Our Spring 2026 Series will wrap up with Linda Stasi sharing about her latest novel, The Descendants, to be published on March 10, 2026.
Linda Stasi is a journalist and author who says she “cut her teeth in the rough-and-tumble world of New York City tabloids,” and became one of the most widely-read columnists at the New York Daily News, New York Post, and Newsday. She describes her specialty as “Taking pop culture and spinning it with an unexpected POV, always keeping readers engaged.”
Linda says “inside every journalist is a novelist desperate to escape.” After writing five non-fiction books, she finally escaped writing The Sixth Stationand Book of Judas—both of which hit Amazon's Top 25.
More typical of a journalist than a novelist, Linda likes to get out and immerse herself in the world of her stories. For her first novel, she drove alone through three countries, hiked mountains in France, and traveled with an exorcist priest from the Vatican. For her second book, she climbed down into a 3,000-year-old burial cave in Israel.
For 15 years, Linda served as on-camera co-host with Mark Simone on NY1's "What a Week!" and currently hosts "Uncensored" for CUNY TV, where thoughtful conversations unfold without pretense. She can also be heard on iHeartRadio's Mark Simone Show and Boston's "Matty In The Morning.” In addition, she has also appeared on: The Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and The View.
About the Book:
This based-on-real-events novel tells the story of the family that possibly inspired The Godfather—except this story doesn’t begin with a small robbery in New York. Instead, The Descendant begins with a big, blooming love in the tiny town of Lucca Sicula, Sicily. Told through the lives of the strong Italian women who fought against impossible odds, this historically inspired narrative introduces a whole cast of fascinating characters.
Mariano Barbera was a strong, powerfully built man who saw tiny fourteen-year-old Maria Ragusa at her family’s store and was struck dumb. He had to have her, and she wanted him just as badly. Their life together leads the couple and their children from earthquake-ravaged Sicily to bondage in the mines of Colorado, to cattle ranching in Pueblo, to Mafia life on the mean streets of Red Hook, Brooklyn.
This sweeping family saga centers around the Barberas’ ten children from their three cowboy gangster sons, Peter, Joe, and Austin to their seven wildly different cowgirl daughters. First there’s little Flo—born on the night of the wolves and whose own alpha wolf never left her side—as she navigates life alongside her best pal and younger sister, Clara. Then there’s Flo’s many older sisters: Callie, who loved and lost; Angie, who loved and left; gorgeous Laura, who loved the wrong man; grouchy but brilliant Helen, who loved many times; and tough-as-nails wrangler Michelina, who loved a woman more than the husband she was forced to marry.
The Descendant is not just the story of how the mountain Mafia began in the United States. This is the story of a family of scrappy, tough, smart folks who refused to let all the power in the world keep them down.