’s remote hometown hideout in the Sierra Madre. She meets Chapo's family and reveals the surprising telenovela details of his childhood, discovering exactly how this third-grade dropout, Mexico’s most controversial narcotrafficker, rappelled his way from the rock pile that is La Tuna, Sinaloa, onto Forbes magazine's big-time billionaire list, governing a $14-billion empire even as he was on the lam, living in simple pine shacks with plastic folding chairs where the phone service went down if it was raining. She discovers the Pentecostal faith his mother (and he) credit with keeping him alive all these years and helping him escape jail and the authorities numerous times, the gift his mother and sisters (and perhaps even he) have of speaking in tongues. Including many never-seen-before color pictures from Chapo's haunts in La Tuna in Badiraguato, the surprising seat of his empire, and also rare material from his 12-week Brooklyn court trial where he was convicted on ten felony counts before shipping off to a life term in Colorado's Supermax prison.

A harsh, small Yorkshire mining town shapes the disillusioned teenage Billy Casper, whose survival is forged through a bond with a kestrel hawk named Kes, revealing the deep, often bleak realities of working‑class life.

Danny Cadogan rises from a broken family to the top of London’s crime world as a feared "Face," balancing ruthless ambition with a domineering home life, while secrets threaten to collapse his empire.