The Japanese have the Yakuzas, the Italians have the Mafi a, the Chinese have the Triads and the Jamaicans have the Yardies. Brace yourself for London’s addition to gangsterism. They are slick, they enjoy the most expensive things in life and they walk around ‘strapped’. Not a lot of their vocabulary can be found in the Oxford dictionary and if smoking weed was an Olympic sport 95% of them would be walking around with the gold. Emerging from the inner cities of London; ladies and gentlemen, ballers and crawlers, pimps and pimpettes, playas and playettes; I present to you none other than the MANDEM.

This book examines how urban adolescents attending a non-mainstream learning centre in the UK use language and other semiotic practices to enact identities in their day-to-day lives. Combining variationist sociolinguistics and ethnographically-informed interactional sociolinguistics, this detailed and highly reflexive account provides rich descriptions and discussions of the linguistic processes at work in a previously underexplored research environment. In doing so, it reveals fresh insights into the changes taking place in urban British English, and into the difficulties of undertaking ethnographic, sociolinguistic research in a challenging context using a combination of methods and approaches. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to students and scholars from across the fields of sociolinguistics, ethnography, and education; as well as providing a valuable resource for teachers and trainees.

A therapeutic profile of my life's journey with the hope to inspire and encourage others to face their truths, deal with them correctly and to live their best life. This book is dedicated to those with PAIN THAT CUTS.

”[A] charming, funny, touching, and relevant comedy.” —The Boston Globe “A provocative yet sweet romantic comedy.” —People, Best of Fall 2020 From the beloved author of Dickens and Prince, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, this warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love—she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through. Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person—someone you didn’t see coming.

AN IRISH TIMES FICTION BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR I’m going to tell you everything. I’m gonna tell you the whole story. Sometimes all it takes is a single message. Maybe it’s bad, like a rival top boy’s been switched off. Or maybe it’s good, like an opportunity you never thought you’d get. But opportunities mean risks, and debts, and you never want to owe anyone anything. Jaq’s worked hard on the road since she was fourteen, bringing in money to keep her broken family afloat. Now she’s built a good life near the top of the Summerhouse crew, with a beautiful home she shares with her girlfriend Becks and her heavily pregnant older sister Lauryn. But messages are coming in — good and bad — and Jaq has to make a choice: step back from the road and start a life she’s never even considered. Or seize her opportunities and risk everything for life-changing money. Either way, Jaq will make enemies. And those enemies aren’t going to let her go easily . . .