This baseball book, crime drama, and love story follows the 1907 Chicago Cubs from the Practice Season to the World's Championship Series. The team of Tinker to Evans to Chance. And "Three Finger" Brown, owner of the game's best curve ball. Rookie "Kid" Durbin rides the bench and writes a journal as the Cubs play a near-perfect brand of baseball against the backdrop of a wild, corrupt Chicago and a transforming America. Madmen, saints and sinners on the diamond and off parade through the pages of this historical novel. …More

Nothing But a Smile
By Amick, Steve
2009-03 - Pantheon Books
9780307377364 Check our catalog

2010 Michigan Notable Book
From the author of the widely praised novel "The Lake, the River & the Other Lake" comes this love story of a man and a woman who choose an unconventional way to redefine themselves during and after World War II. …More

The author of the highly-acclaimed "The Yacoubian Building" returns with a story of love, sex, friendship, hatred, and ambition set in Chicago with a cast of American and Arab characters achingly human in their desires and needs. …More

When Violet Hayes ventures to Chicago during the time of the World's Fair, her one goal is to find her mother, who has been missing from her life since she was nine. Naive, impressionable, and highly imaginative (having secretly ingested a diet of romance novels and true crime stories at school), Violet stays in Chicago under the care of her grandmother and her three great aunts. It is here that her perspectives on life are opened as she is exposed to the world about her--from high society to the poor immigrant families; from the suffragette movement to the security of a suitable marriage match. As Violet contemplates what course her life will take, she will discover the missing parts of her family's past--and, ultimately, Violet will discover herself. …More

Give two singles their own fashion consultants and interior designers and allow them four days to perk up each other's style and homes--and Lily Allen's dream job turns into a nightmare. Episode by episode, through disasters and matchmaking miracles, Lily starts to discover that a little bit of controlled chaos is the spice of life and love. …More

Following the pursuits of a lifelong dreamer, this National Book Award winner written on a grand scale is a heroic comedy that celebrates life, both fantastic and realistic, …More

The Long Italian Goodbye is a portrait of a boy growing up in Chicago surrounded by love and the reality of loss. You will laugh and cry, and be very sad to leave the world Mr. Benedetti paints so splendidly. Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author. …More

Diane Boston lives with her Marfan syndrome-afflicted 13-year-old son in a suburb of Chicago and teaches social studies at the high school, with the students even voting her Teacher of the Year. But she has some dark secrets. Her ex-husband Greg always suspected that Diane kept things from him, but he has no idea just how right he is. When Diane's son, David, finds a box of unmarked videotapes and watches one of them out of curiosity, he discovers that it's a hardcore adult movie from the late 1970s. The star, Lucy Luv, was an actress that mysteriously disappeared in 1980. Some suspected she'd been murdered. David recognizes the actress as his mother. Then, somehow, the news of Diane's involvement in the adult film business hits the streets and causes chaos at her school and at home. It also attracts the attention of the West Coast porn czar who has ties with organized crime. Apparently when Lucy Luv disappeared, she took a cache of stolen diamonds with her. This is the catalyst for a non-stop roller-coaster ride of suspense and mystery that involves the dark side of the adult film industry, the mob, kidnapping, and murder. …More

A #1 "New York Times" bestseller. The Warden Morgan has been accused of treason against the Wizards of the White Council. He's on the run and needs someone with a knack for backing the underdog. Someone like Harry Dresden. Available in a tall Premium Edition. …More

Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics.
Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong--not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become. …More

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, "The Coast of Chicago" is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers. …More

Another exhilarating thriller from Edgar Award-winner Ellis, "The Hidden Man"introduces the new series protagonist, Jason Kolarich. …More

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The characters in Then We Came to the End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work." …More

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Nancy Horan brilliantly blends together fact and fiction in Loving Frank, her compelling debut novel about the relationship between legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the wife of a couple whose home Wright built in 1904. …More

Frank S. Joseph's debut novel evokes nostalgia at the same time that it confronts difficult questions of race and ethnicity in segregated Chicago of the late 1940s. The book chronicles a day and night in the life of two young boys--one black, one white--who unexpectedly find themselves lost in the city, exploring with the innocent enthusiasm of children while their families tear each other apart in fear. The racial tensions threaded through the novel come to a climax as the families meet to reunite with their children and personal choices are weighed with a shattering clarity against the pressures of the city. …More

A BookPage Notable Title
Poignant, ambitious, and tremendously fun, this fiction discovery of the season is a novel about two generations of family and friendship in Chicago from November 1979 through January 1981. …More

From the award-winning author of "Troublemakers" comes this dazzling coming-of-age tale that speaks volumes about the wondrous and antic lives of teenage boys. …More

A BookPage Notable Title
Sara Elliott once again puts aside her own dreams, leaving medical school to take care of her sisters after their mother is put into a nursing home. To find her way, and to shape her own and her sisters' future, Sara must discover the full meaning of family--and what it means to be a "real mother." …More

Eleven-year-old Maggie and her Irish immigrant parents leave the city one June morning in the early 1950s and begin a new life in their home on the prairie on the outskirts of Chicago. Maggie meets three neighbors: Manny, Teo, and Dar. The four friends share a fondness for tennis, baseball, books, and horseback riding. Above all, they love to hang out in the prairie, a splendid place where they construct a hut made of straw, build fires in the evening, watch sunsets, and dream of some day going out west to Wyoming. They venture into the city to movie houses, Riverview, Comiskey Park, and different schools. The world outside, even when it's fun, is complicated and uncertain compared to the simplicity of the prairie. Maggie falls in love. She sees her friends experiencing the same and wonders how they can enter this wondrous new world and still hold on to life in the prairie. …More

The acclaimed author of the novel "The Apostles" chronicles a ghetto teenager's descent into addiction, violent crime, the seductive grip of crack, and the deadly world of Chicago's gang scene. …More

Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, "Calumet City" detonates a hardnosed cocktail of character-driven suspense and Chicago-ghetto intrigue. …More

In Evanston one bitterly cold day, acting on impulse, Rachel buys the house in which she grew up. It's an effort to recapture the happiness and stability that have been shattered by a series of blows that began with the death of her father ten years ago and culminated with her recent divorce. She moves in, hopeful that a rekindled love affair with newsman Amos Curley and the return home of her teenage daughter, Edie, will start the healing. She and Edie are suddenly joined for the Christmas holidays by her mother, Camilla - who brings her own memories and fears to this wary reunion. Rachel's good intentions catapult the three generations of women into an unexpected confrontation with long-suppressed family secrets. But as they struggle, something sinister begins happening on Rachel's radio show that will affect them all. A strangely sardonic listener calling himself the Truthseeker and claiming to be a notorious Chicago murderer begins to call Rachel on the air. The show's ratings shoot through the roof. But then the calls start coming to Rachel's home, and she realizes she and her family are being stalked. Rachel soon faces the possibility that her stalker is not some demented stranger but someone familiar with her most intimate secrets. It is in this atmosphere that she tries to pull together the pieces of her life - knowing finally that not even all the good intentions in the world can save her from facing painful truths if she is to find her way home. …More

From the #1 "Essence" bestselling author of "The Strong, Silent Type" comes a story of first loves and second chances that will ring true to anyone who's never forgotten the one that got away. …More

A BookPage Notable Title
The beloved "New York Times" bestselling author of "Ain't She Sweet" is back with a delightful new novel. A matchmaking business owner needs a major client. She targets the best--and most ruthless--sports agent in Chicago. She'll do whatever it takes to find a woman for him--no matter who that woman turns out to be. …More

Michael Raleigh's "In the "Castle of the Flynns" is about a young boy growing up Irish in a vibrant 1950s Chicago neighborhood. Now grown and looking back on those years, Daniel recalls his bouts with grief and fear of abandonment as he learns to adjust to his new surroundings amidst his oddball family. …More

In a neighborhood on Chicago's outskirts, Fabio and Lucia Comingo have built a new American life--and struggle to comprehend the influences that distract and change their restless young sons. Through this masterful evocation of a time and place, Tony Romano, the acclaimed author of "When the World Was Young," brings a first-generation Italian American family vividly and poignantly alive in closely related tales at once joyous, heartbreaking, and honest. Weaving two dozen stories into a stunning, cohesive family history, Romano gives readers hope for togetherness amid the painful generational cycle of loss and redemption--as children grow and learn, and decide which treasures of cultural inheritance they will cherish. …More

BookPage Notable Title
In an explosive debut thriller reminiscent of the best of Dennis Lehane and Harlan Coben, a young Chicago professional learns that the more he has, the more he has to lose. …More

For readers who loved "Primary Colors" and "Thank You for Smoking" comes thiswise and funny novel of politics--Chicago-style--from NPR anchor and nationalbestselling author Simon. …More

Documenting the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the century, this centennial edition of "The Jungle" brings into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. …More

In the summer of 1926, jazz lovers from the Midwest go where the weather is hot and the music hotter--the Blue Lantern club on Hudson Lake. A rural Indiana dance hall, the Blue Lantern's resident jazz band features a legendary young cornet player named Bix Beiderbecke. For Bix, Hudson Lake is a safe but temporary harbor from a failed romance, conflicts with his middle-class Iowa family, and a growing dependency on alcohol.For Joy, the fiery redheaded resident, Hudson Lake provides everything she needs-a roof over her head, music she loves--and Bix.For Harriet Braun, a young Indiana University student at the resort for the summer, Joy and the musicians are just another subject for study--until her involvement with Bix turns her safe world upside down.And when outside influences like local bootleggers, a Chicago investor named Jack McGurn and even the Ku Klux Klan suddenly show up, jazz isn't the only thing that's hot at Hudson Lake. …More

This remarkably assured debut novel weaves a glittering narrative web encompassing the bursting life of contemporary Chicago. "Looped" tells the separate stories of a diverse group of Chicagoans-black, brown and white; gay, straight and bi-as their lives unfold in diverging and (occasionally) converging ways over the course of the year 2000. The narrative is spun out of short episodes that progress week by week, each brief chapter detailing a day, an event or a moment in the lives of one of the novel's sets of primary characters. Among these are the family of a middle-class black postman whose runaway daughter has just learned she's pregnant; a gifted half-Vietnamese high-schooler whose troubled father spies on the son he abandoned years earlier; a tradition-bound Greek diner owner whose upwardly mobile daughter, embarrassed by her ethnic roots, is snarled in a loveless marriage; a gay chef whose shaky relationship is strained by the visit of his closeted lover's uncle, a Catholic priest; and the motley members of Lather Rinse Repeat, an up-and-coming band rocked by the break-up of its ambitious lead guitarist and his sexually confused songwriter -girlfriend. …More

Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape out society. …More