This collection of true-life tales evokes a city of gritty and colorful neighborhoods and people. With stories from famous Chicagoans like Mike Royko and Studs Terkel and from everyday people like Petros, the owner of a restaurant in Greek Town, Chi Town is Norbert Blei's love letter to the city that has meant so much to him. Book jacket.

Alfonso Lewis goes by the name of “Sunshine.” After serving twelve years in Illinois State Prison on drug related charges, he is released and returns to the south side of Chicago to pick up where he left off. White Chocolate, Sunshine’s partner in the illicit drug trade, kept things operating while Sunshine was away, but now, it’s back to business as usual. While on a trip to the Grand Caymans, Sunshine and White Chocolate meet Leroy and Shirley Smith. The unassuming Smiths just happen to be known transporters who move drugs from Columbia to the United States. Things are looking up—until authorities search the Smiths’ hotel and find an illegal stash of drugs. The Smiths are arrested, and Sunshine and White Chocolate’s lives are forever altered. Chi-Town is a gritty tale of power, corruption, and suspense driven by a compelling sense of realism. Chicago has been a place of unrest and turmoil since its inception. Now, take a fictionalized look into its cruel lawlessness through the eyes of a criminal fighting to make his way.

"A powerfully doomy debut" (The Guardian), Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a novel of a rural Australian community besieged by modern day anxieties and threatened by a supernatural force seeking to consume the dying town. This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback—a desolate place of gas stations, fast-food franchises, and labyrinthine streets: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: the ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape. Dark, slippery and unsettling, Shaun Prescott’s debut resurrects the existential novel for the age of sprawl and blight, excavates a nation’s buried history of colonial genocide, and tells a love story that asks if outsiders can ever truly belong anywhere. The result is a disquieting classic that vibrates with an occult power.

Four Shy Girls, Four Big Dreams, One Awesome City Book 1 in the Shy-Town Girls Quartet Series When beautiful, but shy 24-year-old, Bobbie Bertucci, arrives at her new digs, an elegant brownstone in Chicago's historic Gold Coast neighborhood, she has no idea what her new life will be like. Between balancing her job as a modeling agent and escaping a bad relationship, she's hit rock bottom. But things change when she moves into the same building as her close friend Meryl. Additionally, her two new twenty-something roommates, Ivy and Ella, help bring Bobbie out of her shell. Barbara, landlady and mother-hen of the house, watches out for the girls while sharing wisdom, sage advice, and guidance along better paths. Bobbie, Meryl, Ivy, and Ella, all variations of shy girls, brave the city of Chicago together, forming a powerful bond of friendship. Their nighttime roof deck conversations over glasses of wine instigate laughter and even some tears. Bobbie takes a bold step to redesign her life completely to ensure she doesn't fall into the romantic trap she fell into before. But there's a new suitor in the picture, and she will have to decide between an old flame or a new one, taking a risk, something hard for any girl--even harder for a shy girl.

Collects Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (2019) #7-14. Has one of Spider-Man’s closest allies returned to his criminal beginnings? Aunt May is reopening the F.E.A.S.T. Center to help the homeless and needy of New York City! But things are rarely simple in the Marvel Universe — so it’s no surprise when F.E.A.S.T. and May’s new funding comes under attack by…the Prowler?! Can Spider-Man help bring Hobie Brown back to the side of the angels? Peter Parker has many skills, but he’s no Sherlock Holmes. So the world’s worst detective calls on his new ally, the Rumor, to help him uncover the truth! But what’s the Rumor’s secret history? And what does it all have to do with a villain who’s been secretly plaguing the MU since World War II?! Plus: The Fantastic Four guest star — and Mary Jane saves the day!

"Money & The Power" presents a gripping street tale of love, murder, steamy sex, drugs, crime and betrayal. This novel will have you in awe. In the deadly streets of Milwaukee, WI loyalty is a rarity.