After the deaths and arrests of his entire crew and an informant-fueled investigation into his past, the man known on the streets as Animal relocates to Texas and finds fame and stardom as the newest act signed to the notorious Big Dawg Entertainment. His girlfriend, Gucci, is thrilled when she gets the news that he's coming back to New York on a promotional tour, but when she discovers the hidden agenda behind his homecoming nothing can prepare her for the life-altering consequences that will come of it. There goes the neighborhood . . . again.
Hood Rat (n.): A woman of questionable repute, one who has been known to "get around" in the 'hood. Harlem has never seen four friends as scandalous as Yoshi, Billy, Reese, and Rhonda. The neighborhood will never be the same again.
When three young friends, Porsha, Frankie and Sahara, decide to sublease an apartment from a mutual acquaintance, life becomes one big party for the girls. But the party comes to an abrupt end when they find out they've been fleeced for their money and an eviction notice is taped to their door. They have seventy-two hours to come up with the money or be tossed into the streets by the city marshals. Armed with various schemes, they set out to try and stop the eviction and find themselves caught in the crossfire of a bloody war between the Notorious Clark family and a new player in the game. Meanwhile the police are still searching for the killer known only as The Animal, while his former lover Gucci tries to put the pieces of her life back together. When all is said and done, all parties involved will discover something about Animal and his abduction that no one was prepared for. There goes the neighborhood, again!One of Library Journal's Best Street Lit Books of 2011
A crime would bring them together, grief would bind them and love would make them famous. Parish “Pain” Wells is a man freshly reintroduced to society, after serving time in state prison. Prior to his fall, Pain had been a heist man who showed the promise of someone who could go on to be a legend. His trajectory changed on the night he had made the mistake of accepting a ride from a friend, and found himself behind bars for the one crime he hadn’t committed. Several years later, Pain returns home to a world that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. The only one who still remains in his corner is his ailing grandmother. It’s for her sake that Pain tries to stay on the straight and narrow. He’s tired of breaking her heart and vows to be a good grandson, but when her medical bills start mounting he finds himself backed into a corner. He needs money, fast, and there’s only one way he knows how to get it. Since her parents died and Passion Adams found herself a ward of her estranged uncle, a gangster who everyone calls Uncle Joe, her life has been on a constant downward spiral. She moves like a ghost from one day to the next, numbing her pain with drugs and alcohol, while seeking thrills in unsavory places. One morning Passion finds herself the victim of a robbery and the thieves snatch from her the only thing of value that she has left in the world, a locket containing the ashes of her deceased parents. Passion is devastated, fearing she would never see the locket again until it shows up later in the hands of a handsome stranger, who brings something into Passion’s life that has eluded her since the death of her parents... hope. The two broken souls find themselves inescapably drawn into each other’s orbits, and begin their journey of finding lives outside the ones of poverty and sorrow that their worlds had condemned them to. But when shadows from both their pasts threaten their happiness, Passion and Pain set out on an adventure that would make them hunted by law enforcement and celebrated by the underworld. What initially starts out as a mission of vindication quickly turns into a fight for survival. "K'wan delivered another classic." -Mark Anthony, Essence bestselling author of Paper Chasers "Make way for the Donald Goines/Iceberg Slim of our era." -Tracy Brown, author of Black, Dime Piece and Criminal Minded “Wait until you read this! K'wan is raising the stakes." - Kashamba Williams, author of Blinded and Grimey At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
#1 Essence bestselling author K’Wan returns with The Diamond Empire, the explosive, hard-hitting follow-up novel to the street love story Diamonds and Pearl. It’s about to be an all-out war. While an ambitious rival has taken over Diamonds’s crew, Diamonds lies in wait in exile, carefully planning his next move to comeback and reclaim his position as king of the streets of New York for good. But when an unexpected enemy from the past one-ups Diamonds and beats him at his own game, Diamonds needs to dig deep into his bag of tricks—and make an unlikely alliance—in order to climb back to the top. After opening her heart to Diamonds and then having him disappear, Pearl lives her days in a very dark place. But when her father’s empire is toppled and a gaping power vacuum needs to be filled, Pearl is drawn into the very life her father so desperately wanted to shield her from. Pearl needs to fight tooth and nail to become queen of her father’s kingdom, as Diamonds claws his way back to Pearl.
In this second, bloody installment in the Animal saga, secrets are revealed, sides are chosen, and bodies are dropped—it's on! The man ordered to take Animal from the world turns out to be the man who brought him into it. Animal finds himself torn between his hatred for the father who had abandoned him and the man who had taken everything from him. An uneasy truce is formed between father and son to take down a common enemy and finally grant Animal his freedom from the blood debt he's carried for so many years. But when the ghosts of Animal's past catch up with him, he learns that nothing is what it seems, and everything is subject to corruption—even his love for Gucci.
Beware of the company you keep. K’wan’s urban fiction coming-of-age novel, Promise Broken, is set in the gritty streets of Newark, New Jersey. The story follows seventeen-year-old Promise Mohammed as she attempts to uphold friendships and new relationships—even if they lead to her demise. After Promise’s mother dies in a tragic car accident, it leaves a void in Promise’s life that she is yearning to fill. This titular novel finds Promise spiraling into a life of crime and drug affiliation by the company she chooses to keep. Also coping with abandonment and a lifelong broken commitment from her biological father, Promise ultimately has two goals: to graduate from high school and to be loved. But can she find the love that she seeks from her aunt Dell, two best friends, Mouse and Keys, or drug-dealer Asher—the man who captivates her—despite the fact that each relationship will lead to life-altering events? Only time will tell.
From # 1 Essence best-selling Crime Novelist K'Wan comes a tale of forbidden love, high stakes murder and the robbery gone bad that set it all in motion, Diamonds and Pearl. They say that good girls like bad boys, and this was especially true for Pearl Stone. A child born of privilege to a drug baron and reputed killer known in the streets as Big Stone. Although the flashy, fast-paced nature of the streets calls to Pearl, she’s been brought up to look but not touch. But when a young hustler named Diamonds crawls up from the swamps of Louisiana and sets up shop in New York City, everything Pearl was taught flies out the window. Raised in the wild and schooled on the mean streets of New Orleans, Diamonds is no stranger to hard times and is willing to do whatever it takes to stay above the poverty line, including kill. When a robbery turned mass murder goes wrong, Diamonds is forced to flee New Orleans and lands in New York where he meets Pearl, and for the first time finds something he craves more than wealth and power...love. As the stakes get higher, Diamonds has to push away his past if he’s to grab hold of his future—but by doing so, will he show Pearl that all that glitters isn’t gold?
In order to avoid an Internal Affairs investigation, Detective Wolf must hunt down the "Black Lotus Killer," a pursuit that leads to a cold case from his past.
A History of the African American Novel offers an in-depth overview of the development of the novel and its major genres. In the first part of this book, Valerie Babb examines the evolution of the novel from the 1850s to the present, showing how the concept of black identity has transformed along with the art form. The second part of this History explores the prominent genres of African American novels, such as neoslave narratives, detective fiction, and speculative fiction, and considers how each one reflects changing understandings of blackness. This book builds on other literary histories by including early black print culture, African American graphic novels, pulp fiction, and the history of adaptation of black novels to film. By placing novels in conversation with other documents - early black newspapers and magazines, film, and authorial correspondence - A History of the African American Novel brings many voices to the table to broaden interpretations of the novel's development.
