Books like Gangsta by K'wan

Two stories of a young heiress and her schemes in New York City.

A powerful story of a teenage mother raising her baby, set in a troubled neighborhood.

Travel back to a small Southern town where, before there was Duncan Motors, there were the Duncan brothers and their tough-as-nails women. After a hard fought battle, they've vanquished their rivals and taken their place as the leaders of Waycross, Georgia's criminal enterprises. Their rise to the top is not without problems, though, as outside forces enter the scene and the Duncans are rocked by the murder of one of their own. No one knows who the killer is, but their secret adversary, only known as the Reaper of Georgia, won't be happy until all the Duncans are completely wiped off the face of the earth. Luckily, the Duncan brothers aren't alone, and when new and old friends are called in to help, an all-out war ensues.

Gang life is both the starting point and the dark side of the American dream. Ethnic groups and immigrants have long turned to gangs for protection and support when it was offered nowhere else. From the Five Points to South Central L.A., Bowery Boys to Bloods and Crips, the James gang to gangsta rap, gangs offer a largely urban version of the American frontier: an opportunity and a refuge for societys outlaws, outcasts, and outsiders. Featuring writing drawn from fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, Gangs takes the reader on a tour of this underground, from accounts of New Yorks violent past by Herbert Asbury (The Gangs of New York) and Mark Helprin (A Winters Tale) to Hunter S. Thompsons report from within the Hells Angels and T.J. English inside Americas most notorious Vietnamese gang. Other selections bring readers into the Irish, Italian, and Jewish Mobs as well as the Triads of Americas Chinatowns, and chart the role of the vicious drug trade in contemporary gang life.