Becky Wills

Stun

$14.99

In the fictional Chicago suburb of New Lawn, a young woman grows up with a workaholic father and a dysfunctional mother who has a predilection for Stun—a prescription drug prone to abuse. Between Dad’s business trips and Mom’s affairs and overdoses, she grows self-reliant and introverted, possessed of an interior life possibly more interesting (and seemingly more safe) than the real one. Navigating the challenges of work, school, sexuality—and above all, her own feelings—she searches for her own place in the world. Until at last she finds that she, too, has a taste for Stun.

Stun is a masterpiece that lightly dances along the tightrope between prose and poetry, while also looking at the addictions society condemns, and the ones it condones. With echoes of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, and a novel-in-fragments approach reminiscent of Ocean Vuong, it’s a sparkling debut from a fantastic new talent—Becky Wills.

Cover image for Stun, isbn: 9781965199299

Sara Lippmann

Hidden River

$19.99

Thirty-five year old Cassandra (aka Cass, Cassie, Cassidy, and Cassiopeia) Trout is going nowhere fast. Stuck in her hometown of Philadelphia, she spends her lackluster days working retail and running, and then rinse, repeat. But a surprise wedding invitation from an estranged childhood friend is set to change all that.

Sally Sellers has made it big in London and is eager to flesh out her guest list. Cass and Sally were once inseparable, sharing everything from boys to beds. But secrets polluted their friendship—particularly Cass's illicit entanglement with Sally's father, Len, which began in adolescence, and ended with his untimely death. Will the wedding finally force Cass to reckon with her painful, hidden past? Can she heal well enough to truly grow into her own adulthood? And what does healing look like when the most damaging memories are also the ones that last?

Sara Lippmann’s Hidden River is an unforgettable masterwork by a writer at the top of her game. With a timeline that toggles between the summer of 2008 and the late 80s/early 90s, this lean but bold novel casts an intimate look at grooming in the era before #metoo. A fascinating blend of tragedy and dark comedy, a work of brutal emotional truths unearthed with lightness and grace, this exquisitely charged story, at once private and political, will linger in your mind—and earn a place in your heart.

Cover image for Hidden River, isbn: 9781965199251

Joseph G. Peterson

Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman

$18.99

Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city in the one thing in his life that brings him joy and freedom—a 1989 Cadillac Brougham D’Elegance.

Unfortunately he also has a talent.

His great weight, his ballast, makes him a remarkable shot with all manner of weapons. And this eventually draws him into the orbit of a local gangster and psychopath, a Polaroid-toting maniac named Rodger. In short order Frank is trapped in a seemingly endless and cartoonish routine of bloodshed and gore, a criminal Sisyphus pushing a soul-wearying boulder—or perhaps a biblical figure blundering towards an improbable Golgotha.

Joseph G. Peterson has attracted a devoted readership for his unique blend of sad and funny writing—a series of remarkable books centered around lovable losers stuck in absurdly existential situations reminiscent of both Camus and the Coen Brothers. Here he’s created perhaps his most memorable book, a pulpy reverie unlike anything you’ll ever read.

Cover image for Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman, isbn: 9781965199275

Sara Lippmann

Jerks

$17.99

With Jerks, Sara Lippmann rides the proverbial clutch between wanting and having. Ambivalent mothers, aging suburbanites, restless teens, survivalist parents, and disaffected wives—desire is a live wire, however frayed; a reminder that life, for all its sputtering stall outs, is still worth living. The messy characters in these eighteen stories may hack up their bedsheets with group sex, anonymous sex, infidelity, and a literal handsaw, but there's tenderness, too, among the lust and rage. With crisp precision, ample honesty and desperate humor, Lippmann delivers an irresistibly fraught cast of characters at various stages of undress.

Cover image for Jerks, isbn: 9781965199237

Becky Wills

Stun

$4.99

Cover image for The Autobiography of Ember, isbn: 9781965199305

Sara Lippmann

Hidden River

$9.99

Joseph G. Peterson

Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman

$8.99

Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city in the one thing in his life that brings him joy and freedom—a 1989 Cadillac Brougham D’Elegance.

Unfortunately he also has a talent.

His great weight, his ballast, makes him a remarkable shot with all manner of weapons. And this eventually draws him into the orbit of a local gangster and psychopath, a Polaroid-toting maniac named Rodger. In short order Frank is trapped in a cartoonish and seemingly endless routine of bloodshed and gore, a criminal Sisyphus pushing a soul-wearying boulder—or perhaps a biblical figure blundering towards an improbable Golgotha.

Joseph G. Peterson has attracted a devoted readership for his unique blend of sad and funny writing—a series of remarkable books centered around lovable losers stuck in absurdly existential situations reminiscent of both Camus and the Coen Brothers. Here he’s created perhaps his most memorable book, a pulpy reverie unlike anything you’ll ever read.

Cover image for Frank Buck: Chicago Hitman, isbn: 9781965199282

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Rescued Me

$14.99

Nestor Gomez was sure he had found love with his new girlfriend. The only problem? His girlfriend was still in love with a real dog. No, really—a seventy-pound pitbull mix. And after having been…well, nearly emasculated by a dog that bit him high on the thigh when he was a young boy, Nestor had developed a paralyzing phobia of our four-legged friends. Soon he was faced with a dilemma…could he learn to love the creatures that had aroused in him such terror, or would he lose the love of his life on account of her pet? (To say nothing of all the other little challenges that loom large in life—a hand-me-down-mattress with poky springs, nosy neighbors with belligerent blogs, pesky police, and an evil cat.)

Rescued Me is a lively little memoir from one of Chicago’s greatest live storytellers. It’s a true and touching story about finding the courage to love after you’ve been hurt—literally and figuratively! And it’s a wonderful monument to the growth and change we must find in ourselves if we are to move past our fears and into a bigger and better life.

(A portion of every sale will be donated to local animal charities. Which might give you a little clue as to how the story turns out.)

Cover image for Rescued Me, isbn: 9781965199121

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Me Rescató

$9.99

Néstor Gómez estaba seguro de que había encontrado el amor con su nueva novia. ¿El único problema? Su novia seguía enamorada de un verdadero perro. No, en serio, una mezcla de pitbull de setenta libras. Y después de haber sido... bueno, casi castrado por un perro que lo mordió en el muslo cuando era un niño, Néstor había desarrollado una fobia paralizante a nuestros amigos de cuatro patas. Pronto se enfrentó a un dilema... ¿Podría aprender a amar a las criaturas que habían despertado en él tanto terror, o perdería al amor de su vida a causa de su mascota? (Por no hablar de todos los otros pequeños desafíos que se ciernen sobre la vida y las relaciones: un colchón de segunda mano con malísimos resortes, vecinos entrometidos con blogs beligerantes, policías molestos y un gato malvado).

Me Rescató es un pequeño y animado libro de memorias de uno de los mejores narradores de relatos en vivo de Chicago. Es una historia verdadera y conmovedora sobre encontrar el coraje para amar después de haber sido herido, ¡literal y figurativamente! Y es un maravilloso monumento al crecimiento y al cambio que debemos encontrar en nosotros mismos si queremos dejar atrás nuestros miedos y tener una vida más grande y mejor.

(Una parte de cada venta se donará a organizaciones benéficas locales de animales. Lo que podría darte una pequeña pista de cómo resulta la historia).

Cover image for Me Rescató, isbn: 9781965199176

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Tu Conductor Ha Llegado

$5.99

Un inmigrante ex indocumentado y actual ciudadano estadounidense documenta sus experiencias por varios años persiguiendo el sueño americano a través de la economía colaborativa como conductor de viajes compartidos en Chicago. A la vez conmovedor e hilarante, este libro es un valioso recordatorio de los valores que todos compartimos.

Un dólar de cada libro vendido será donado a RAICES, el Centro de Educación y Servicios Legales para Refugiados e Inmigrantes, o al Fondo Educativo Ascend.

A former undocumented immigrant and current American citizen documents his experiences chasing the American Dream through the gig economy years as a rideshare driver in Chicago. By turns heartwarming and hilarious, this book is a valuable reminder of the values we all share.

A dollar from every book sold will be donated to RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center For Education and Legal Services, or to the Ascend Educational Fund.

Cover image for Tu Conductor Ha Llegado, isbn: 9781965199077

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Me Rescató

$9.99

Néstor Gómez estaba seguro de que había encontrado el amor con su nueva novia. ¿El único problema? Su novia seguía enamorada de un verdadero perro. No, en serio, una mezcla de pitbull de setenta libras. Y después de haber sido... bueno, casi castrado por un perro que lo mordió en el muslo cuando era un niño, Néstor había desarrollado una fobia paralizante a nuestros amigos de cuatro patas. Pronto se enfrentó a un dilema... ¿Podría aprender a amar a las criaturas que habían despertado en él tanto terror, o perdería al amor de su vida a causa de su mascota? (Por no hablar de todos los otros pequeños desafíos que se ciernen sobre la vida y las relaciones: un colchón de segunda mano con malísimos resortes, vecinos entrometidos con blogs beligerantes, policías molestos y un gato malvado).

Me Rescató es un pequeño y animado libro de memorias de uno de los mejores narradores de relatos en vivo de Chicago. Es una historia verdadera y conmovedora sobre encontrar el coraje para amar después de haber sido herido, ¡literal y figurativamente! Y es un maravilloso monumento al crecimiento y al cambio que debemos encontrar en nosotros mismos si queremos dejar atrás nuestros miedos y tener una vida más grande y mejor.

(Una parte de cada venta se donará a organizaciones benéficas locales de animales. Lo que podría darte una pequeña pista de cómo resulta la historia).

Cover image for Me Rescató, isbn: 9781965199190

Brooke Randel

Also Here

$8.99

As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.”

What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman's harrowing survival, and another's struggle to excavate the story from under the sands of time, and her grandma's illiteracy. Chronicling the darkness of the past and the difficult (and occasionally comic) challenges of bringing it to life in a sunny Florida condo, this book offers an insightful look into the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and the impossible pull of both silence and remembrance.

Cover image for Also Here, isbn: 9781948954983

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Tu Conductor Ha Llegado - Edición con Actividades

$6.99

Cyn Vargas

Nothing's Ever the Same

$5.99

Itzel’s 13th birthday party starts in just about the unluckiest way possible—with her dad having a heart attack. In those frantic moments, the piñata and the frosted sheetcake and the Styrofoam cups of orange soda are forgotten; the day’s highlights end up being CPR, an ambulance ride, and angioplasty. But when her father gets home from the hospital, his problems are far from over—and Itzel’s are just getting started.

Nothing’s Ever the Same chronicles a young girl’s coming of age in Chicago—growing up as her family grows apart. In masterful fashion, Cyn Vargas gives us a touching and memorable and universal story about a marriage on the brink and a teenager looking for love. It's a short book that packs a wallop; it’s also a beautiful meditation on dysfunction and forgiveness, and all the times in life to which we can never return.

The New Chicago Classics are a disparate set of titles united around a common theme: showcasing the city's up-and-coming literary talents as they produce enduring works. These excellent titles are destined to stand in the first rank of literature about the second city.

Cover image for Nothing's Ever the Same, isbn: 9781948954884

John Vurro

Play, Rewind

$9.99

Wes is stuck. He should be spending his twenties finishing the schooling that will help him land a career in movies, just like he’s always dreamed about. Instead he divides his time between clerking in the most low-rent video store in Queens, and caring for a mom struggling with Alzheimer’s. His father’s out of the picture, and he has no realistic means of finding care for her—beyond the harried home nurse who’s already on the brink of quitting—but even though he’s sure his mother won’t even remember his efforts, he’s still committed to her. Still, he doesn’t have much to do outside life’s boring routines, except pressing Play and Rewind to try and identify the moments when it all went wrong. (And maybe watching the random vacation video that some customer left at the store to be copied.)

Then: change. A friend from high school returns to the neighborhood after a mysterious absence, and a disreputable man from the neighborhood takes over the store. (He may or may not be mobbed up. Who can say, really? It’s not the sort of thing you ask your new boss.) And he finds out his father may be closer than he thinks. In short order, Wes’s life’s starting to look different. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is tough to say—the store’s new owner wants to make easy money selling bootleg videos out front, and we all know the FBI frowns on that sort of thing; the high school friend may be too eager to make amends, and to hide the secrets of her own past mistakes—but still, it’s something. Now Wes has to navigate feelings far more frightening than stasis, and find a way forward despite everything pulling him back.

Play, Rewind is a lovely literary look at a place near and dear to our hearts, one we all might want to visit if we had a time machine—the video store. (And it sends us to another vanished place, peaceful and innocent pre-9/11 New York.) More importantly, it’s a great glimpse into lives we can all relate to, people struggling against impossible odds, unsure if anything will ever change. It’s a fantastic debut novel from an amazing new author—John Vurro.

"I loved it so much that after I read it, I wanted to rewind back to the beginning and read it again. Vurro’s is a bold and brilliant new literary voice. This beautiful novel moved me deeply.”
— Alena Graedon, author of The Word Exchange

Cover image for Play, Rewind, isbn: 9781965199992

John Julius Reel

My Half Orange

$7.99

In his late thirties, John Julius Reel left his native New York for Seville, hoping to reinvent himself, find his voice as a writer, and cast off the shadow of his famous father. When his girlfriend dumped him after a month-long visit, the last tie was cut, and he had to face his future from his stark, mosquito-infested rented room. Alone in a foreign land, struggling with the language, and longing to find his place and purpose in the world, he began to rebuild his life.

What follows is a tender, comical, and illuminating story about what it means to learn to speak and think in a new way, and to spend so much time away from home that the foreign becomes familiar. This heartwarming chronicle filled with Sevillian delicias (soccer, Iberian ham, creative cursing, and one extraordinary woman) reveals how love, language, and culture can transform your life forever.

Cover image for My Half Orange, isbn: 9781948954785

Patricia Ann McNair

The Temple of Air

$8.99

Linking the lives and tales of a place and its people through tragedy and consequence, blind faith and redemption, The Temple of Air, Patricia Ann McNair’s award-winning collection of finely tuned short stories, spans three decades to present a portrait of working class Americans.

From babysitter and bus ticket salesman to construction worker and cult leader, the residents of New Hope—whose lives intersect after a tragic accident during a summer carnival—chase dreams and suffer disappointment against the subtle backdrop of a Midwestern landscape. The stories are unapologetic yet magical, bringing to life the daily struggle under the weight of war, poverty, natural disaster, illness, grief, and greed, even as the residents enjoy the comforts of solace, friendship, sex, love, ice cream, and the comics found wrapped around bubblegum.

This revised second edition features new stories that will delight both new and old readers, as well as a new introduction.

Cover image for The Temple of Air, isbn: 9781948954907

Hannah Sward

Strip

$9.99

Born in the bohemian seventies, Hannah Sward was abandoned by her mother, and lived with her poet father on an island with no stores or cars. Kidnapped and molested by a stranger at age six, she grew up to be a stripper and a prostitute with a taste for crystal meth—which seemed to be a sure-fire way to lose weight —with stops along the way for silent gurus, sugar daddies, and drinking in the CVS bathroom before therapy sessions. Painstakingly honest, often humorous, Strip is a heartfelt memoir revealing a woman’s journey from innocence to a dark existence, and beyond it to a world of empowerment.

Cover image for Strip, isbn: 9781948954686

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Rescued Me

$9.99

Nestor Gomez was sure he had found love with his new girlfriend. The only problem? His girlfriend was still in love with a real dog. No, really—a seventy-pound pitbull mix. And after having been…well, nearly emasculated by a dog that bit him high on the thigh when he was a young boy, Nestor had developed a paralyzing phobia of our four-legged friends. Soon he was faced with a dilemma…could he learn to love the creatures that had aroused in him such terror, or would he lose the love of his life on account of her pet? (To say nothing of all the other little challenges that loom large in life—a hand-me-down-mattress with poky springs, nosy neighbors with belligerent blogs, pesky police, and an evil cat.)

Rescued Me is a lively little memoir from one of Chicago’s greatest live storytellers. It’s a true and touching story about finding the courage to love after you’ve been hurt—literally and figuratively! And it’s a wonderful monument to the growth and change we must find in ourselves if we are to move past our fears and into a bigger and better life.

(A portion of every sale will be donated to local animal charities. Which might give you a little clue as to how the story turns out.)

Cover image for Rescued Me, isbn: 9781965199152

Sara Lippmann

Jerks

$9.99

With Jerks, Sara Lippmann rides the proverbial clutch between wanting and having. Ambivalent mothers, aging suburbanites, restless teens, survivalist parents, and disaffected wives—desire is a live wire, however frayed; a reminder that life, for all its sputtering stall outs, is still worth living. The messy characters in these eighteen stories may hack up their bedsheets with group sex, anonymous sex, infidelity, and a literal handsaw, but there's tenderness, too, among the lust and rage. With crisp precision, ample honesty and desperate humor, Lippmann delivers an irresistibly fraught cast of characters at various stages of undress.

Cover image for Jerks, isbn: 9781965199244

Chris Eagle

Dwell Here and Prosper

$8.99

Dick, a blunt and bawdy Philly sports fan, finds himself in an assisted living facility following a stroke. Determined to regain his independence, he does daily laps around the grounds with his quad cane. But when recovery never comes, and days swell into years, Dick finds purpose instead by studying his fellow residents, chronicling their odd obsessions and their nasty arguments, their breakdowns, their drunken debaucheries—and yes, even their sexual escapades.

Dwell Here and Prosper is a gritty but heartfelt novel, heavily informed by the author’s father and his experiences in assisted living near Philadelphia in the 90s. With its set of memorable outcasts—a shady jokester who insists he worked for the FBI, a schizophrenic Catholic who roams local cemeteries at night in search of the Virgin Mary, a twenty-six-year-old whose teeth mysteriously fell out, a middle-aged alcoholic who prostitutes herself to other residents for booze and cigarettes—it’s a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for a different generation and a different kind of institution. This timeless book offers a funny yet honest meditation on aging and community, and what it means to thrive in purgatory.

Cover image for Dwell Here and Prosper, isbn: 9781948954808

Darrin Doyle

The Dark Will End The Dark

$9.99

A group of tugboat passengers grapples with a disturbing loss. A record-holding hiccuper confronts his condition—and a troubling secret. A wife wonders what to do when her husband’s head stops working—but his body stays alive. A man struggles with the memory of the time he saw his friend swallowed whole by a neighborhood girl with supernatural powers.

In this classic set of Midwestern Gothic stories by Darrin Doyle, we see the strange hold hands with the familiar—and seem all the more strange as a result. A set of tall tales (and medium-height ones) told with Nabokovian prose, this stunning and visceral collection by the author of The Beast in Aisle 34 will linger long after the last page.

Originally published in 2015, this revised tenth anniversary edition features a new introduction by American Mythology author Giano Cromley.

Cover image for The Dark Will End The Dark, isbn: 9781965199213

Darrin Doyle

The Beast in Aisle 34

$9.99

Sandy Kurtz has problems. He's got a baby on the way, his wife doesn't love him, and he's struggling to find passion or purpose at his big-box retail job. And, once a month, he turns into a werewolf.

In Darrin Doyle's deft hands, Sandy's story is a tall tale for our times, an absurd and darkly comedic take on toxic masculinity, small-town America, and the terror of not knowing who you are—or who you're capable of becoming.

Join us on the trip. Feel the power of the full moon as it turns you into a carnivore capable of ruling the wilds of rural Michigan. Taste the rich blood of a pulsing animal heart; feel it cascade down your face as you transform into what you always wanted to be. Enter...the wolf.

Cover image for The Beast in Aisle 34, isbn: 9781948954587

Adam Kovac

The Surge

$8.99

Larry Chandler knows what his fellow soldiers don’t—that war scars you and haunts you, leaving you with memories you’d prefer not to face. They’re all National Guardsmen serving together in Iraq, but he’s already done a stint in Afghanistan, whereas they’re fresh-faced youngsters on their first tour. The new soldiers are eager for something more interesting than life on a firebase, or boring guard duty at isolated outposts—and they’re about to get their wish.

Adam Kovac has written one of the great novels of The Forever Wars—one that captures both the dust and grit and sweat of soldiers on patrol, and the surrealism of their lives back on base. (Where they might be checking Facebook and ordering lattes one minute, and dodging mortars the next.) In its first edition, it earned comparisons to the likes of Hemingway, Mailer, and O’Brien; this revised second edition promises to find it the audience it so richly deserves.

Cover image for The Surge, isbn: 9781965199053

Bill Hillmann

White Flight

$9.99

Chicago’s western suburbs. Young Joe Walsh is making a go of it at a new school, still haunted by his rough-and-tumble city upbringing. He’s got some great opportunities—a summer seminar at one of the world’s top physics laboratories, a hard-hitting Catholic clergyman and boxing instructor who thinks he’s got talent in the ring, and a beautiful girlfriend who’s giving him some much-needed love and support. But the challenges of Chicago have followed him to its outskirts; his sister’s struggling to recover after being shot by one of his former friends, his mom’s unvarnished ways are rubbing their wealthy neighbors the wrong way, and his brother’s fresh out of prison and falling into old habits. Like many young men before him, Joe’s taking out his frustrations in the boxing ring, and dreaming of a triumphant career—but will that, too, become a prison?

This follow-up to Bill Hillmann’s The Old Neighborhood connects like a 1-2 punch. It’s another modern classic from one of the city’s best authors, a powerful story unlike anything you’ve read before.

Cover image for White Flight, isbn: 9781965199114

Sara Lippmann

Lech

$9.99

A mother recovering from an abortion in a Borscht Belt rental. An eccentric aging landlord, haunted by a mysterious death. A grief-stricken Hasid. A scheming real estate agent looking for her break, her dogged daughter longing for her way out (specifically, a career as a human mermaid), and her addict boyfriend mired in it.

These lives—strangers, neighbors, family, friends—entwine and separate over the course of one fevered upstate summer, in a haunting and hilarious debut novel by acclaimed author Sara Lippmann. In her inimitable prose, she mercilessly explores the predatory side of human nature through conflicts of faith, trauma, desire, belonging, and longing—the particulars of Judaism and feminism, parenting and partying, small-town life and big blundering dreams, as well as the timeless question: How do we carry on?

Cover image for Lech, isbn: 9781948954709

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Rescued Me

$9.99

Nestor Gomez was sure he had found love with his new girlfriend. The only problem? His girlfriend was still in love with a real dog. No, really—a seventy-pound pitbull mix. And after having been…well, nearly emasculated by a dog that bit him high on the thigh when he was a young boy, Nestor had developed a paralyzing phobia of our four-legged friends. Soon he was faced with a dilemma…could he learn to love the creatures that had aroused in him such terror, or would he lose the love of his life on account of her pet? (To say nothing of all the other little challenges that loom large in life and relationships—a hand-me down-mattress with poky springs, nosy neighbors with belligerent blogs, pesky police, and an evil cat.)

Rescued Me is a lively little memoir from one of Chicago’s greatest live storytellers. It’s a true and touching story about finding the courage to love after you’ve been hurt—literally and figuratively! And it’s a wonderful monument to the growth and change we must find in ourselves if we are to move past our fears and into a bigger and better life.

This discussion edition features questions designed to promote classroom discussion.

(A portion of every sale will be donated to local animal charities. Which might give you a little clue as to how the story turns out.)

Cover image for Rescued Me, isbn: 9781965199138

Bill Hillmann

The Old Neighborhood

$9.99

Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago—a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime.

Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it.

This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.

Cover image for The Old Neighborhood, isbn: 9781948954969

Gerald Brennan

Public Loneliness

$9.99

October, 1967. Yuri Gagarin sits atop a Proton rocket, ready to launch. After several turbulent years in the public eye, he's been chosen in secrecy to captain the Soviet Union's latest space spectacular: the first manned flight around the moon.
The second story in the Altered Space series, Public Loneliness is a detailed and imaginative look at a country and a space program with a curious schizophrenia regarding publicity and secrecy. Based on extensive research, it's also a lively and literary story that references familiar classics (like Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea) and forgotten landmarks of Soviet socialist realism, while also touching on universal themes of adventure, alcoholism, heroism and shame. It's a compelling look behind the massive posters at the all-too-real man who led the human race into space.
The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

Cover image for Public Loneliness, isbn: 9781948954464

Joseph Worthen

All Trap No Bait

$9.99

It’s the summer of 2020 in Alabama, and Beverly Jane Ornett is terminally online. To be fair, the real world has lost its charms—thanks to the pandemic, she hasn’t worked in months. Plus, her longtime roommate is moving out of their filthy apartment to live with her wealthy boyfriend, and the only people she communicates with are the weirdos and pariahs in her crappy poetry collective. And she’s spending way too much time pining for one of them, an aloof redneck she dated the previous summer. Sure, she could ponder these cascading depressing failures…or she could zone out on Xanax and watch YouTube tutorials on eyebrow threading, and videos of hydraulic presses crushing random objects; she could peruse the poetry collective’s group chat, or even go to the Domino's website and use their online tools to sprinkle virtual toppings on the pizza she’d order if only she had the money.

Then comes a chat message from an unfamiliar handle—a demon, or something worse. The demon is asking for favors, and posting Bev’s secrets online.

Now Bev has to get to the bottom of things. (Nevermind the fact that she’s not able to get to the bottom of much, except maybe a bottle of cough syrup.) In short order she’s exploring—or perhaps stumbling through—a world of viral rap stars and webcam girls, all the seediness that Mobile and the internet have to offer. (Which is quite a bit of seediness, indeed.) Maybe the truth is out there, and maybe it’s not, but either way, Bev’s life is about to change forever.

All Trap No Bait is both a gripping book about a hapless detective, and a Southern Gothic novel for the cyber age—something like the bastard love child of Flannery O’Connor and The Big Lebowski. Hilarious and harrowing, a chronicle of its depressing time and an immensely entertaining escape from ours, it’s a landmark work and an incredible debut by a major new talent—Joseph Worthen.

Cover image for All Trap No Bait, isbn: 9781965199015

David LeBrun

Delirium Vitae

$8.99

In 2001, David LeBrun travelled to Costa Rica to reconnect with an old friend. LeBrun, a young writer at the end of a string of dead-end jobs, planned on living cheaply for a winter while finishing the book he thought would make his career. (And, of course, drinking every night and getting stoned every day. And maybe stealing the occasional pill.) But once there, he was swept up in his friend’s self-destruction and ran out of money far sooner than expected.
What followed was an epic odyssey across Central America and Mexico, hitchhiking with random strangers and sleeping anywhere he could as his mental health deteriorated and he tried to finish his book; along the way, he met down-and-out street buskers, a narcissistic thief, a Bible-thumper with multiple personalities, ex-convicts in a Narcotics Anonymous shelter—but, more importantly, himself.
Delirium Vitae is a new classic, an On the Road for the twenty-first century. Alternately charming and harrowing, it looks beneath the romance of adventure in a foreign land to see what it’s really like to teeter between freedom and homelessness. (Because, let’s be honest, walking thirty-six kilometers on an empty stomach, or fending off a sweaty and shirtless truck driver, does suck.) It’s a fantastic book that looks not only at the excitement of the open road, but at why we go there, and what we leave behind—and whether we can ever still come home.

Cover image for Delirium Vitae, isbn: 9781965199039

John Addison Dally

The Master is Here

$9.99

An Episcopal priest has a fateful encounter with an Amsterdam teenager who may be a prostitute—or something else entirely. An Iowa supermarket patron repurposes Bible verses for a love note to a handsome cashier, with consequences both tragic and transformational. A disgraced seminarian shows up at his lover’s first Mass, determined to be remembered.

One way or another, the characters in The Master is Here happen to find themselves in a place larger and more interesting than many others can imagine: the intersection in the Venn diagram of Christian and gay experience. Whether there by choice or quite against their will, whether making good decisions or bad ones, whether driven by love or lust or foolishness or faith, their lives are a valuable testament to the complexities and the conundrums of the human experience, and their stories chronicle the reckonings that none of us can avoid.

Cover image for The Master is Here, isbn: 9781948954600

Jeremy T. Wilson

The Quail Who Wears The Shirt

$8.99

Tuesday night is trivia night, a night for produce market owner Lee Hubbs to swing by the bar with his cop friend, a night to down a few shots and avoid all the folks who’ve mysteriously been turning into quails. It’s a night to kick back and maybe get some action on the side from his employee/girlfriend before heading home to his wife and kids.

But this Tuesday’s different. An argument with the girlfriend, a little unintentional vehicular homicide of an unsuspecting cyclist, and the next thing you know, Lee’s life’s upended like a bushel of rotten peaches. Well, mostly upended. Because when you’re a fine upstanding citizen, and your victim is a quail-human ne’er-do-well who won’t be missed by society, who’s to say what’s right, really?

Jeremy T. Wilson’s The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is a magnificent Southern-fried meditation on guilt and karma, a fantastic and truly memorable work about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths that seep through despite our best efforts, a darkly comedic satire as strange and surreal as an onion pie.

Cover image for The Quail Who Wears The Shirt, isbn: 9781948954860

Alice Kaltman

Staggerwing

$9.99

This irresistible collection of stories brilliantly skewers the close-to-rich and not-so-famous of 21st century America. With keen yet kind perspective, Kaltman revels in the triumphs and travails of misfit trophy wives, psychic hotel maids, jilted bridegrooms, showtune-singing security guards, and assorted other oddballs. Always balancing her sharp eye with a soft heart, Kaltman ensures that this collection isn't just funny, but memorable and lovable as well.

Cover image for Staggerwing, isbn: 9781948954419

Bristol Vaudrin

Afterward

$8.99

In an unnamed city, a young woman deals with an unspeakable tragedy, and her boyfriend’s subsequent hospitalization.

Torn from her normal routines—coffee, sex, barhopping, and disc golf—she finds herself in an unfamiliar world of hospital visits and doctor’s appointments, all while navigating an unexpected move to a new apartment and enduring the disapproval of her boyfriend’s mother, as well as the gossip of her friends and coworkers. (Plus the suspicious looks of strangers, and the unbearable strain on her credit card…and did we mention the gossip of her friends and coworkers?) Along the way, she meets every obstacle with…well, not grace, exactly. In fact, pretty much the opposite of grace. Maybe more like bitchiness, truth be told. And all the while, the aftereffects of the tragedy cast a pall over everything she does—and threaten to destroy everything she has.

Bristol Vaudrin’s fascinating debut novel is an engrossing and darkly comedic read with an unforgettable narrator/protagonist. Watching her struggles—real, imagined, and in-between—we too must choose between kindness and judgment, between condescension towards someone who simply doesn’t have a clue, and empathy with a person struggling to deal with something we all must face: the desire to hold on to the things we enjoy when the world around us changes in ways we didn’t expect.

Cover image for Afterward, isbn: 9781948954921

S.L. Wisenberg

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

$7.99

S.L. Wisenberg, known for writing that is “seriously funny,” proves in this acerbic chronicle that a cancer diary can be at once hilarious, rageful, and feminist.

She passes through the expected rites of breast cancer—diagnosis, surgery, and chemotherapy—but her responses are less expected: she throws a farewell party for her left breast, and rejects a “cranial prosthesis” in favor of using her bare scalp as a canvas for political messages. She insightfully criticizes the ad campaigns of cancer charities, the inept medical staff, and the inequities in the U.S. health care system she encounters as she navigates daily life with cancer and chemo. (There is much she disapproves of, from Brazilian waxes to books that blame patients for their own diseases.) Drawing on a wealth of personal, literary, and historical sources, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch creates an indelible image of a politically engaged, self-aware woman facing a daunting disease while examining her soul and society. (And riding the subway and teaching one-breasted.) It’s a thought-provoking memoir from a woman who questions everything and everyone, including herself.

This revised and expanded second edition features new observations and reflections from the author.

Cover image for The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, isbn: 9781948954945

Gerald Brennan

Zero Phase

$9.99

May, 1970. After a one-month launch delay, Apollo 13 lands in the Fra Mauro Highlands of the moon—and then the trouble starts.
The first in a series of what-if stories from the golden age of space exploration, Zero Phase was written based on meticulous research, and with assistance from two Apollo astronauts: Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who visited the Fra Mauro Highlands—and Captain Jim Lovell, who was supposed to. Dramatic, detailed, and finely written, this novella is a must-read for space aficionados and literary enthusiasts alike.
The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

Cover image for Zero Phase, isbn: 9781948954471

Joyce Becker Lee

Casualties

$7.99

A teenage girl victimized by assault and prejudice. An office worker holding on to his boss’s cat after a failed workplace romance. A father struggling through a ceremony for a son lost in combat. A family whose members can often predict the day they’re going to die.

The characters in Casualties are damaged souls doing their best to keep moving despite their difficulties—a motley mélange of memorable misfits who refuse to be victims despite their circumstances. It’s a fantastic collection for young and old alike, a wonderful work about the walking wounded who somehow find a way to be kind despite life’s cruelties.

Cover image for Casualties, isbn: 9781948954761

Giano Cromley

What We Build Upon the Ruins

$9.99

Like an arrowhead, the title story in this collection pierces through our tough skin and through to what’s delicate within. It’s the first piece in a triptych that elegantly holds together this stunning collection about love and loss and longing—our feeble human institutions and fragile relationships broken down and rusting; our tender hearts shot through with tragedy and dysfunction but still struggling to stay alive, to find wholeness and healing and rebirth in nature, or just to keep beating as long as possible in the face of overwhelming sorrow.

Cover image for What We Build Upon the Ruins, isbn: 9781948954365

Frank Santo

The Birthparents

$8.99

The Bronx. It’s America at its most vibrant and chaotic; it’s also where one foster care caseworker—a would-be white savior from New England, a twentysomething kid prematurely jaded by the system—takes it upon himself to reunify a troubled birthmother with her children, against the recommendation of his world-weary but wise Hispanic boss. (Nevermind the fact that the mother in question just might have a crush on him—either that, or she’s running game for her own purposes. And nevermind the fact that her ex-husband, a serial abuser whose casefile’s thick with bruises, just might have killed someone to protect her in the past—and might be willing to do so again.) What follows is a vivid portrait of lives intersecting and colliding as they grapple with timeless issues: poverty and privilege, parenting and responsibility, drug abuse and insanity.

As gritty as a cracked city street, as full of light and shadow as a crumbling row house, as hard to discard as a piece of summer sidewalk bubblegum stuck to your shoe, The Birthparents does for early 21st century New York what Charles Dickens did for mid-19th century London, not only preserving it for posterity but bringing it to life, and showcasing the shared humanity of characters climbing up (or clinging to) every rung on the societal ladder. It’s a stunning debut by an incredible new voice—Frank Santo.

Cover image for The Birthparents, isbn: 9781948954822

Andy Mozina

Tandem

$9.99

Mike Kovacs is an economics professor who's trying to get over a bitter divorce. He’s barely on speaking terms with his only child. And he’s just killed two bicyclists in an inebriated hit-and-run at a deserted Michigan beach. (In his defense, he hadn’t meant to get that drunk. And what’s the use of getting caught and going to jail if it means you can no longer make positive contributions to society? Sunk costs, and all.)

Claire Boland’s daughter is one of the victims. She’s racked with guilt over what she might have done differently as a parent. Her marriage is buckling under the weight of the tragedy. And yet there’s one person who seems to understand the magnitude of her grief—her neighbor, Mike Kovacs.

Tandem is a gripping dark comedy about two lives that intersect in the most awful way possible. Andy Mozina’s exquisite novel details the absurd lengths we go to in order to avoid uncomfortable truths. (And to cover up murder—although that’s such a strong word, isn’t it?) It’s a mesmerizing book about the weight of guilt and the longing for justice—and the crazy things we do for love.

One of Electric Literature's 15 Must-Read Small Press Books for Fall 2023!

A NewPages Editor's Choice!

Cover image for Tandem, isbn: 9781948954846

Gerald Brennan

Alone on the Moon

$9.99

May, 1970. A two-person Soviet crew approaches the moon, ready to accomplish the greatest feat in human history—provided they can overcome their own petty jealousies, and the unforgiving harshness of space.

Alone on the Moon chronicles a Soviet moon mission through the eyes of Boris Volynov, a backup who’s been pressed into service helping Alexei Leonov (a man he despises) attempt humanity’s first lunar landing. Thoroughly researched, it’s a detailed and plausible rendition of two larger-than-life personalities facing incredible challenges. It’s also a meditation on luck, trust, the nature of observation, and the burden of being chosen—plus the way our personal narratives can shape (or poison) our perceptions of the present. Do the stories we tell ourselves shape our fate, or can we write a new chapter? The answer awaits.

The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

Cover image for Alone on the Moon, isbn: 9781948954662

Gerald Brennan

The Pleasure You Suffer

$9.99

Saudade reportedly has no direct English translation; it’s a Portuguese word describing the nostalgic longing for something that may never return, or may not exist. This feeling can be strangely comforting; author Manuel de Mello calls it “A pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.” It permeates the music of Brazil, another nation steeped in slavery and sadness and the hope for a better life. Yet this heartsick yearning’s actually very familiar to those of us born and raised in North America; we often call it “the blues.” This saudade-themed anthology explores this fascinating emotional territory in exciting poems and stories from a range of new and up-and-coming authors—pieces that linger after the last page is turned.

Cover image for The Pleasure You Suffer, isbn: 9781948954426

Christine Sneed

Love in the Time of Time's Up

$9.99

With pathos and insight, each of the sixteen accomplished authors—among them Lynn Freed, Karen Bender, May-lee Chai, Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza, and Amina Gautier—featured in Love in the Time of Time’s Up skillfully explores the complexities of desire, intention, and what it means to be a woman in the era of Me Too and Time’s Up.

From the fraught, sexually charged groves of academia and elevators of corporate America, to the imagined diary entries of Brett Kavanaugh and the tragicomic travails of a woman swiping right on Tinder in order to dispense advice to men whose profiles she finds lacking, these stories offer a blend of humor and horror, victory and heartache, righteous anger and rueful recrimination. It’s a collection that’s sure to leave a mark on readers’ minds—and earn a place in their hearts.

Cover image for Love in the Time of Time's Up, isbn: 9781948954723

Joe Kapitan

Caves of the Rust Belt

$5.99

The natural successor to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg collection, Caves of the Rust Belt: Ohio Stories travels to the Heart of It All, where drowned sailors reminisce over a hot meal, and the rules of the yard sale are law. In his stunning debut, Joe Kapitan captures the modern Midwest in devastating detail, often blurring the lines between reality and the surreal. The depth of each story leaves readers wanting more as they dig into the pages of this remarkable collection. Memories of another America encase families like a Cold War bunker, forcing characters to confront the pasts that haunt their future. A man tries to renovate the exterior of an old mansion, but even in the state where All Things Are Possible, it is impossible to remove the cracks in the foundation and exorcise the ghosts in the basement. A school shares a message of resilience and community, while masking terrifying truths that appear all-too-possible in our current age. Kapitan has created a fantastical representation of the post-recession Midwest, presenting an image of a world where sinkholes don't just swallow the neighborhood, but also unearth hidden hope lying beneath the surface.

Cover image for Caves of the Rust Belt, isbn: 9781948954198

Anthony Koranda

Broken Bottles

$6.99

After growing up with an alcoholic mother and an intermittent stepfather, Alex pines for connection, even as he sabotages his life with substances, and substitutes one failed relationship for the next. Shuffling from troubled home to chaotic institution, he narrates his strange search through Chicago’s gritty gutters and lonely lakefront spaces with a voice that is clear, honest—and unforgettable.

Anthony Koranda’s debut Broken Bottles is earning comparisons to Denis Johnson and Nelson Algren. It’s a searing debut destined for a space among the classics of Chicago literature—a story both strange and familiar about one person’s path through the chaos of youth, in a quest for acceptance and hope.

Cover image for Broken Bottles, isbn: 9781948954747

Cyn Vargas

On the Way

$9.99

Cyn Vargas's debut explores the whims and follies of the heart. When a mother disappears in Guatemala, her daughter refuses to accept she's gone; a divorced DMV employee falls in love during a driving lesson; a young girl shares a well-kept family secret; a bad haircut is the last straw in a crumbling marriage.
This elegant and lovely set of stories by a master of the craft won widespread praise in its first printing; this revised new edition promises to bring her work to the wider audience she deserves. Join us on this trip from the frozen north to the tropical south, and through the hopes and fears and dreams and visions that keep us cycling through new destinations and old.

Cover image for On the Way, isbn: 9781948954563

Alex Higley

Old Open

$9.99

Aging widower Russ Lanaker knows he doesn't know his neighbors—but when he finds out one of them was a witness to, and career expert on, the strange UFO phenomenon known as the Phoenix Lights, he realizes that's a situation he'd like to change. What follows is an odyssey out of his air-conditioned comfort zone, through the sun-baked Arizona suburbs, and onto the franchise-lined (and not-so-great) American road.
In an existential style reminiscent of Don DeLillo, but with the humor and heart of a Coen Brothers film, Alex Higley takes us along as Russ strikes out in search of knowledge about an alien encounter, and perhaps something far more bizarre—genuine human connection.

Cover image for Old Open, isbn: 9781948954372

Brandon K. Gauthier

Before Evil

$9.99

Should we humanize the world's most inhumane leaders?

Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face—parental authority, education, romance, loss—and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar.

Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world.

The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like.

Cover image for Before Evil, isbn: 9781948954624

Ryan Elliott Smith

Fly Over This

$9.99

These compelling stories offer a detailed look at a part of the country many Americans only glimpse through an airplane window from 30,000 feet—the small towns of the rural Midwest. The characters here—struggling to raise children and build a better future, or just to escape their past; searching for connection on social media and longing for the glory days of youth, even as they put on pounds and lose hair; good citizens, and criminals—populate a landscape of emotional peaks and valleys far more varied and interesting than the flat physical terrain they inhabit. They are the people we’ve left behind when we moved to the city, or the people we’ve become. They are us.

Cover image for Fly Over This, isbn: 9781948954648

Vojislav Pejović

American Sfumato

$9.99

American Sfumato consists of nine mesmerizing stories, each designed to function independently and form a unit with the rest. The action is set in several present-time locales (Chicago, the Balkans, New Orleans, Germany, Brazil), and the narrative revolves around a protagonist who's caught up in attempts to reassemble the fragments that constitute his life. By day, he's a neurobiologist who researches learning and memory, which then informs his acts of night-time self-examination.The Serbo-Croatian version was published in Montenegro and Serbia in 2015, and a Slovenian translation was released in 2016. In 2016, American Sfumato was nominated for the Meša Selimović Prize, the most prestigious award for a novel published in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, or Serbia, and in 2017, it was shortlisted as a Montenegrin entry for the European Union Prize for Literature.

Cover image for American Sfumato, isbn: 9781948954259

Darrin Doyle

The Dark Will End The Dark

$9.99

Stunning and visceral in its emotional impact, The Dark Will End The Dark collects 14 stories by veteran author Darrin Doyle. Deftly mixing realism and fabulism, bleakness and hope, sparkling dialogue and unforgettable characters, these literary Midwestern Gothic tales remain in the reader’s mind long after the last page is turned.

Cover image for The Dark Will End The Dark, isbn: 9781948954457

Jeremy T. Wilson

Adult Teeth

$9.99

A suburban lawyer obsessively searches for her out-of-work husband’s sex doll; a grieving man buys a parrot for the stranger who saved his life; a retired Florida lineman discovers a power more vital than electricity. In his debut collection Adult Teeth, award-winning short story writer Jeremy T. Wilson skillfully presents a cast of compelling characters who grapple with life’s big concerns: marriage, friendship, parenthood, death. With heartbreak and humor, these twelve stories explore the brutal truth that for all these characters, as for all of us, time is lying in wait, ready to punch us in the mouth.

Cover image for Adult Teeth, isbn: 9781948954204

Giano Cromley

The Last Good Halloween

$9.99

Like most teenagers, Kirby Russo doesn't want much: a calm home life, a couple close friends, a sense of direction and purpose. And a chance to relax with a cocktail now and then. And maybe some privacy whenever fantasy and hormones get the better of him. But his world's upended when he comes home from computer camp to find his stepfather gone and his mom sleeping with their neighbor. In short order, he has to plan an epic road trip to save his family. Never mind the fact that he's at that age where you take yourself seriously, but no one else does. Never mind the fact that he doesn't have a car—it's really more like borrowing when it's a friend's parent's car and they won't know it's gone. And never mind the fact that he doesn't know as much about life as he thinks he does.

Cover image for The Last Good Halloween, isbn: 9781948954488

Gerald Brennan

Resistance

$9.99

In late December of 1941, two parachutists dropped into occupied Europe on a mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, an SS leader whom one contemporary called “the hidden pivot” of Nazi Germany.

Six months later, they succeeded.

This is the definitive telling of this oft-forgotten story—its fascinating background, its thrilling climax, and its tragic consequences.

Cover image for Resistance, isbn: 9781948954495

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Your Driver Has Arrived

$9.99

A former undocumented immigrant and current American citizen documents his experiences chasing the American Dream through the gig economy years as a rideshare driver in Chicago. By turns heartwarming and hilarious, this book is a valuable reminder of the values we all share.
A dollar from every book sold will be donated to RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center For Education and Legal Services, or to the Ascend Educational Fund.

Cover image for Your Driver Has Arrived, isbn: 9781948954303

Bob Hartley

North and Central

$9.99

Andy's a bartender in North Austin in the late 1970s. For years, he's been slinging beers to corrupt cops and fat Zenith employees, but given the neighborhood's ongoing decline (and his own serious health issues), he's starting to wonder how long it can go on. He's serving workers from a dying factory in a dying neighborhood; he sees crime on the rise—and he decides to become a criminal himself. North and Central perfectly evokes Chicago in the epic winter of '78-'79—the bleak season of blizzards and disco and John Wayne Gacy—capturing the city in microcosm through the denizens of one blue-collar watering hole. If Springsteen and Bukowski had teamed up to write a story about a Chicago bar, they'd have been hard pressed to do better than this; it's an anti-Cheers, a bittersweet story about a place where everybody knows your nickname, and they're tired of you coming around because you're a degenerate. But it's more than just a static portrait; it's a gripping and moving story destined to earn its own place among the classics of Chicago literature.

Cover image for North and Central, isbn: 9781948954402

Stuart Ross

Jenny in Corona

$9.99

Tyrone has a problem. Several problems, in fact: a girlfriend who sleeps around, a boss he's sleeping with, and various types of guilt (Catholic, Jewish, White) he can’t live without. Plus, there’s his deceased mother, his pill-popping father (who at least shares the good ones), the death metal guitarist who lives in his attic and shreds into the wee morning hours, and the coworker obsessed with the 200 movies Robert De Niro may or may not have filmed between 1974 and 1976. Follow Ty as he muddles through twentysomething life tangled up in Manhattan and Queens, good sex and bad drugs, and the relative merits of Antonioni and Superman II.

Cover image for Jenny in Corona, isbn: 9781948954242

Gint Aras

The Fugue

$9.99

After over a decade in prison, a young sculptor, Yuri Dilienko, returns to his old neighborhood in Cicero, Illinois. He finds the town stripped of so many places he used to know, while the town's familiar streets, bricks and steeples trigger memories of his traumatic youth. To convalesce, he sculpts from collected scrap metal, but his arrival in town soon rouses a young girl, Lita Avila, to curiosity. Could this reclusive and oddly quiet man, whose art is sensitive yet intense, truly be guilty of setting fire to his parents' bungalow and burning them alive? At once an homage to the urban grit of Nelson Algren and the family sagas of Leo Tolstoy, The Fugue is a true epic that spans three generations and over fifty years, a major new achievement in the history of Chicago literature. It considers the effects of war and the silent, haunting traumas inherited by children of displaced refugees. Gint Aras's lucid yet lyrical prose braids and weaves a tale where memory and imagination merge, time races and drags, and identity collapses and shifts without warning.

Cover image for The Fugue, isbn: 9781948954433

Rachel Slotnick

In Lieu of Flowers (Illustrated)

$9.99

In this surreal series of dreamscapes, bears roam the subway, and fathers become fish. But for all of the fantastic imagery in this stunning debut poetry collection, there are equally memorable explorations of more familiar terrain: the landscapes of our lives and relationships.

Cover image for In Lieu of Flowers (Illustrated), isbn: 9781948954440

Carlo Matos

The Quitters

$9.99

This hard-hitting collection of creative essays explores the beauty and pain embedded in some of our favorite rough-and-tumble pastimes—roller derby, mixed martial arts, and teaching. Carlo Matos ties it all together with gusto, in a book that will send you reeling to the canvas again and again, and make you return every time for more.

Cover image for The Quitters, isbn: 9781948954358

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Your Driver Has Arrived - Discussion Edition

$9.99

A former undocumented immigrant and current American citizen documents his experiences chasing the American Dream through the gig economy years as a rideshare driver in Chicago. By turns heartwarming and hilarious, this book is a valuable reminder of the values we all share.
The school edition contains discussion questions at the end of every chapter to facilitate classroom discussion.
A dollar from every book sold will be donated to RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center For Education and Legal Services, or to the Ascend Educational Fund.

Cover image for Your Driver Has Arrived - Discussion Edition, isbn: 9781948954297

Bill Hillmann

The Pueblos

$9.99

In 2014, author and bullrunning expert Bill Hillmann was gored in the streets of Pamplona by a bull named Brevito who left a baseball-sized wound in his thigh. Two years later he returned to Spain, eager to run with the bulls again.
Bill was on a mission to run a hundred and one bull runs over the course of the summer, putting his marriage and his life on the line in a quest to explore the breadth and depth of the Spanish bullrunning tradition alongside the nation’s top runners, many of whom had become fast friends. It was an exhilarating trip, full of fun and danger in every town—a trip that almost cost him everything. Now he’s chronicled the experience, in a memoir of remarkable power and honesty. It’s a perfect book for an age when everyone, it seems, is looking to leave their boring ordinary life behind and become a viral internet sensation; more importantly, it’s a pure visceral thrill ride, a pulsing rush of blood and adrenalin.
Open this book and you can follow Bill on his remarkable odyssey to the edge of human endurance, and past the limits of sanity. You, too, can hear the thunder of clattering hooves on the pavement behind you, feel the warm wet breath of the beasts on your bare skin, and glance back at the sharp tips of the horns as they thrust towards you. Come along…if you dare.

Cover image for The Pueblos, isbn: 9781948954518

Steve Passey

Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock

$4.99

An unadulterated look inside the lives of those hardest hit by the Great Recession, Steve Passey shows with great clarity that when all else fails, it’s our relationships that keep us afloat, even if we’re drifting to nowhere. Narrators shaped by the generation decaying around them proclaim an era where the Business of Bad News is the norm, and the only escape is trying to find solace in the familiarity of everyday life. Relatable in their unique contentment with the bottom of the barrel, these characters form the most intimate bonds through conversations held in the marginal spaces of the American Dream.

Cover image for Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock, isbn: 9781948954389

Gerald Brennan

Island of Clouds

$9.99

April, 1972. Three legendary astronauts embark on mankind’s boldest space voyage yet—a yearlong mission to fly past our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus. What follows will be a journey more harrowing than any of them can imagine.

Island of Clouds, the first full-length novel in the Altered Space series, is a gripping space epic based on NASA mission proposals from the late 1960s. Touching on literary influences ranging from Borges and Bukowski to the Book of Job, this story of exploration also offers a literary probing of the dark reaches of human nature: alcoholism, capitalism, authority, fatherhood, and the ephemeral nature of desire.

The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

Cover image for Island of Clouds, isbn: 9781948954396

Alex Poppe

Moxie

$6.99

Jax, a magazine model, has had half her face destroyed in a bomb blast. Drowning in whiskey and self-loathing, she must rebuild her life now that her beauty is gone. Part love letter to New York, part social justice commentary, Moxie is a timely and raw portrayal of the sometimes self-destructive search for identity and redemption.

Cover image for Moxie, isbn: 9781948954211

Darrin Doyle

Scoundrels Among Us

$9.99

A mysterious man appears suspended in the air above a major American city. A foul-mouthed posse of machete-wielding scoundrels wreak havoc on a small-town mayor. A cocaine-addled boxer starts a torrid affair with the wife of the Invisible Man—who just might be watching (and enjoying) all the freakiness. Darrin Doyle’s latest book of short stories is an electrifying look at men behaving badly—or just being weird. Hilarious, madly inventive, and compellingly readable, this unforgettable collection will leave the reader disturbed, dazzled, delirious—and begging for more.

Cover image for Scoundrels Among Us, isbn: 9781948954334

Gerald Brennan

Infinite Blues

$9.99

June, 1968. An air force astronaut flies to an orbiting observation platform for a forty-day stint spying on the Soviet Union from space—and discovers a plot that will determine the fate of the world.
The fourth book in the Altered Space series, Infinite Blues imagines a militarized Space Race in a Cold War that never was, with America trying to find its way back to normalcy after the MacArthur presidency, and warily watching as Beria’s Soviet Union builds the ballistic missiles that threaten to destroy it on a half-hour’s notice. A thoroughly researched thriller full of political paranoia and imaginative intrigue, it’s also a look at today’s America through the lens of an alternate past, as well as a literary examination of observation and participation, individualism and collectivism, the ideas and attitudes that hold our country together—and the ones that might send it careening towards catastrophe.
The titles in the Altered Space series are wholly separate narratives, but all deal with the mysteries of space and time, progress and circularity. Each one is an ensō of words in which orbits of spacecraft, moons, planets, and people allow us fresh perspectives on the cycles of our own lives.

Cover image for Infinite Blues, isbn: 9781948954525

Joseph G. Peterson

Gunmetal Blue

$9.99

Detective Art Topp has a wife…or rather, had a wife. It’s hard to tell. On one hand, he talks to her every day, and she talks back. On the other, he’s still in shock from the day he walked into his Triple A Detective AAAgency office and found her lifeless body riddled with bullets, the catastrophic blowback from what should have been a simple investigation. Now he’s promised his daughter he’s going to figure out what happened. The only problem is, he’s not much of a detective—just a washed-up middle-aged former telecom worker who went to the gun range too often, watched too many episodes of The Rockford Files, and suddenly decided it’d be fun to be a private eye. Or maybe there’s another problem—he also knows it might have been his fault. And the cops are starting to wonder, too…
Gunmetal Blue showcases Joseph G. Peterson at his inimitable best. It’s delightfully absurd and horrifyingly plausible, a sad and funny look at what happens when our airy fantasies become gritty reality, and when that reality in turn falls apart into madness and nightmares.

Cover image for Gunmetal Blue, isbn: 9781948954341

Bill Hillmann

White Flight

$22.99

Chicago’s western suburbs. Young Joe Walsh is making a go of it at a new school, still haunted by his rough-and-tumble city upbringing. He’s got some great opportunities—a summer seminar at one of the world’s top physics laboratories, a hard-hitting Catholic clergyman and boxing instructor who thinks he’s got talent in the ring, and a beautiful girlfriend who’s giving him some much-needed love and support. But the challenges of Chicago have followed him to its outskirts; his sister’s struggling to recover after being shot by one of his former friends, his mom’s unvarnished ways are rubbing their wealthy neighbors the wrong way, and his brother’s fresh out of prison and falling into old habits. Like many young men before him, Joe’s taking out his frustrations in the boxing ring, and dreaming of a triumphant career—but will that, too, become a prison?

This follow-up to Bill Hillmann’s The Old Neighborhood connects like a 1-2 punch. It’s another modern classic from one of the city’s best authors, a powerful story unlike anything you’ve read before.

Cover image for White Flight, isbn: 9781965199107

Billy Lombardo

Morning Will Come

$9.99

Alan and Audrey Taylor are an ordinary married couple raising three children and coping with the demands of busy careers when the unthinkable happens: their eldest daughter, Isabel, on the verge of precocious womanhood, goes missing in the middle of the night. Thus begins this intimate portrait of a barely functioning family as Alan, Audrey and their two young sons are left to decipher the mysteries of how to go on living and loving––in the aftermath of violence and loss. A haunting, sometimes raw exploration of grief, Morning Will Come is also by turns humorous and sexy, exploring the bonds of brotherhood and the redemptive power of love.
Originally published as How to Hold a Woman by Dzanc Books in 2009, this revised edition is being published in 2020 by Tortoise Books as part of their New Chicago Classics series.

Cover image for Morning Will Come, isbn: 9781948954266

Joseph G. Peterson

Ninety-Nine Bottles

$9.99

The local bar—the true, no-frills, nameless dive bar—offers its patrons a refuge, a place to express their doubts, dreams, regrets, and failures. Here they can escape or celebrate life; tell tall tales and jokes, or rage against the inherent unfairness of the human condition. Chances are you've spent time in a place like this yourself—but whether minutes or hours or years, you'll want to spend more in here. Lyrical and hypnotic, Ninety-Nine Bottles is a distillation of Joseph G. Peterson's considerable talents, and a powerful and emotional meditation on the repetitions and variations of life—regular people searching for meaning in these sad and beautiful places. Why not stop in for a few?

Cover image for Ninety-Nine Bottles, isbn: 9781948954235

Turi Ryder

She Said What?

$9.99

Radio. It's almost as easy as marriage and motherhood.The excitement of a career on the air! Listeners asking for advice on dressing their girlfriends in leather bustiers; managers who believe every professional woman longs for a bouquet on Secretaries' Day; Saturday nights giving away free T-shirts and beer in country music bars; reporting on a day in the life of a dominatrix—all while juggling two kids, rescue dogs, and one cross-country move after another. Live the dream with Turi Ryder, a music jock and talk host on major-market stations from Chicago to Los Angeles, with stops in Minneapolis, Portland, and San Francisco along the way. This darkly comical, bitingly accurate, and lovingly fictionalized memoir will ring true for anyone who has longed for both a creative life and a family to come home to.

Cover image for She Said What?, isbn: 9781948954228

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Rescued Me

$15.99

Nestor Gomez was sure he had found love with his new girlfriend. The only problem? His girlfriend was still in love with a real dog. No, really—a seventy-pound pitbull mix. And after having been…well, nearly emasculated by a dog that bit him high on the thigh when he was a young boy, Nestor had developed a paralyzing phobia of our four-legged friends. Soon he was faced with a dilemma…could he learn to love the creatures that had aroused in him such terror, or would he lose the love of his life on account of her pet? (To say nothing of all the other little challenges that loom large in life—a hand-me-down-mattress with poky springs, nosy neighbors with belligerent blogs, pesky police, and an evil cat.)

Rescued Me is a lively little memoir from one of Chicago’s greatest live storytellers. It’s a true and touching story about finding the courage to love after you’ve been hurt—literally and figuratively! And it’s a wonderful monument to the growth and change we must find in ourselves if we are to move past our fears and into a bigger and better life.

(A portion of every sale will be donated to local animal charities. Which might give you a little clue as to how the story turns out.)

This discussion edition contains questions and answers throughout the book to facilitate conversation in a classroom setting.

Cover image for Rescued Me, isbn: 9781965199145

John Vurro

Play, Rewind

$20.99

Wes is stuck. He should be spending his twenties finishing the schooling that will help him land a career in movies, just like he’s always dreamed about. Instead he divides his time between clerking in the most low-rent video store in Queens, and caring for a mom struggling with Alzheimer’s. His father’s out of the picture, and he has no realistic means of finding care for her—beyond the harried home nurse who’s already on the brink of quitting—but even though he’s sure his mother won’t even remember his efforts, he’s committed to her. Still, he doesn’t have much to do outside life’s boring routines, except pressing Play and Rewind to try and identify the moments when it all went wrong. (And maybe watching the random vacation video that some customer left at the store to be copied.)

Then: change. A friend from high school returns to the neighborhood after a mysterious absence, and a disreputable man from the neighborhood takes over the store. (He may or may not be mobbed up. Who can say, really? It’s not the sort of thing you ask your new boss.) And he finds out his father may be closer than he thinks. In short order, Wes’s life’s starting to look different. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is tough to say—the store’s new owner wants to make easy money selling bootleg videos out front, and we all know the FBI frowns on that sort of thing; the high school friend may be too eager to make amends, and to hide the secrets of her own past mistakes—but still, it’s something. Now Wes has to navigate feelings far more frightening than stasis, and find a way forward despite everything pulling him back.

Play, Rewind is a lovely literary look at a place near and dear to our hearts, one we all might want to visit if we had a time machine—the video store. (And it sends us to another vanished place, peaceful and innocent pre-9/11 New York.) More importantly, it’s a great glimpse into lives we can all relate to, people struggling against impossible odds, unsure if anything will ever change. It’s a fantastic debut novel from an amazing new author—John Vurro.

"I loved it so much that after I read it, I wanted to rewind back to the beginning and read it again. Vurro’s is a bold and brilliant new literary voice. This beautiful novel moved me deeply.”
— Alena Graedon, author of The Word Exchange

Cover image for Play, Rewind, isbn: 9781948954990

Ben Tanzer

Upstate

$9.99

Featuring dark character studies of childhood, middle age, and (lack of) grace under pressure, these stories are among the best work of Tanzer's career, and voracious fans of his writing will surely be pleased and satisfied to have these small masterpieces collected together into one easy-to-read volume. So take a stool at Thirsty's, order another Yuengling, and be prepared to be transported into the rusted soul and blackened heart of the American small-town, as one of our nation's best contemporary authors takes us on a remarkable journey to a place full of love and lust and gin and sin.
Previously published as The New York Stories, this classic collection has been revised and edited, and includes a new introduction by Tortoise Books publisher Gerald Brennan.

Cover image for Upstate, isbn: 9781948954310

William Auten

In Another Sun

$9.99

In Another Sun is a lovely and eloquent look at one woman’s journey towards, and away from, the American Dream. We follow its protagonist, the child of Mexican immigrants, through love and loss, career ascent and personal crisis. It’s a specific and detailed story focused on one slice of the American experience; it’s also a great general look at ambition and grace and identity, at the goals that shape our lives—only to leave us longing for something else.

Cover image for In Another Sun, isbn: 9781948954280

Ignatius Valentine Aloysius

Fishhead

$9.99

Amidst the teeming tenements of 1970s Bombay (Mumbai), a hungry teenage boy struggles through life in a poverty-stricken family ruled by a domineering alcoholic father, when suddenly he faces another challenge: the affections of an upper middle-class girl. In this exploration of poverty and pleasure, patriarchy and tragedy, Fishhead’s titular narrator must search for ways to bridge the gap between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds: the life he longs to live, and the one chosen for him by Destiny.

Cover image for Fishhead, isbn: 9781948954273

Joseph Worthen

All Trap No Bait

$20.99

It’s the summer of 2020 in Alabama, and Beverly Jane Ornett is terminally online. To be fair, the real world's lost its charms—thanks to the pandemic, she hasn’t worked in months. Plus, her longtime roommate is moving out of their filthy apartment to live with her wealthy boyfriend, and the only people she communicates with are the weirdos and pariahs in her crappy poetry collective. And she’s spending way too much time pining for one of them, an aloof redneck she dated the previous summer. Sure, she could ponder these cascading depressing failures…or she could zone out on Xanax and watch YouTube tutorials on eyebrow threading, and videos of hydraulic presses crushing random objects; she could peruse the poetry collective’s group chat, or even go to the Domino's website and use their online tools to sprinkle virtual toppings on the pizza she’d order if only she had the money.

Then comes a chat message from an unfamiliar handle—a demon, or something worse. The demon is asking for favors, and posting Bev’s secrets online.

Now Bev has to get to the bottom of things. (Nevermind the fact that she’s not able to get to the bottom of much, except maybe a bottle of cough syrup.) In short order she’s exploring—or perhaps stumbling through—a world of viral rap stars and webcam girls, all the seediness that Mobile and the internet have to offer. (Which is quite a bit of seediness, indeed.) Maybe the truth is out there, and maybe it’s not, but either way, Bev’s life is about to change forever.

All Trap No Bait is both a gripping book about a hapless detective, and a Southern Gothic novel for the cyber age—something like the bastard love child of Flannery O’Connor and The Big Lebowski. Hilarious and harrowing, a chronicle of its depressing time and an immensely entertaining escape from ours, it’s a landmark work and an incredible debut by a major new talent—Joseph Worthen.

Cover image for All Trap No Bait, isbn: 9781965199008

Darrin Doyle

The Dark Will End The Dark

$17.99

A group of tugboat passengers grapples with a disturbing loss. A record-holding hiccuper confronts his condition—and a troubling secret. A wife wonders what to do when her husband’s head stops working—but his body stays alive. A man struggles with the memory of the time he saw his friend swallowed whole by a neighborhood girl with supernatural powers.

In this classic set of Midwestern Gothic stories by Darrin Doyle, we see the strange hold hands with the familiar—and seem all the more strange as a result. A set of tall tales (and medium-height ones) told with Nabokovian prose, this stunning and visceral collection by the author of The Beast in Aisle 34 will linger long after the last page.

Originally published in 2015, this revised tenth anniversary edition features a new introduction by American Mythology author Giano Cromley.

Cover image for The Dark Will End The Dark, isbn: 9781965199206

Patricia Ann McNair

The Temple of Air

$18.99

Linking the lives and tales of a place and its people through tragedy and consequence, blind faith and redemption, The Temple of Air, Patricia Ann McNair’s award-winning collection of finely tuned short stories, spans three decades to present a portrait of working class Americans.

From babysitter and bus ticket salesman to construction worker and cult leader, the residents of New Hope—whose lives intersect after a tragic accident during a summer carnival—chase dreams and suffer disappointment against the subtle backdrop of a Midwestern landscape. The stories are unapologetic yet magical, bringing to life the daily struggle under the weight of war, poverty, natural disaster, illness, grief, and greed, even as the residents enjoy the comforts of solace, friendship, sex, love, ice cream, and the comics found wrapped around bubblegum.

This revised second edition features new stories that will delight both new and old readers, as well as a new introduction.

Cover image for The Temple of Air, isbn: 9781948954891

Avner Landes

Meiselman

$9.99

Meiselman has had enough. After a life spent playing by the rules, this lonely thirty-six-year-old man—"number two" at a suburban Chicago public library, in charge of events and programs, and in no control whatsoever over his fantasies about his domineering boss—is looking to come out on top, at last. What seems like an ordinary week in 2004 will prove to be a golden opportunity (at least in his mind) to reverse a lifetime of petty humiliations. And no one—not his newly observant wife, not the Holocaust survivor neighbor who regularly disturbs his sleep with her late-night gardening, and certainly not the former-classmate-turned-renowned-author who's returning to the library for a triumphant literary homecoming—will stand in his way.
"Meiselman is a triumph of comic escalation." — Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask

Cover image for Meiselman, isbn: 9781948954501

Regan Burke

In That Number

$9.99

A unique hybrid memoir, Regan Burke's In That Number chronicles one woman's struggle to find grace and peace amidst the chaos of politics and alcoholism. It's an important public book from a longtime Democratic party activist, one whose beliefs led her from protesting the Vietnam War at the Lincoln Memorial to working inside the White House-a woman with fascinating firsthand reminisces about everything and everyone from Woodstock to Vladimir Putin, from The Exorcist to Bill Clinton, from Roger Ebert to Donald Rumsfeld. It's also an intimate and revealing private memoir from a woman who spent a harrowing childhood being raised by shockingly dysfunctional parents-a roguish naval-aviator-turned-lawyer-turned-con-man father and a racist socialite mother-and bouncing from house to house to luxury hotel, trying to stay one step ahead of the creditors. (And not always succeeding.) It's an entertaining and ultimately heartwarming journey from private schools to the psych ward, from hippie communal living to the corridors of power to the pews of church, and through the rooms of twelve-step recovery to the serenity of long-term sobriety.

Cover image for In That Number, isbn: 9781948954327

Bristol Vaudrin

Afterward

$18.99

In an unnamed city, a young woman deals with an unspeakable tragedy, and her boyfriend’s subsequent hospitalization.

Torn from her normal routines—coffee, sex, barhopping, and disc golf—she finds herself in an unfamiliar world of hospital visits and doctor’s appointments, all while navigating an unexpected move to a new apartment and enduring the disapproval of her boyfriend’s mother, as well as the gossip of her friends and coworkers. (Plus the suspicious looks of strangers, and the unbearable strain on her credit card…and did we mention the gossip of her friends and coworkers?) Along the way, she meets every obstacle with…well, not grace, exactly. In fact, pretty much the opposite of grace. Maybe more like bitchiness, truth be told. And all the while, the aftereffects of the tragedy cast a pall over everything she does—and threaten to destroy everything she has.

Bristol Vaudrin’s fascinating debut novel is an engrossing and darkly comedic read with an unforgettable narrator/protagonist. Watching her struggles—real, imagined, and in-between—we too must choose between kindness and judgment, between condescension towards someone who simply doesn’t have a clue, and empathy with a person struggling to deal with something we all must face: the desire to hold on to the things we enjoy when the world around us changes in ways we didn’t expect.

Cover image for Afterward, isbn: 9781948954914

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Tu Conductor Ha Llegado

$11.99

Un inmigrante ex indocumentado y actual ciudadano estadounidense documenta sus experiencias por varios años persiguiendo el sueño americano a través de la economía colaborativa como conductor de viajes compartidos en Chicago. A la vez conmovedor e hilarante, este libro es un valioso recordatorio de los valores que todos compartimos.

Un dólar de cada libro vendido será donado a RAICES, el Centro de Educación y Servicios Legales para Refugiados e Inmigrantes, o al Fondo Educativo Ascend.

A former undocumented immigrant and current American citizen documents his experiences chasing the American Dream through the gig economy years as a rideshare driver in Chicago. By turns heartwarming and hilarious, this book is a valuable reminder of the values we all share.

A dollar from every book sold will be donated to RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center For Education and Legal Services, or to the Ascend Educational Fund.

Cover image for Tu Conductor Ha Llegado, isbn: 9781965199060

Chris Eagle

Dwell Here and Prosper

$18.99

Dick, a blunt and bawdy Philly sports fan, finds himself in an assisted living facility following a stroke. Determined to regain his independence, he does daily laps around the grounds with his quad cane. But when recovery never comes, and days swell into years, Dick finds purpose instead by studying his fellow residents, chronicling their odd obsessions and their nasty arguments, their breakdowns, their drunken debaucheries—and yes, even their sexual escapades.

Dwell Here and Prosper is a gritty but heartfelt novel, heavily informed by the author’s father and his experiences in assisted living near Philadelphia in the 90s. With its set of memorable outcasts—a shady jokester who insists he worked for the FBI, a schizophrenic Catholic who roams local cemeteries at night in search of the Virgin Mary, a twenty-six-year-old whose teeth mysteriously fell out, a middle-aged alcoholic who prostitutes herself to other residents for booze and cigarettes—it’s a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for a different generation and a different kind of institution. This timeless book offers a funny yet honest meditation on aging and community, and what it means to thrive in purgatory.

Cover image for Dwell Here and Prosper, isbn: 9781948954792

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Me Rescató

$15.99

Néstor Gómez estaba seguro de que había encontrado el amor con su nueva novia. ¿El único problema? Su novia seguía enamorada de un verdadero perro. No, en serio, una mezcla de pitbull de setenta libras. Y después de haber sido... bueno, casi castrado por un perro que lo mordió en el muslo cuando era un niño, Néstor había desarrollado una fobia paralizante a nuestros amigos de cuatro patas. Pronto se enfrentó a un dilema... ¿Podría aprender a amar a las criaturas que habían despertado en él tanto terror, o perdería al amor de su vida a causa de su mascota? (Por no hablar de todos los otros pequeños desafíos que se ciernen sobre la vida y las relaciones: un colchón de segunda mano con malísimos resortes, vecinos entrometidos con blogs beligerantes, policías molestos y un gato malvado).

Me Rescató es un pequeño y animado libro de memorias de uno de los mejores narradores de relatos en vivo de Chicago. Es una historia verdadera y conmovedora sobre encontrar el coraje para amar después de haber sido herido, ¡literal y figurativamente! Y es un maravilloso monumento al crecimiento y al cambio que debemos encontrar en nosotros mismos si queremos dejar atrás nuestros miedos y tener una vida más grande y mejor.

(Una parte de cada venta se donará a organizaciones benéficas locales de animales. Lo que podría darte una pequeña pista de cómo resulta la historia).

Nestor "The Boss" Gomez

Me Rescató

$14.99

Néstor Gómez estaba seguro de que había encontrado el amor con su nueva novia. ¿El único problema? Su novia seguía enamorada de un verdadero perro. No, en serio, una mezcla de pitbull de setenta libras. Y después de haber sido... bueno, casi castrado por un perro que lo mordió en el muslo cuando era un niño, Néstor había desarrollado una fobia paralizante a nuestros amigos de cuatro patas. Pronto se enfrentó a un dilema... ¿Podría aprender a amar a las criaturas que habían despertado en él tanto terror, o perdería al amor de su vida a causa de su mascota? (Por no hablar de todos los otros pequeños desafíos que se ciernen sobre la vida y las relaciones: un colchón de segunda mano con malísimos resortes, vecinos entrometidos con blogs beligerantes, policías molestos y un gato malvado).

Me Rescató es un pequeño y animado libro de memorias de uno de los mejores narradores de relatos en vivo de Chicago. Es una historia verdadera y conmovedora sobre encontrar el coraje para amar después de haber sido herido, ¡literal y figurativamente! Y es un maravilloso monumento al crecimiento y al cambio que debemos encontrar en nosotros mismos si queremos dejar atrás nuestros miedos y tener una vida más grande y mejor.

(Una parte de cada venta se donará a organizaciones benéficas locales de animales. Lo que podría darte una pequeña pista de cómo resulta la historia).

Cover image for Me Rescató, isbn: 9781965199169

Brooke Randel

Also Here

$18.99

As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.”

What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman's harrowing survival, and another's struggle to excavate the story from under the sands of time, and her grandma's illiteracy. Chronicling the darkness of the past and the difficult (and occasionally comic) challenges of bringing it to life in a sunny Florida condo, this book offers an insightful look into the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, and the impossible pull of both silence and remembrance.

Cover image for Also Here, isbn: 9781948954976

Frank Santo

The Birthparents

$18.99

The Bronx. It’s America at its most vibrant and chaotic; it’s also where one foster care caseworker—a would-be white savior from New England, a twentysomething kid prematurely jaded by the system—takes it upon himself to reunify a troubled birthmother with her children, against the recommendation of his world-weary but wise Hispanic boss. (Nevermind the fact that the mother in question just might have a crush on him—either that, or she’s running game for her own purposes. And nevermind the fact that her ex-husband, a serial abuser whose casefile’s thick with bruises, just might have killed someone to protect her in the past—and might be willing to do so again.) What follows is a vivid portrait of lives intersecting and colliding as they grapple with timeless issues: poverty and privilege, parenting and responsibility, drug abuse and insanity.

As gritty as a cracked city street, as full of light and shadow as a crumbling row house, as hard to discard as a piece of summer sidewalk bubblegum stuck to your shoe, The Birthparents does for early 21st century New York what Charles Dickens did for mid-19th century London, not only preserving it for posterity but bringing it to life, and showcasing the shared humanity of characters climbing up (or clinging to) every rung on the societal ladder. It’s a stunning debut by an incredible new voice—Frank Santo.

Cover image for The Birthparents, isbn: 9781948954815

Adam Kovac

The Surge

$18.99

Larry Chandler knows what his fellow soldiers don’t—that war scars you and haunts you, leaving you with memories you’d prefer not to face. They’re all National Guardsmen serving together in Iraq, but he’s already done a stint in Afghanistan, whereas they’re fresh-faced youngsters on their first tour. The new soldiers are eager for something more interesting than life on a firebase, or boring guard duty at isolated outposts—and they’re about to get their wish.

Adam Kovac has written one of the great novels of The Forever Wars—one that captures both the dust and grit and sweat of soldiers on patrol, and the surrealism of their lives back on base. (Where they might be checking Facebook and ordering lattes one minute, and dodging mortars the next.) In its first edition, it earned comparisons to the likes of Hemingway, Mailer, and O’Brien; this revised second edition promises to find it the audience it so richly deserves.

Cover image for The Surge, isbn: 9781965199046

Sara Lippmann

Lech

$18.99

A mother recovering from an abortion in a Borscht Belt rental. An eccentric aging landlord, haunted by a mysterious death. A grief-stricken Hasid. A scheming real estate agent looking for her break, her dogged daughter longing for her way out (specifically, a career as a human mermaid), and her addict boyfriend mired in it.

These lives—strangers, neighbors, family, friends—entwine and separate over the course of one fevered upstate summer, in a haunting and hilarious debut novel by acclaimed author Sara Lippmann. In her inimitable prose, she mercilessly explores the predatory side of human nature through conflicts of faith, trauma, desire, belonging, and longing—the particulars of Judaism and feminism, parenting and partying, small-town life and big blundering dreams, as well as the timeless question: How do we carry on?

Cover image for Lech, isbn: 9781948954693

David LeBrun

Delirium Vitae

$18.99

In 2001, David LeBrun travelled to Costa Rica to reconnect with an old friend. LeBrun, a young writer at the end of a string of dead-end jobs, planned on living cheaply for a winter while finishing the book he thought would make his career. (And, of course, drinking every night and getting stoned every day. And maybe stealing the occasional pill.) But once there, he was swept up in his friend’s self-destruction and ran out of money far sooner than expected.

What followed was an epic odyssey across Central America and Mexico, hitchhiking with random strangers and sleeping anywhere he could as his mental health deteriorated and he tried to finish his book; along the way, he met down-and-out street buskers, a narcissistic thief, a Bible-thumper with multiple personalities, ex-convicts in a Narcotics Anonymous shelter—but, more importantly, himself.

Delirium Vitae is a new classic, an On the Road for the twenty-first century. Alternately charming and harrowing, it looks beneath the romance of adventure in a foreign land to see what it’s really like to teeter between freedom and homelessness. (Because, let’s be honest, walking thirty-six kilometers on an empty stomach, or fending off a sweaty and shirtless truck driver, does suck.) It’s a fantastic book that looks not only at the excitement of the open road, but at why we go there, and what we leave behind—and whether we can ever still come home.

Cover image for Delirium Vitae, isbn: 9781965199022

Cyn Vargas

Nothing's Ever the Same

$15.99

Itzel’s 13th birthday party starts in just about the unluckiest way possible—with her dad having a heart attack. In those frantic moments, the piñata and the frosted sheetcake and the Styrofoam cups of orange soda are forgotten; the day’s highlights end up being CPR, an ambulance ride, and angioplasty. But when her father gets home from the hospital, his problems are far from over—and Itzel’s are just getting started.

Nothing’s Ever the Same chronicles a young girl’s coming of age in Chicago—growing up as her family grows apart. In masterful fashion, Cyn Vargas gives us a touching and memorable and universal story about a marriage on the brink and a teenager looking for love. It's a short book that packs a wallop; it’s also a beautiful meditation on dysfunction and forgiveness, and all the times in life to which we can never return.

The New Chicago Classics are a disparate set of titles united around a common theme: showcasing the city's up-and-coming literary talents as they produce enduring works. These excellent titles are destined to stand in the first rank of literature about the second city.

Cover image for Nothing's Ever the Same, isbn: 9781948954877

Bill Hillmann

The Old Neighborhood

$21.99

Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago—a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime.

Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it.

This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.

Cover image for The Old Neighborhood, isbn: 9781948954952

Christine Sneed

Love in the Time of Time's Up

$17.99

With pathos and insight, each of the sixteen accomplished authors—among them Lynn Freed, Karen Bender, May-lee Chai, Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza, and Amina Gautier—featured in Love in the Time of Time’s Up skillfully explores the complexities of desire, intention, and what it means to be a woman in the era of Me Too and Time’s Up.

From the fraught, sexually charged groves of academia and elevators of corporate America, to the imagined diary entries of Brett Kavanaugh and the tragicomic travails of a woman swiping right on Tinder in order to dispense advice to men whose profiles she finds lacking, these stories offer a blend of humor and horror, victory and heartache, righteous anger and rueful recrimination. It’s a collection that’s sure to leave a mark on readers’ minds—and earn a place in their hearts.

Cover image for Love in the Time of Time's Up, isbn: 9781948954716

John Addison Dally

The Master is Here

$16.99

An Episcopal priest has a fateful encounter with an Amsterdam teenager who may be a prostitute—or something else entirely. An Iowa supermarket patron repurposes Bible verses for a love note to a handsome cashier, with consequences both tragic and transformational. A disgraced seminarian shows up at his lover’s first Mass, determined to be remembered.

One way or another, the characters in The Master is Here happen to find themselves in a place larger and more interesting than many others can imagine: the intersection in the Venn diagram of Christian and gay experience. Whether there by choice or quite against their will, whether making good decisions or bad ones, whether driven by love or lust or foolishness or faith, their lives are a valuable testament to the complexities and the conundrums of the human experience, and their stories chronicle the reckonings that none of us can avoid.

Cover image for The Master is Here, isbn: 9781948954594

S.L. Wisenberg

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

$17.99

S.L. Wisenberg, known for writing that is “seriously funny,” proves in this acerbic chronicle that a cancer diary can be at once hilarious, rageful, and feminist.

She passes through the expected rites of breast cancer—diagnosis, surgery, and chemotherapy—but her responses are less expected: she throws a farewell party for her left breast, and rejects a “cranial prosthesis” in favor of using her bare scalp as a canvas for political messages. She insightfully criticizes the ad campaigns of cancer charities, the inept medical staff, and the inequities in the U.S. health care system she encounters as she navigates daily life with cancer and chemo. (There is much she disapproves of, from Brazilian waxes to books that blame patients for their own diseases.) Drawing on a wealth of personal, literary, and historical sources, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch creates an indelible image of a politically engaged, self-aware woman facing a daunting disease while examining her soul and society. (And riding the subway and teaching one-breasted.) It’s a thought-provoking memoir from a woman who questions everything and everyone, including herself.

This revised and expanded second edition features new observations and reflections from the author.

Cover image for The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, isbn: 9781948954938

John Julius Reel

My Half Orange

$17.99

In his late thirties, John Julius Reel left his native New York for Seville, hoping to reinvent himself, find his voice as a writer, and cast off the shadow of his famous father. When his girlfriend dumped him after a month-long visit, the last tie was cut, and he had to face his future from his stark, mosquito-infested rented room. Alone in a foreign land, struggling with the language, and longing to find his place and purpose in the world, he began to rebuild his life.

What follows is a tender, comical, and illuminating story about what it means to learn to speak and think in a new way, and to spend so much time away from home that the foreign becomes familiar. This heartwarming chronicle filled with Sevillian delicias (soccer, Iberian ham, creative cursing, and one extraordinary woman) reveals how love, language, and culture can transform your life forever.

Cover image for My Half Orange, isbn: 9781948954778

Jeremy T. Wilson

The Quail Who Wears The Shirt

$18.99

Tuesday night is trivia night, a night for produce market owner Lee Hubbs to swing by the bar with his cop friend, a night to down a few shots and avoid all the folks who’ve mysteriously been turning into quails. It’s a night to kick back and maybe get some action on the side from his employee/girlfriend before heading home to his wife and kids.

But this Tuesday’s different. An argument with the girlfriend, a little unintentional vehicular homicide of an unsuspecting cyclist, and the next thing you know, Lee’s life’s upended like a bushel of rotten peaches. Well, mostly upended. Because when you’re a fine upstanding citizen, and your victim is a quail-human ne’er-do-well who won’t be missed by society, who’s to say what’s right, really?

Jeremy T. Wilson’s The Quail Who Wears the Shirt is a magnificent Southern-fried meditation on guilt and karma, a fantastic and truly memorable work about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths that seep through despite our best efforts, a darkly comedic satire as strange and surreal as an onion pie.