Experience life in the hood through the eyes of four friends, known around the way as The Hood Rats. As the girls go through the ups and downs of friendship and life on the streets, youll be taken on a roller coaster ride of love, heartache and pain. When tragedy strikes the group, the bond of friendship is tested and easily broken by lies, deceit and betrayal. Open your mind, and see that sometimes a Hood Rat is just a girl trying to live her life the best she can with what she has. You cant judge a book by the cover, but is there more to a Hood Rat than her reputation? You be the judge!

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.

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2012 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION DAGGER AWARD ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT CRIME STORY OF THE DECADE’ Scottish Mail Manchester. London. Glasgow. In the summer of 2011 violence erupted in our inner cities and many blamed gang culture. But is the truth so simple? Hood Rat tells the human stories that the media miss: of young men who have fallen through the system, and of one young woman with a vision for change. ‘Unflinching. It penetrates environments that most of us only ever glimpse’ Observer ‘Impressive. Knight uncovers the sort of stories that never make the news’ Scotsman ‘This British sensation is a must. Disturbingly compelling’ Marie Claire ‘A gripping novelistic immersion in the lives of young criminals’ Louis Theroux ‘The British Wire’ BBC Radio 5 Live

In the hood, a woman can make a man successful—or destroy him. The black community has a wide variety of women, good and bad, and now author Mcgregor Philippe seeks to help men watch out for those who can damage them. Philippe describes five particular types of women in the hood that men should try to identify at first meeting so that they can then run for dear life: the thot, the mammy, the hood rat, the bad bitch, and the educated ratchet. He explains how these women can be disastrous to a man’s life; no matter how mean a man is, even if he is a thug, an armed robber, or an assassin, he can never be as mean as these women. Philippe’s goal is to save men from falling in traps that would lead to their downfall and to inspire women on taking a positive change in their behavior. In this self-help guide, one man provides a description of five types of toxic women that inhabit the hood and hopes to aid men in avoiding them.

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

No Shade: No offense (as defined by the Urban Dictionary). Ex: “Don’t tell her I told you, but your little cousin is a ho, no Shade.” Every little girl dreams of a happy ending to their stories; a home, children and a man who loves her enough to share his life and last name. When Billy’s longtime boyfriend Marcus finally pops the question, it’s one of the happiest moments of her life. To stand with her on her special day, Billy calls on her childhood friends Reese and Yoshi. Several years passing since they’d last all come together, and some unresolved issues have driven a wedge between the girls, but they agree to put their difference aside for the sake of Billy’s wedding. The truce is a short one when Billy has to decide on a Maid of Honor and both her friends expect the position to fall to them. Just when things seem to be coming together they quickly begin to fall apart, and at a time when Billy is supposed to be basking in the sunshine of her approaching wedding she finds herself the target of shade being thrown from the most unlikely places. While Billy is going through her drama, Marcus is dealing with issues of his own. An old crime partner of his blows into town unexpectedly and his presence threatens to destroy the legitimate life Marcus has worked so hard to build. Even with the universe seemingly working against them, Billy and Marcus are determined to have their dream wedding, but first they have to survive the nightmare of planning it. There goes the neighborhood...again.

In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt tells the witty and compelling story of a teenage boy who feels that fate has it in for him, during the school year 1968-68. Seventh grader Holling Hoodhood isn't happy. He is sure his new teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. Holling's domineering father is obsessed with his business image and disregards his family. Throughout the school year, Holling strives to get a handle on the Shakespeare plays Mrs. Baker assigns him to read on his own time, and to figure out the enigmatic Mrs. Baker. As the Vietnam War turns lives upside down, Holling comes to admire and respect both Shakespeare and Mrs. Baker, who have more to offer him than he imagined. And when his family is on the verge of coming apart, he also discovers his loyalty to his sister, and his ability to stand up to his father when it matters most.

NAMED AN NPR GREAT READ OF 2018 From the Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of The Hole, a Kafkaesque tale of crime and punishment hailed by Korea’s Wall Street Journal as “an airtight masterpiece.” Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle to survive in the streets of this foreign city gripped with fear of contamination and reestablish contact with his company and friends in order to clear his reputation. But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems. From the bestselling author of The Hole, City of Ash and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.

A monster book with a twist! Sammy Squirrel, Henri Hedgehog, and Marvin Mouse have heard all about the MONSTER IN THE HOOD. He's GRUMBLY. And RUMBLY. And frighteningly HUNGRY! But are things always what they seem? With lots of suspense and build up with every single page turn, this is a witty cautionary tale with a thrilling twist at the end, from the award-winning creator of The Queen's Hat, Please Mr Panda and Betty Goes Bananas.

In a rustic town in Washington State, a man's death upsets the quiet equilibrium of small-town life. A well-intentioned blacksmith performs a civic duty for the town, ridding it of a pernicious evil that has taken up residence along the canal, but the death of the predator allows a more ancient evil into the waters. The townsfolk find themselves caught a vortex of uncertainty and moral ambiguity as the investigators start to uncover hidden secrets long thought buried . . . From the author the Tulsa World says "has patented a hard-edged folksy narrative that conceals within its intricate voice the imminence of the supernatural" comes a tale of the dark side of the quintessential American small town.