Gordon, age thirteen, is the leader of the Friends, a gang of young black boys who struggle to hold a few blocks of bleak, ragged turf in Oakland--known to the homeboys as Oaktown--California. When a more powerful sixteen-year-old drug dealer tries to set the Friends against their neighboring rival gang, the Crew, the dealer's unwilling bodyguard emerges as the key player in a drama that illuminates America's urban reality in a totally new way. A shocking portrait of young kids living on the slimmest of edges, Way Past Cool is also an inspiring, even hopeful testament to the renewing power of love.

Way Past Cool: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Mowry, Jess.

United States

Perennial

Arriving in Oakland with his skateboard and dreams of living by the ocean, thirteen-year-old Robby befriends the Animals, a street gang whose culture is based on skateboards, beer, rap slang, and danger.

Rats in the Trees

Contemporary

Vintage

Way Past Cool

RH Canada UK Dist

Six Out Seven

Arriving in Oakland with his skateboard and dreams of living by the ocean, thirteen-year-old Robby befriends the Animals, a street gang whose culture is based on skateboards, beer, rap slang, and danger

Rats in the Trees (Contemporary American Fiction)

Literary

Penguin??Books

Fleeing from Mississippi to California following the arrest of his father, Met, a young black boy, is plunged into a nightmare world of drugs, violence, and poverty. By the author of Way Past Cool.

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Living by a strict code of honor, two rival gangs of boys on Oakland's tough streets--the Friends and the Crew--find a common enemy in Deek, the sixteen-year-old drug dealer who cruises their neighborhood, controlling by intimidation. 25,000 first printing.

The thirteen-year-old Corbitt Wainwright's adolescence is abruptly cut short when his father is imprisoned for attacking a white man. Tragically, dreams of success through good grades and hard work are wiped aside as white society shows him, out of both kindness and malice, that poor black kids in Mississippi don't have much of a hand in creating their own destinies. Refusing to accept this allotted role, and after a deadly confrontation with his father's accuser, Corbitt sets out for California, the land of opportunity and racial equality. Upon his arrival in West Oakland, a whole other world awaits. This is a world populated by gangs and crack dealers, violent cops and street kids, and one where the future seems even bleaker than it does back at home. Against the odds, he helps some of the local homeboys overcome one of their many predators and discovers the power of his African heritage. Finally, he learns to trust his own strength. Filled with a remarkably diverse cast of characters and written with gut-wrenching immediacy, cutting-edge street slang, and a haunting lyricism, Six Out Seven is a brutally honest novel about what it means to be a black teenager in America today.

Six Out Seven: A Novel

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Anchor

Thirteen-year-old Spencer Dray, an intelligent, well-read, home-schooled boy already offered scholarships by prestigious colleges, is delighted when he and his parents move from their rented West Oakland, California bungalow into their very own home in the Oakland hills, a forested, storybook-like setting where deer, foxes and coyotes still roam, and with a pond to swim in; though it’s only a little stone cottage, former residence for the grounds-keeper of a huge estate. The lavish mansion upon the estate, once home to the Shade family, has been deserted since 1926, when Gilbert Grosvenor Shade, the last of the Shades, passed-away. As with most abandoned mansions, there are rumors it's haunted. There are also dark hints that the family line ended under sinister circumstances following the death by drowning of Gilbert’s fifteen-year-old son, Gavin, in the cottage’s pond, and Gilbert’s possible suicide shortly after due to grief. But, while Spencer’s first night in the cottage seems to be heralded by a haunting, it appears instead he’s found a new friend, a mischievous, somewhat scruffy boy named Dodger, who exhibits many traits of Charles Dickens’ Artful, as well as Huckleberry Finn. In company with Dodger, Spencer embarks upon nightly adventures, hopping freight trains, meeting more new friends in what some might call the wrong side of the tracks, and eventually discovers what really happened to the Shades.

Spencer's Spirit

Anubis

In this tense teen novel, three struggling boys in embattled West Oakland are faced with a choice sure to change their lives--for better or worse. Dante, Pook, and Wyatt are eighth graders in a rundown school in West Oakland, California, plagued by guns, gangs, drugs, and violence, all overseen by inept or indifferent teachers. The three friends are used to only being able to react to the world around them, dodging blows rather than forging their own paths. Dante, thirteen, was born to a crack-addicted mother and needs an expensive heart operation if he hopes to reach thirty. Pook is newly fourteen and, handsome and muscular, outcasted for being gay, with dreams of medical school he can't afford. Wyatt, thirteen, is awesomely fat and cursed with being smart in a stupid place. They feel like they're headed for a dead in until they find a suitcase full of cocaine and suddenly face an excruciating decision. Selling the coke means escape. But it also means adding to the crack epidemic that has already destroyed their community. What price are they willing to pay for freedom.

Babylon Boyz

Teen & Young Adult

Aladdin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mowry, Jess.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mowry, Jess.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mowry, Jess.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Way Past Cool: A Novel

Rats in the Trees

Way Past Cool

Six Out Seven

Rats in the Trees (Contemporary American Fiction)

Six Out Seven

Way Past Cool

Six Out Seven: A Novel

Spencer's Spirit

Babylon Boyz