The acclaimed journalist and author delivers “a raw and vivid slice of Chicago” in a novel that explores the changing tide of race, class and politics (The New York Times). Time for Frankie Coolin is the story of a plasterer turned landlord in Chicago who, in the late 1970s, buys abandoned buildings and makes them just habitable enough to charge minimal rent from his mostly black tenants. In this way, Frankie is able to move his family to a house in the suburbs. But Frankie’s well-ordered life comes apart when a casual favor for a cousin combined with a random act of arson set in motion a cascade of crises. Suddenly, Frankie’s up against menacing G-men and threats of prison if he doesn’t talk. But since talking has never been one of Frankie’s strengths, he copes as he always has: by trying to tough it out on his own. Time for Frankie Coolin is both a psychological thriller and a ’70s Chicago period piece that shines a surprisingly sympathetic light on the often-overlooked people who lived, worked, and died at the city’s margins. This edition includes a foreword by Bill Savage.

"Time for Frankie Coolin" tells the story of an absentee landlord in Chicago who, in the late 1970s, buys abandoned buildings and makes them just barely habitable so that he can charge minimal rent to his mostly black tenants. He then moved his family to the suburbs. He misses the city, but is managing pretty well until he does a favor for his wife s cousin, allowing the man to store some crates in an empty building. Then someone sets the building on fire. Pretty soon, a pair of G-men start coming around, threatening Frankie with prison if he doesn t talk to them. Since talking is not one of Frankie s strengths, he just copes as he always has: by trying to tough it out on his own. Part psychological thriller and part period piece, the novel vividly evokes the south and west sides of Chicago and the people who worked there in the 1970s."

"Frankie Coolin's not the most likable guy around. At 49, he's an all-around bigot, a scrounger, a two-bit Chicago contractor/slumlord who's first seen ripping the radiators out of a "six-flat" building he's readying for occupancy by blacks. But somehow you'll care about Frankie--as a dark dread starts draining the life out of him, a dread he can't admit or share: a while back, you see, Frankie let his wife's cousin use some warehouse space; and when the warehouse burned, stolen TVs were found in the rubble. So now two FBI guys keep coming around, threatening Frankie with jail unless he Tells All. And, though semi-innocent, Frankie clams up tight, gets some foreboding advice from a coarse/wise Jewish lawyer, and walks around like a man under a death sentence: not only did a jail-term virtually kill his Uncle Brian but Frankie knows that his extended family's frail status quo will collapse if he's sent away. Still, tough-guy Frankie can't talk about it--not to his bar buddies or his soft wife Rose or his resentful, sick brother John or his nephew-employee Joey or his old father (who lives in the basement). Only when the indictment gets closer and closer does he open up a little with his "Polack" son-in-law, with college-student son Mick. Then, finally, the nightmare does indeed begin: the arrest, the handcuffs, the neighbors watching. But both Rose and Mick surprisingly rise to the occasion; and Frankie's ultimate salvation involves more than just escaping the jail time. A simple story--with a slightly too-simple resolution in the transformed father/son relationship."--Kirkus.

Chapter book meets graphic novel in this first book in the series everyone will be talking about. Like most kids, Frankie Pickle hates cleaning his room. But what happens when his mom says he never has to clean it again? For Frankie and his unstoppable imagination, it means he and his sidekick, Argyle, can become explorers swinging on vines, forging paths through piles of clothes, and scooting past lava pits. They can perform flawless surgery on a broken action figure. They can spend time in the big house. They can even become superheroes. But when junk piles grow too high, will all this imagining be enough to conquer . . . the closet of DOOM?

In this study, Charles Fanning has written the first general account of the origins and development of a literary tradition among American writers of Irish birth or background who have explored the Irish immigrant or ethnic experience in works of fiction. The result is a portrait of the evolving fictional self-consciousness of an immigrant group over a span of 250 years. Fanning traces the roots of Irish-American writing back to the eighteenth century and carries it forward through the traumatic years of the Famine to the present time with an intensely productive period in the twentieth century beginning with James T. Farrell. Later writers treated in depth include Edwin O'Connor, Elizabeth Cullinan, Maureen Howard, and William Kennedy. Along the way he places in the historical record many all but forgotten writers, including the prolific Mary Ann Sadlier. The Irish Voice in America is not only a highly readable contribution to American literary history but also a valuable reference to many writers and their works. For this second edition, Fanning has added a chapter that covers the fiction of the past decade. He argues that contemporary writers continue to draw on Ireland as a source and are important chroniclers of the modern American experience.

In a delightful baseball fable, the owner of the New York Yankees decides to fire his over-priced ballplayers who make a sorry showing year after year and hire a team of hard-playing, baseball-loving Cubans.

The importance of Chicago in American culture has made the city's place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on Chicago-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. In The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 1,200 works of fiction significantly set in Chicago and published between 1852 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources. Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fiction, as well as literary fiction, are included.