T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

The follow up to his best-selling memoir Monster , Sanyika Shakurs T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. is a vicious, heart-wrenching and true-to-life novel about an LA gang member that masterfully captures the violence and depravity of gang life. Shakurs protagonist is Lapeace, the leader of the Eight Tray Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles. In a deadly gunfight with Anyhow, a Blood and Lapeaces rival since childhood, eight innocent civilians are killed. Anyhow is captured. Lapeace becomes a fugitive and he must hide out in the home of his girlfriend, Tashima, a hip-hop mogul as a pair of crooked LA detectives, John Sweeney and Jesse Mendoza, attempt to track him down.

This novel was written from the confines of Shakurs jail cell, and the authenticity of its street scenes—the relentlessness of violence, the do-or-die attitude of each side of the gang war, the sheer joy in the killing—is a testament to the hell that has been a majority of Shakurs life. With T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. , Shakur delivers a powerful and gripping story about the terror of gang life and one mans attempt to free himself.

Sanyika Shakur, aka Kody Scott, was born in 1963 and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He is the author of Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member .