In every close-knit community, people carry stories that rarely remain entirely private. TanYah Global, writing as TanYah Global, brings that familiar reality to fiction in ‘The Gully Side Book Series,’ a ten-book collection shaped by Jamaican culture, community life, humour, hardship, and the complicated choices people make to survive.
Ten Books Build One Unforgettable Jamaican Community
‘The Gully Side Book Series’ takes readers into contemporary Jamaican life through characters whose personal experiences gradually become part of a much larger community portrait. The stories travel from the bustling yards of Kingston to Brooklyn, exploring love, relationships, poverty, money, politics, religion, migration, betrayal, and ambition. TanYah Global creates a world where neighbours pay attention, rumours travel quickly, and seemingly private decisions can have consequences that reach far beyond one household.
The series draws particular energy from subjects that have long appeared throughout Jamaican popular culture. Dancehall entertainers sing about relationships, money, power, and social pressures, while reggae musicians reflect on struggle and inequality, and comedians find humour in everyday situations. TanYah Global brings these themes into contemporary fiction and explores the people living through them. Readers encounter vulnerabilities, motivations, difficult circumstances, and consequences alongside the gossip and humour that give Gully Side its distinctive personality.
Each of the ten novels works as an individual story, making it possible for readers to become immersed in a particular character or situation. Connections between the books gradually reveal how closely the people of Gully Side are tied together. A person encountered in one story may become relevant elsewhere, while community events can carry different meanings depending on whose perspective readers are following. This interconnected structure gives the series room to develop an expansive fictional neighbourhood filled with recognisable personalities.
Five Stories Set the Gully Side World in Motion
Part One, launching in November 2026, begins with five novels exploring different corners of this shared world. ‘Gully Side: A Big Yard, A So It Guh?’ follows a family entering Big Yard with expectations of keeping its affairs private. Community life quickly complicates that plan as neighbours observe what happens around them. Family relationships, privacy, belonging, gossip, and survival shape a story rooted in the unwritten rules of living among people who know one another’s business.
‘One Don: Mi Nuh Business’ follows Damion from boyhood toward his emergence as a powerful community Don. His journey explores authority, political influence, loyalty, money, and the responsibilities created when people begin depending on one person. ‘Hot Wuk: Who Feel It Knows It’ shifts attention to Poochie, whose reputation inspires plenty of opinions. Her experiences with motherhood, relationships, judgment, and ambition reveal the deeper circumstances behind a woman determined to protect the people she loves and pursue her own future.
Faith and morality come into focus in ‘Bun Gad: Whose God?’ through Pastor, Mama Daris, and Rasta, who approach life’s struggles from different perspectives. Secrets bring questions about trust, hypocrisy, responsibility, and the protection of vulnerable people into the community conversation. ‘Farrin Life, Farrin Lies: Tek Time’ then carries the series to Brooklyn, examining Jamaican immigrant experiences involving employment, cultural identity, family pressures, finances, and the expectations attached to building a successful life abroad.
Part Two, scheduled for February 2027, expands the community through five more interconnected novels. The announced books are ‘SQUADY,’ ‘Jerry the Hyper G,’ ‘Night Nurse,’ ‘Rum Bar,’ and ‘Last Stop,’ with additional story information still to come. Together with the first five novels, they form a collection designed around the idea that individual lives can reveal something larger about the society surrounding them.
Part One is available through the official Gully Side Book Series website. A single book is advertised at $30 plus $4 shipping, while readers can choose any three different books for $75 plus $9 shipping. The complete five-book Part One collection is offered for $120 plus $13 shipping, giving readers who want to follow the interconnected characters from the beginning an option to experience all five stories together.
About the Author
TanYah Global is a Jamaican author, educator, and youth development specialist who writes as TanYah Global. She has nearly thirty years of experience working with young people, families, and communities, alongside personal familiarity with the realities represented in her Jamaican fiction. Her background gives her storytelling an informed understanding of social pressures, humour, family relationships, ambition, hardship, and the resilience found within everyday community life.
Her broader writing spans psychological thrillers, supernatural young adult fiction, children’s and youth literature, and socially conscious fiction. Among her titles are ‘The Collective Series,’ ‘The Eternal Series,’ ‘The Beyond Slavery Children and Youth Series,’ and ‘Boys Struggling to Become Men: Trafficked in Silence.’ Across these different genres, TanYah Global’s storytelling frequently engages with identity, trauma, belonging, responsibility, freedom, and the experiences that shape people and communities.
Why Gully Side Has a Story for Everyone
With ten connected novels, memorable personalities, and an unmistakably Jamaican setting, ‘The Gully Side Book Series’ turns the everyday realities of community life into an ambitious fictional world. Its stories invite readers into the yard, into the conversation, and into lives where everybody has something happening, and somebody always knows the business.
We had the privilege of interviewing TanYah Global. Here are excerpts from the interview:
TanYah Global, could you tell our readers a little about yourself?
I’m a Jamaican author, educator, and youth development specialist, and I write as TanYah Global. I have nearly thirty years of experience working with young people, families, and communities.
What inspired you to create the Gully Side Book Series?
My professional experience and personal familiarity with Jamaican community life provide a foundation for the Gully Side Book Series. Having grown up around the realities portrayed in my fiction, I bring an understanding of the relationships, social pressures, humour, struggles, ambitions, and resilience that shape everyday life.
How would you describe your storytelling in Gully Side?
My storytelling looks beyond labels and stereotypes to examine the human beings behind them: their vulnerabilities, desires, choices, contradictions, and capacity for survival. Through Gully Side, I give literary expression to subjects often discussed through Jamaican music, comedy, gossip, and popular culture, while inviting readers to look more deeply at the circumstances behind the entertainment. My writing blends social observation, cultural authenticity, emotional complexity, humour, and provocative storytelling.
Will readers outside Jamaica connect with the series?
Although the series is distinctly Jamaican in language, atmosphere, and cultural identity, it explores universal human experiences that readers across the Caribbean diaspora and international audiences can recognise. You don’t have to be Jamaican to recognise somebody in the yard.
Thank you so much, TanYah Global, for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!