Katie, Bar the Door by Ruth Hull Chatlien
A young woman’s harrowing emotional journey to save herself and her dreams.
From a childhood of parental loss, religious repression, and sexual shaming, Katie Thompson suffers deep wounds and persistent self-doubt. Her desire to find meaning through education and a career is threatened…
The Dark Side of the Moon by Anju Kanwar
In the aftermath of the prime minister’s assassination, another crime is committed. Amrita Chaddha, a rookie lecturer, is left lame. Her idyllic past with her brother shaken. Overcome by an onslaught of doubts about her future and the future of the country, she plunges into a kind of madness. Centered in Delhi over three summer months in 1985, the crisis is both psychological and real.…
John Caul has decided that it is finally time to wreak some havoc on the townspeople who’ve ostracized him for the past 20 years. When he was a 17-year-old kid, John did the inexcusable—he accidentally burned down the brand new high school gymnasium on the eve of its championship basketball team playing the first game of their season.…
Wilmette at 150 by John Jacoby
Wilmette at 150 is a collection of illuminating stories that feature and celebrate the people, places, and events that have shaped the village and created its unique character over the last century and a half. These stories present the grandeur of the lakefront, the turmoil of No Man’s Land, the devastation wrought by a Palm Sunday tornado, the beauty of a tree memorial built for blind Judge Kolman, the final moments of notorious gangster Baby Face Nelson, the inspirational visit by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to promote racial justice and unity, and much more.
Stand Up For Bastards by Caleb Mason
Marcus Heaton is an ex-cop working as an investigator for a high-end law firm. When a simple family-history case goes sideways and the bodies start to pile up, he learns that neither his employer nor his client are who they seem, that some wounds never heal, and that the law is no match for a cocktail of ambition, greed, and revenge, on the rocks.
It’s the 1950s. The American South. And Moses is returning home. After years away, he’s visiting Miss Clio, the woman who found him as a baby in a basket on a creek mudbank.
Harve and Enos are a couple of hardscrabble losers making time at the local Grain & Feed. They need nineteen dollars to pay back the boys at the V.F.W. so they can get back in Friday night’s card game. They hatch a plan—grab a shotgun and rob a Black church during Sunday service.…
52 Poems for Men compiled by Jay Amberg
Every poem in this collection speaks directly to men, capturing powerful moments, deep insights, and honest glimpses of life. The themes are universal: birth, death, love, loss, war, beauty, and family. Both classic and contemporary poetic masters are represented, including…
Barbara Blake is a bright, young, attractive, and ambitious defense attorney. Alejandro Soto, an inmate already serving two life sentences for the brutal murder of a drug dealer and the man’s mother, is on trial for a third murder, one he did not commit but that could well result in the Death Penalty.…
Across Unstill Waters by D.L. Andersen
Ben Stephenson dreams of building his fortune along the trade routes of America’s western rivers. But first, he must keep a promise to a dying friend whose younger sister has fallen prey to their unscrupulous stepfather’s greed and cruelty. When the little girl starts exhibiting strange behavior, Ben is forced to dredge up demons from his past he thought long buried, in order to keep his promise and ensure her safety.
The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte by Ruth Hull Chatlien
As a clever girl in stodgy, mercantile Baltimore, Betsy Patterson dreams of a marriage that will transport her to cultured Europe. When she falls in love with and marries Jerome Bonaparte, she believes her dream has come true—until Jerome’s older brother Napoleon becomes an implacable enemy.
The most lethal poison ever concocted is about to be loosed on Las Vegas. TV reporter Andrew Wright is the only one who can stop the apocalypse. Confronted by madness on all sides, he stumbles into a conspiracy of racial, religious and military fanatics. His only allies are a beautiful Iranian doctor and a mysterious desert wanderer. But who can he really trust?…
Blackbird Singing by Jay Amberg
Everyone thinks that Robert “Sky” Walker has it all. And they’re right. He’s the world’s most famous athlete and the darling of the Chicago Bulls; his wife is an internationally adored and beautiful anchorwoman; his nine-year-old daughter, Tonya, is the apple of his eye. He has money, fame, awards, and a picture-perfect family. Sky Walker has everything. And he loses it in a twinkling.
Sky Walker’s world comes crashing down when Tonya is kidnapped.…
Back to Forest High by Bob Boone
Bob Boone returns to Forest High School in his new book. With his distinctive voice, he gives us another glimpse into the characters that people the school landscape. Back to Forest High tells of new beginnings, youthful mistakes, failed marriages, and uncertain retirements. Each story is told with humor and tenderness as the characters make their way through the rhythms of everyday life.
Blood Moon by Ruth Hull Chatlien
Southern Minnesota, August 1862. Smoke fills the horizon and blood soaks the prairie as the Sioux fight to drive white settlers from their ancestral homeland. Sarah Wakefield and her young son and baby daughter are fleeing for their lives when two warriors capture them. One is Hapa, who intends to murder them. The other is Chaska, an old acquaintance who promises to protect the family.…
On a hill overlooking the Aegean Sea in Turkey, an international team of archeologists discovers a stone box that first-century Jews used to rebury their dead. The box’s Aramaic inscription: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Sophia Altay, the beautiful French-Turkish archeologist who heads the team, tries to keep the discovery secret until she can authenticate the ossuary. She knows that people will kill to obtain the relics—and to suppress the box’s other contents, documents that could alter Western history.
As 1907 becomes 1908, National Base Ball League President Harry Pulliam suspects that the owner of the New York Giants has hired detectives to spy on him and his lover, Ted Russell, with the goal of blackmailing him. The pressure tests the strength of his relationship and his ability to administer his league duties.
“In Campaign!, veteran newsman Peter Nolan, who covered all the players in the 1983 contest, has written a first-hand account of not only the key participants, the candidates and their top supporters, but also of relatively unknown election workers who invested their time and passions in a way not seen since in Chicago politics.…
Chicago Sketches by Richard Reeder
In Chicago Sketches, we visit places as diverse as Maxwell Street, Riverview, Wrigley Field, the old Clark Theater, and the National Bohemian Cemetery. We meet the famous—Nelson Algren and Yevgeny Yevtushenko—and the other people who have touched Reeder’s life—Bubbie Gussie, Rabbi Mendel, and the Big Klu.…
Cycle by Jay Amberg
Redwoods thrive for centuries in the coastal regions of America’s Pacific Northwest. A monarch butterfly journeys from Northern meadows to the mountains of Central Mexico. The mother of four wolf pups leads her family through the Arctic’s stark terrain and bitter storms. One of the greatest seagoing mammals roams the Pacific Ocean from the Gulf of Alaska to the Galapagos. These voices speak to us of the meaning we seek in our lives.
Dialogues of a Crime by John K. Manos
1972. The Chicago Mob stands unchallenged, and college students with drugs provide fodder for political point-making. Michael Pollitz, a nineteen-year-old with connections to the Outfit, becomes one of those political pawns.
Set in the late 1990s, Division opens with the physical barrier of Division Street on Chicago’s north side, exploring the street’s function as a north-south boundary between rival African American gangs and as a metaphor for the boundary between affluent whites and poverty-stricken minorities in the racially divided city: Division Street runs westward from the wealth of Chicago’s Gold Coast to the economic desperation of Cabrini-Green’s “Soul Coast.”…
Everything Solid has a Shadow by Michael Antman
Charlie Alessandro is a musician and a marketing executive who ought to be happily satisfied. He is successful in his career, involved with a sleek and confident woman, and enjoying a fulfilling creative outlet with his guitar. Yet his seemingly complete life is troubled at every turn by something dark that happened to him when he was very young.…
“In a time when the importance of teachers has been unfairly challenged, Bob Boone gives us a collection of simply told, hard-edged tales from the lives of educators and their students. These rich, multifaceted stories ring true with details gleaned over the course of a full life.…
God Loves a Madman by Matt Hader
Jakub “Pies” Jakubowski is released from prison after doing a five-year jolt for manslaughter. There’s only one simple goal in mind for the parolee now that he’s free, and that’s to apologize, face-to-face, to the mother of the woman he killed. But Pies’s criminal associates have something else in mind for the newly sprung burglary expert.…
The Healer’s Daughters by Jay Amberg
A terrorist bombing in Bergama, Turkey kills twenty-three people including three children. Modern Bergama is built on the site of ancient Pergamon, a city whose art and wealth and culture rivaled Athens. It was also the home of the Aesklepion, the world’s greatest healing center, and the birthplace of Galen, the Roman Empire’s most famous doctor.
A History of Surgery at Cook County Hospital edited by Patrick D. Guinan, Kenneth J. Printen, James L. Stone, & James S. T. Yao
From 1866 until the end of the 1950s, almost all of the attending staff at Cook County Hospital—and thus the instructors who prepared physicians for their life’s work—were unpaid volunteers. As was the case at all other large public teaching hospitals, appointment at County was an honor, public recognition of the doctor’s professional reputation.…
Jesusita is the story of immigrants—legal and illegal—trying to survive in California in the years after World War II. Jesusita, alone and impoverished, struggles to keep her four young children together. Though she finds support from Padre Montes at St. Teresa’s Catholic Church, her faith won’t solve her problems, especially those with her daughter, Paulina.…
Justice Perverted by William B. Crawford
In 1983, Anthony Porter was convicted of the brutal double murder of Marilyn Green and Jerry Hillard. While sitting in the bleachers near Chicago’s Washington Park swimming pool, the victims were shot multiple times at point-blank range. Porter was sentenced to death.
Ray Lopez is on the run with a duffel bag full of cash. Both drug dealers and the police are after him. But Ray is not a criminal. His last brush with the law was over traffic tickets. Recently released from the hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, he is haunted by voices, auditory hallucinations, that frighten him and cause him to question his every move.
Malachy’s Gloriam by C.M. Martello
Malachy Madden, disbarred criminal defense lawyer and manager of the Shamrock bar, is well known throughout Chicago for successfully undertaking unusual projects. When John Bari, a handsome, charismatic, and immensely popular Italian-American priest, is accused of years of sexual abuse of a young boy, he is suspended from his role as pastor-rector of the Saint Shrine located in the heart of an old Italian neighborhood.
Life ain’t easy for a regular guy in this town.
Just ask Vic Brahm, workaday investigator in a city of monsters. Vic’s new client? A three-thousand-year-old Egyptian who suspects his wife is messing around with a manwolf. Vic’s neighbor? A beautiful dame being stalked by some thing with claws. Vic’s partner Shelley? Murdered, with no suspects or leads. And the vampire syndicate? Breathing down Vic’s neck because who knows why.
On a quiet day in 1858, two desperate men hijack a schooner from the Marblehead, Massachusetts harbor. Trapped aboard his grandfather’s boat is fifteen-year-old Luke Constance. He is a normal kid who plays pranks on the townsfolk and has a crush on Agatha, his classmate. But Luke is not ordinary—very well versed himself, he reads aloud to workers in small, local shoemaking shops. And he knows more about sailing schooners than most seasoned seamen.…
The Mystery at Black Partridge Woods by Pat Camalliere
Wawetseka, a Potawatomi woman, is shocked when a body washes up near her village, but events soon turn worse: her only son is arrested for murder. To free him she must track down the real killer. Her investigation takes her through the wilderness of 1817 northern Illinois and to Fort Dearborn as she races desperately, fighting the harsh terrain and the realities of vigilante justice.
The Mystery at Mount Forest Island by Pat Camalliere
Crime, deceit, love and the value of friendship set in the forests of Lemont, Illinois, in suburban Chicago. A woman whose family’s involvement in the Chicago Mob devastates lives throughout generations.
When an automobile accident leaves Valerie Pawlik totally blind, she masters the daily activities of a dark world, but due to painful mysteries…
The Mystery at Sag Bridge by Pat Camalliere
Cora Tozzi is a retired businesswoman who, after nursing her mother through her final illness, wishes only for a peaceful orderly world in her suburban Chicago home. When an angry spirit begins to leave cryptic messages on her computer and threatens those around her, Cora is forced to dig into the town’s notorious past to uncover secrets that will free the bonds that tie her and the spirit.…
Object Permanence by Jim Davis
“Jim Davis’ Object Permanence seems a life’s work, but one realizes that Davis is a poet who finds poetry in every second of his life—this collection is just the beginning. This is poetry of image and story that transcends the ordinary with extraordinary insight.…
Peace Breathing by Charles H.C. Kim
Through Peace Breathing you discover what you’re capable of—something beautiful.
Originally given by Charles H.C. Kim at The Peace School, this book’s 31 talks offer practical yet profound insight into becoming a person of peace amid the challenges we face in today’s world. Peace Breathing combines the vital energy of breath with the powerful energy of thought to calm your mind, reduce stress, and open your heart to your true self.…
From the author of The Wreck of the Columbia comes a collection of stories about people and events which helped shape a city and region. Included are profiles of Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Lindbergh and many other famous and not so famous figures who played a part in the rich history of Peoria and Central Illinois.…
Pushing the River by Barbara Monier
In Barbara Monier’s third novel, a family crisis erupts when a fifteen-year-old becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby.
Madeline describes her house as an empty shell inhabited by ghosts. She has been living alone for years, keeping to a few rooms, surrounded by the possessions of her ex-husband and grown children.…
The Rocky Orchard by Barbara Monier
Why has Mazie returned to her old farm—her family’s summer home and a pivotal refuge throughout her life?
While there, Mazie meets and befriends an elderly woman. Mazie is adrift on a sea of memory as she gazes toward the rocky orchard above the farmhouse when movement in the far distance captures her attention.…
Ryan’s Woods by Patrick Creevy
The year is 1962. The family of fourteen-year-old Kevin Collins, caught in white flight, has moved from Beverly, its South Side of Chicago neighborhood, to the city’s northern suburbs. The field of Kevin’s most formative boyhood adventures was Ryan’s Woods, the great South Side forest preserve, mysterious, beautiful, running along the city’s western edge a full mile from 83rd Street to 91st. It now serves as the frame for his memories.…
The Stendhal Summer by Laurie Levy
In the summer of 1992, public relations writer Alison Miller takes her savings and flies from Chicago to Europe in search of information about Stendhal, the nineteenth-century French author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. Traveling to the same cities, walking the same streets, and taking in the same vistas, Alison hopes to discover fresh material and gain an intimate perspective to write a new biography of Stendhal with whom she feels a deep affinity.
The Story of My Universe by Christopher Guerin
In seventeen powerful stories, Christopher Guerin pulls us into a multi-dimensional, ironic universe that slides seamlessly from a re-telling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis to the competitive politics and ego-driven amorality of symphony orchestras. These stories re-imagine Midwestern American lives in scenes ranging from dysfunctional realism to fantastical musings…
Two-Seven Remainder by Matt Hader
Jakub “Pies” Jakubowski is an expert at what he does, so good that he maintains a clean criminal record. Twenty-eight-year-old Pies is a member of a Chicago Outfit-sanctioned burglary crew run by Northwest-Side-based boss Stan Zielinski and his son Sebastian, “Bast.” Because Pies is arrest-free, he’s ordered to take a position in a newly opened suburban 9-1-1 communications center.…
Ken Zurski, author of The Wreck of the Columbia and Peoria Stories, provides a fascinating collection of once famous people and events that are now all but forgotten by time. Using a backdrop of schemes and discoveries, adventures and tragedies, Zurski weaves these figures and the events that shaped them into a narrative that reveals history’s many coincidences, connections, and correlations.
Each of our lives is a voyage of discovery. In Whale Song, we hear the voice of a fellow traveler, an albino sperm whale. We hear of life in his words—the joys of family, the pain of loss, the confusion and frustrations of a changing environment—familiar aspects of life even in the ocean. His observations and insights give us much to consider. If we listen, we may better understand how we affect the global society, and what we now need to do.
The Women’s Center by Michele Fitzpatrick
Award-winning journalist Michele Fitzpatrick’s engaging debut novel introduces four unlikely heroines in their fifties who navigate extraordinary challenges as ordinary people do: rarely smoothly, often treading water, sometimes barely afloat.
The Wreck of the Columbia by Ken Zurski
On the night of July 5, 1918, a steamboat named Columbia, returning from a moonlight excursion, collapsed and sank in the middle of the Illinois River. Of the nearly 500 passengers on board that night, most were from the town of Pekin. Eighty-seven people lost their lives in the disaster. The rest were left to tell their stories of fortitude and survival.
Write Through Chicago by Mark Henry Larson & Bob Boone
Write Through Chicago offers both teachers and students a unique opportunity to connect with Chicago and its remarkable history. Young writers will mourn at Lincoln’s Chicago Funeral, marvel at the Columbian Exposition, gather with the crowd at the Haymarket Riot, drive to Riverview Amusement Park, chomp down on the first McDonald’s Burger, and celebrate at Grant Park as Barack Obama delivers his presidential acceptance speech.…
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Broken Girls by Tess Ballis
Eden Wright’s parents have both verbally and physically abused her for years. Her best friend, Lacey, is facing problems of her own. When Lacey’s boyfriend commits a horrible act, it is all too familiar to something Eden has suffered herself. Desperate to escape the memories that have been haunting her, she has to face the frightening truth that she has spent her whole life trying to forget.
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Darlene’s Silver Streak and The Bradford Model T Girls by John G. Butte
Bill and Daisy Dorgan ran the popular Dorgan’s Café on Main Street in Bradford, Illinois, for almost 50 years. Legend has it that Bill bought a six-year-old 1926 Ford Model T for his daughter Darlene, who immediately organized a summer vacation, inviting several girlfriends to join her camping in Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin. Seven more summer trips, from 1936 through 1942, took these “twenty-something” girls through 44 states, Canada, and Mexico in an era when such travel by a group of coeds was not common.
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Girl in the Mirror by Natasha Tarpley
Girl in the Mirror is the story of the lives, loves and migrations of three generations of African-American women: a grandmother, mother and daughter—on a journey in search of self.
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My Dad’s Best Day Fishing.…Ever! by Dan Paschen
Based on a true story of a father and daughter fishing in the Northwoods.
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Notes of Valor by Bryan Meeker
In the relative calm before World War II, a young musician finds love and fulfillment. He is wounded by the war in every sense, and his long recovery is dealt a devastating blow, leaving him a broken man aged beyond his years. His despair is only abated by a chance event, one that reacquaints him with an old love, and leads him to find redemption through the greatest of humanity’s creations—music.