Released from prison bad boy Easy-Love Brown is out ready to reclaim Manchester’s gangster crown after wasting time doing time, time has brought him new enemies but as grandma says, “if you want to swim in the river, first you have to kill the crocodiles.” Seventeen-year-old Danny Boy Ranks leader of the Worlders Crew has a vile mouth and a temper to match and he doesn’t believe no man riding on his grind. Ranks’ ambition is to “out Easy’s light” while avoiding clashing with Yardie godmother, leader of the Dodge Crew, Miss Small who wants to be reunited with the son she abandoned as a baby and give up the hustle. Easy figures that if he can manipulate Miss Small, he can take over her crew because as grandma always says, strength comes in numbers.Realising that he too, has to increase numbers, it doesn’t take long for Danny to work out that ex-gang leader, Storm Michaels is hiding the truth from his brother Zukie who is suffering from memory loss after a car crash and doesn’t remember that Storm caused the death of his best friend in a payback gone wrong. Storm has given up the gun for good, no longer in a gang, but Danny believes that once a street soldier always a street soldier, blackmailing Storm to get him to eradicate Easy. Storm, Zukie, Ranks and Easy-Love, find they have unresolved issues and challenges from the past and present to face in the sequel to the best-selling novel, Moss Side Massive, from the UK’s first first black female crime writer. “Rolling along at a terrific lick, a highly original take on the American crime novel is as claustrophobic as Pelecanos (acclaims writer of The hit TV series ‘The Wire’) and as soapy/dysfunctional as Franzen” Times Literary Supplement “Karline Smith captures both atmosphere and a pervading feel of evil. She's undoubtedly a writer to watch...." - Reviewing the Evidence

Manchester, United Kingdom, 1994 When a young, gang leader is shot dead and killed in broad daylight, his brother strongly suspects opposing gang-leader, Storm Michaels, is responsible. Storm lives a double life, leader of the Grange Close gang, and his mother's, (Queenie) doting son, with a good job as jewellery sales representative, and can do no wrong. Just when he is about to give up the gang life to concentrate on his son and daughter, and conflicts with his women, he finds himself divided concerning his loyalties. In the midst of this is Queenie, who came to England and settled in Moss Side, in the early seventies, following her husband Vermont. After the marriage deteriorates. Queenie is forced to bring up two sons alone in the area with no idea that one of her sons is a notorious gang-leader and that her life is under threat. In the dark Winter that follows, the war between the two feuding gangs, Pier Mill Massive and the Grange Close crew steps up. Two Generals fighting for control of one army, for control of the streets, the clubs, and even the local black businesses, claiming a stake (taxing) of profits and of course vengeance. By the time Storm realises that his family is under threat it is almost too late. His younger brother, up-and-coming sound system engineer eighteen-year-old Zukie, becomes the main focus of the Piper Mill’s craving-for-revenge and unstable new leader, Jigsy and Jigsy’s message is simple: 'A brother for a brother, a life for a life.' "The side of Manchester people never get to see...wicked stuff" - Victor Headley, author of best-selling Jamaican gangster novel YARDIE. "A rare glimpse into a world in which the women are hopelessly patient and the men little more than demanding children obsessed with their toys is grimly exotic and extremely readable. " - Times Literary Supplement. "Karline Smith is an author that is certainly going places." - The Voice Newspaper. “This book is a jewel. A time-piece that captures an era, revisited through its pages. Pulsating with tension, Moss Side Massive is peppered with historical moments. Music, streets, clubs, street language, gang-grooming and culture, generational conflict, despondency and at that time, hopelessness. Fantastic.” - City Life Magazine.

This book takes a post-racial approach to the representation of race in contemporary British fiction, re-imagining studies of race and British literature away from concerns with specific racial groups towards a more sophisticated analysis of the contribution of a broad, post-racial British writing. Examining the work of writers from a wide range of diverse racial backgrounds, the book illustrates how contemporary British fiction, rather than merely reflecting social norms, is making a radical contribution towards the possible future of a positively multi-ethnic and post-racial Britain. This is developed by a strategic use of the realist form, which becomes a utopian device as it provides readers with a reality beyond current circumstances, yet one which is rooted within an identifiable world. Speaking to the specific contexts of British cultural politics, and directly connecting with contemporary debates surrounding race and identity in Britain, the author engages with a wide range of both mainstream and neglected authors, including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes, John Lanchester, Alan Hollinghurst, Martin Amis, Jon McGregor, Andrea Levy, Bernardine Evaristo, Hanif Kureishi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hari Kunzru, Nadeem Aslam, Meera Syal, Jackie Kay, Maggie Gee, and Neil Gaiman. This cutting-edge volume explores how contemporary fiction is at the centre of re-thinking how we engage with the question of race in twenty-first-century Britain.

This study analyses four new genres of literature and film that have evolved to accommodate and negotiate the changing face of postcolonial Britain since 1990: British Muslim Bildungsromane, gothic tales of postcolonial England, the subcultural urban novel and multicultural British comedy.

Drawing together the insights of postcolonial scholarship and cultural studies, Popular Postcolonialisms questions the place of ‘the popular’ in the postcolonial paradigm. Multidisciplinary in focus, this collection explores the extent to which popular forms are infused with colonial logics, and whether they can be employed by those advocating for change. It considers a range of fiction, film, and non-hegemonic cultural forms, engaging with topics such as environmental change, language activism, and cultural imperialism alongside analysis of figures like Tarzan and Frankenstein. Building on the work of cultural theorists, it asks whether the popular is actually where elite conceptions of the world may best be challenged. It also addresses middlebrow cultural production, which has tended to be seen as antithetical to radical traditions, asking whether this might, in fact, form an unlikely realm from which to question, critique, or challenge colonial tropes. Examining the ways in which the imprint of colonial history is in evidence (interrogated, mythologized or sublimated) within popular cultural production, this book raises a series of speculative questions exploring the interrelation of the popular and the postcolonial.

According to Orwell, the North was 'a strange country.' In an industrial landscape, its inhabitants seem to inhabit a bleak world caught in the gaze of 1930s realism. Such stereotypes have been tenacious. This book challenges these stereotypes, establishing the strategic and mobile nature of 'the North' and the effects of literary realism.

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An action-packed roller-coaster account of a life spiralling out of control featuring wild women, gangsters and a mountain of drugs Shaun Attwood arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, a penniless business graduate from a small industrial town in England. Within a decade, he became a stock-market millionaire. But he was leading a double life. After taking his first Ecstasy pill at a rave in Manchester as a shy student, Shaun became intoxicated by the party lifestyle that would change his fortune. Years later, in the Arizona desert, Shaun became submerged in a criminal underworld, throwing parties for thousands of ravers and running an Ecstasy ring in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy 'The Bull’ Gravano. As greed and excess tore through his life, Shaun had eye-watering encounters with Mafia hit men and crystal-meth addicts, enjoyed extravagant debauchery with superstar DJs and glitter girls, and ingested enough drugs to kill a herd of elephants. This is his story. Shaun Attwood is the author of Hard Time: A Brit in America's Toughest Jail. He regularly speaks to audiences of young people about the perils of drugs and the horrors of prison life.

Entry includes attestations of the head word's or phrase's usage, usually in the form of a quotation. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).