Search results for ""author ryan gattis""

Jen B's been surviving at the nightmarishly brutal MLK High School just like everybody else: by following the rules. She avoids the Principal. She doesn't complain. She's loyal to her MLK 'family'. And, like 99.5% of the student body, she knows one form or another of martial arts. When Jen's world-famous Kung-Fu champion of a cousin Jimmy Chang turns up, everyone wants a piece of him - including Ridley, resident drug lord and leader of the school's most violent gang. They all want to see the legendary martial-arts master defend himself during the school's merciless initiation ritual. Except that Jimmy's made a promise never to fight again - a promise that soon leads to the murder of Jen's brother and a bloody final battle that engulfs the entire school.Fast-paced, gritty and addictive, Kung Fu by Ryan Gattis is an extreme journey into high-school violence and the American Dream that feeds it.

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Longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2021‘Excellent, lucid, intelligent and gripping’ – Scotsman‘An utterly riveting read’ – Guardian, Thriller of the Month6 December 1993. A drug dealer called Scrappy is shot and left for dead on her mother’s lawn in South Central Los Angeles. Two local gang members, Wizard and Dreamer, are arrested. The problem is: one is guilty, the other wasn’t even there. It had to be a frame-up. And the cops had to be responsible, didn’t they?Narrated by the characters involved – the suspects, the victim, the families who love them, and those simply doing their jobs – The System tells the story of one crime, from the moments before shots are fired to the verdict and its violent aftershocks. It’s a breakneck journey through the American criminal justice system. A system that can save you, or break you.

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Set in LA against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crash, this is the story of Rudy Reyes (a.k.a. Glasses), a gangster-turned-double-agent who wants out of the high-stakes high-risk life criminal life, and Ricky Mendoza, Junior (a.k.a. Ghost), a DEA safe-cracker with terminal cancer who's got nothing to lose. When Ghost goes rogue and steals thousands of dollars from a safe that belongs to an LA crime lord who happens to be Glasses' boss, he endangers a deal Glasses had with the DEA. As Ghost sets out to steal as much money as he can get his hands on - all with the plan to give it to those hit hardest by the crash - and the Mob gets ever closer to catching him, Glasses tries desperately to keep his plans on track.Fast-paced and gritty, Safe by Ryan Gattis is both a moving and human morality tale and an utterly immersive and heart-stoppingly suspenseful thriller.

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