Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

Chicago forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy and the case of a missing heiress from Montreal--an investigation that becomes more complicated when two more bodies of elderly women are found in Montreal and Tempe faces the very real possibility that a colleague has sabotaged work in the lab.

"Annika (rhymes with Monica) Rose is an English major at the University of Illinois. Anxious in social situations where she finds most people's behavior confusing, she'd rather be surrounded by the order and discipline of books or the quiet solitude of playing chess. Jonathan Hoffman joined the chess club and lost his first game--and his heart--to the shy and awkward, yet brilliant and beautiful Annika. He admires her ability to be true to herself,...

A wealthy and depressed Chicago man, bound for Christmas in Hawaii, is abruptly summoned home to North Dakota. He arrives just in time to be trapped there by a blizzard. During his stay, he reaches an epiphany worthy of the season and resolves to simplify his life.

"In 1871, as Chicago's Great Fire destroys their bookshop, Meg and Sylvie Townsend make a harrowing escape with the help of reporter Nate Pierce. But when their father is committed to an asylum after being accused of murder, they must prove his innocence before the asylum truly drives him mad"--Provided by publisher. Chicago, 1871. Meg and Sylvie Townsend manage the family bookshop. Their father, Stephen is a veteran still suffering in mind and spirit...

Dagan Zoelner has made three huge mistakes... The first two left blood on his hands. The third left him wondering...what if? What if he had told the woman of his dreams how he felt before his world fell apart? Spitfire CIA agent Chelsea Duvall has always had a thing for bossy, brooding Dagan. It's just as well that he's never given her a second look since she carries a combustible secret about his past that threatens to torch their lives...

In an instant, the lives of two women collide. One was behind the wheels of a Trans Am she liked to drive too fast. The other was lying in the road, dying an agonizing death. When Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski gets out of her car to look at the woman she almost hit, she begins a long, harrowing descent into a world of shadowy secrets and tangled lives- and into the grimmest heart of her city. As Warshawski unravels the mystery of...

"Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, the California concentration camp where they have been 'interned' by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the...

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only practicing wizard, is hired by a mysterious priest to find the stolen Shroud of Turin. But first, Harry must deal with the Red Court of Vampires' champion, professional hit men, and the return of his semi-vampire former girlfriend.

"Kamilah Vega is desperate to convince her family to update their Puerto Rican restaurant and enter it into the Fall Foodie Tour. With the gentrification of their Chicago neighborhood, it's the only way to save the place. The fly in her mofongo: her blackmailing abuelo says if she wants to change anything in his restaurant, she'll have to marry the one man she can't stand: his friend's grandson. Liam Kane spent a decade working to turn his family's...