Everybody knows that if you break the law and get caught, you go to prison. But what happens when the very same people that are supposed to enforce and uphold the law, are criminals themselves? Three strangers, Eshe, Milla, and Sun-Solé, meet under the worst circumstances possible--behind bars. Prison isn't at all what they expected, and from the onset of their arrival, these three savvy boss chicks find themselves surrounded by disloyal snitches, set-ups, and scandalous drama. Determined to survive the system that enslaved them, these courageous women unite and embark on a mission to level the scales of justice. Will they survive the gruesome conditions of confinement, or will they fold under pressure?
“Gripping and timely.” —People “The YA debut we’re most excited for this year.” —Entertainment Weekly “A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of knowledge that’ll keep you down for the count. Prepare to BE slain.” —Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for Black gamers. By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.” But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.” Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
Nasty and Soulja, were ruthless kingpins on the streets of Baltimore. Now in prison, nothing has changed. They are still running things from behind the penitentiary walls. Even though they are still getting large amounts of money, it cannot solve all of their problems. Daily, they deal with the reality that they left loved ones behind. Nasty and his sister Von grew up parentless. They were murdered early in their childhood, and he had to become a brother and father to her. Feeling like he had no choice, Nasty left her with another hustler who was supposed to pick up where Nasty left off. But Rodney, with his own selfish agenda, held a dangerous secret that ruined many lives. As Nasty and Soulja embark on a journey to uncover the truth, there is bloodshed, betrayal, and mayhem. These young bosses with old-school principles are tested in ways that they never imagined. This is the ultimate gangster's tale.
Everybody knows that if you break the law and get caught, you go to prison. But what happens when the very same people that are supposed to enforce and uphold the law, are criminals themselves? Three strangers, Eshe, Milla, and Sun-Sole, meet under the worst circumstances possible--behind bars. Prison isn't at all what they expected, and from the onset of their arrival, these three savvy boss chicks find themselves surrounded by disloyal snitches, set-ups, and scandalous drama. Determined to survive the system that enslaved them, these courageous women unite and embark on a mission to level the scales of justice. Will they survive the gruesome conditions of confinement, or will they fold under pressure?
The High Price I Had To Pay is a captivating real-life story that reveals another aspect of the inside fraud perpetrated by Lehman executives that has yet to be told! Years before the 2008 Financial Crisis, a major epidemic of mortgage fraud surged throughout the country. The FBI geared up to combat the problem, imprisoning thousands who alleged to have victimized Wall Street giants, such as Lehman Brothers. Hidden safely behind the auspices of being a “victim,” savvy Ivy League bank executives created additional fraudulent schemes to further their profit. Utilizing their “victimizers” as scapegoats, the bankers’ clever plan went undetected. Consequently, the real architects of the massive fraudulent lending schemes escaped unpunished. And the “small fries,” who the bankers blamed, were left to do big time! This illuminating synopsis by author Jamila T. Davis, who is currently serving a 12 ½ Year sentence in federal prison for bank fraud, is shared from a unique standpoint. Davis was labeled by Lehman attorneys as the 25 year old mastermind who devised an elaborate mortgage scheme that defrauded their bank of 22 million dollars. Her shocking story captures the inside tricks of Wall Street elite and takes you up-close and personal into a world driven by greed and power. Davis’ story will leave you amazed and make you think. Have savvy Wall Street executives, such as Richard Fuld, been able to out smart the world? And while these executives escape unpunished, is it fair that “small Fries, “like Davis, are left to do big time?
This is the first Street Lit book to be written in reverse! Thuggz Valentine is the story of a modern day Bonnie & Clyde, natural born killers who go out in a blaze of glory after taking on the city s police force. Step by step, readers relive Ebony and Bless s last day together . . . Valentines Day. The day however, starts nothing like it ends, and as time goes back, hour by hour, the two lovers are unable to avoid destiny. Fate brings them together in a most bizarre way, and the couple realize the day is not about winning, it s about embracing the moment, no matter the outcome. Thuggz Valentine is the story of a ghetto love doomed from the beginning, but definitely worth the trip to Hell.
"Profound, funny ... wild and moving ... heartbreaking accounts of a lonely black childhood.... Brown sees racial oppression in national and global context; every political word she writes pounds home a lesson about commerce, money, racism, communism, you name it ... A glowing achievement.” —Los Angeles Times Elaine Brown assumed her role as the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party with these words: “I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?” It was August 1974. From a small Oakland-based cell, the Panthers had grown to become a revolutionary national organization, mobilizing black communities and white supporters across the country—but relentlessly targeted by the police and the FBI, and increasingly riven by violence and strife within. How Brown came to a position of power over this paramilitary, male-dominated organization, and what she did with that power, is a riveting, unsparing account of self-discovery. Brown’s story begins with growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in Philadelphia and attending a predominantly white school, where she first sensed what it meant to be black, female, and poor in America. She describes her political awakening during the bohemian years of her adolescence, and her time as a foot soldier for the Panthers, who seemed to hold the promise of redemption. And she tells of her ascent into the upper echelons of Panther leadership: her tumultuous relationship with the charismatic Huey Newton, who would become her lover and her nemesis; her experience with the male power rituals that would sow the seeds of the party's demise; and the scars that she both suffered and inflicted in that era’s paradigm-shifting clashes of sex and power. Stunning, lyrical, and acute, this is the indelible testimony of a black woman’s battle to define herself.
First published in Germany in 1929, The End and the Beginning is a lively personal memoir of a vanished world and of a rebellious, high-spirited young woman's struggle to achieve independence. Born in 1883 into a distinguished and wealthy aristocratic family of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hermynia Zur Muhlen spent much of her childhood travelling in Europe and North Africa with her diplomat father. After five years on her German husband's estate in czarist Russia she broke with both her family and her husband and set out on a precarious career as a professional writer committed to socialism. Besides translating many leading contemporary authors, notably Upton Sinclair, into German, she herself published an impressive number of politically engaged novels, detective stories, short stories, and children's fairy tales. Because of her outspoken opposition to National Socialism, she had to flee her native Austria in 1938 and seek refuge in England, where she died, virtually penniless, in 1951. This revised and corrected translation of Zur Muhlen's memoir - with extensive notes and an essay on the author by Lionel Gossman - will appeal especially to readers interested in women's history, the Central European aristocratic world that came to an end with the First World War, and the culture and politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
