Brown in the Windy City is the first history to examine the migration and settlement of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in postwar Chicago. Lilia Fernández reveals how the two populations arrived in Chicago in the midst of tremendous social and economic change and, in spite of declining industrial employment and massive urban renewal projects, managed to carve out a geographic and racial place in one of America’s great cities. Through their experiences in the city’s central neighborhoods over the course of these three decades, Fernández demonstrates how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans collectively articulated a distinct racial position in Chicago, one that was flexible and fluid, neither black nor white.

The acclaimed author of the intensely powerful novel Pretty Birds, Scott Simon now gives us a story that is both laugh-out-loud funny and heart-piercing–as sprawling and brawling as Chicago, where politics is a contact sport. The mayor of Chicago is found in his office late at night, sitting in his boxer shorts, facedown dead in a pizza. The mayor was a hero and a rascal: dynamic, charming, ingenious, corruptible, and a masterly manipulator. The city mourns. But it’s discovered that the mayor was murdered–shortly after he may have begun to squeal on some of his colleagues at City Hall. Over the next four days, police race to find the mayor’s killer, while the politicians who bemoan his passing scramble for his throne.

Lake Shore Drive, the Magnificent Mile, Navy Pier...just the mention of these iconic sights conjures up a skyline known the world over as the Windy City. Welcome to Chicago! And there's no better guidebook to the city than W is for Windy City: A Chicago Alphabet. Following the alphabet, the city's character and familiar landmarks are fully captured in poem and expository text. A is for Art Institute or Adler Planetarium. And if we want a "triple A," we'll add the Shedd Aquarium. Young readers can marvel at the treasures on display at the renowned Art Institute, go window shopping along Michigan Avenue's mile-long Magnificent Mile, or take in an afternoon game at Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs. W is for Windy City brings this famous city to life.A faculty member in the Department of Education at Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, Dr. Steven L. Layne is a respected literacy consultant and keynote speaker, working with educators and children at schools and conferences throughout the world. With more than 20 years as an educator, Deborah Dover Layne has worked at elementary and middle school levels and has been a reading specialist. Currently, she is an elementary principal in Elgin. The Laynes live in St. Charles, Illinois. Rhode Island School of Design graduate Michael Hays teaches illustration and drawing at Columbia College and lives in Oak Park, Illinois. Judy MacDonald and Michael started Painted Pony Studio in Chicago several years ago, each of them bringing their own unique style to the drawing table while illustrating books and creating art for children.

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST. “Powerful and stirring, like a 2020 Jewish version of The Catcher in the Rye.” —Good Morning America A Recommended Book from: The New York Times * Good Morning America * Entertainment Weekly * Electric Literature * The New York Post * Alma * The Millions * Book Riot A commanding debut and a poignant coming-of-age story about a devout Jewish high school student whose plunge into the secularized world threatens everything he knows of himself. Ari Eden’s life has always been governed by strict rules. In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense study and religious rituals, and adolescence feels profoundly lonely. So when his family announces that they are moving to a glitzy Miami suburb, Ari seizes his unexpected chance for reinvention. Enrolling in an opulent Jewish academy, Ari is stunned by his peers’ dizzying wealth, ambition, and shameless pursuit of life’s pleasures. When the academy’s golden boy, Noah, takes Ari under his wing, Ari finds himself entangled in the school’s most exclusive and wayward group. These friends are magnetic and defiant—especially Evan, the brooding genius of the bunch, still living in the shadow of his mother’s death. Influenced by their charismatic rabbi, the group begins testing their religion in unconventional ways. Soon Ari and his friends are pushing moral boundaries and careening toward a perilous future—one in which the traditions of their faith are repurposed to mysterious, tragic ends. Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires.

Amber Sand is not a witch. The Sand family magical gene somehow leapfrogged over her. But she did get one highly specific bewitching talent: she can see true love. As a matchmaker, Amber's pretty far down the sorcery food chain (even birthday party magicians rank higher), but after five seconds of eye contact, she can envision anyone's soul mate. Amber works at her mother's magic shop -- Windy City Magic -- in downtown Chicago, and she's confident she's seen every kind of happy ending there is: except for one--her own. (The Fates are tricky jerks that way.) So when Charlie Blitzman, the mayor's son and most-desired boy in school, comes to her for help finding his father's missing girlfriend, she's distressed to find herself falling for him. Because while she can't see her own match, she can see his -- and it's not Amber. How can she, an honest peddler of true love, pursue a boy she knows full well isn't her match? The Best Kind of Magic is set in urban Chicago and will appeal to readers who long for magic in the real world. With a sharp-witted and sassy heroine, a quirky cast of mystical beings, and a heady dose of adventure, this novel will have you laughing out loud and questioning your belief in happy endings.

When a beloved contemporary Christian recording artist finds herself unable to continue her current tour schedule, she returns home to Chicago, where she faces new questions about her future and her faith.

V.I. Warshawski, “undoubtedly one of the best-written characters in mystery fiction” (The Baltimore Sun), returns in a collection of stories that bring new meaning to “ties that bind.” Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense Attitude, V.I. is out to make a living—by the skin of her teeth. In “Grace Notes,” V.I. has barely finished her morning coffee when she sees an ad in the paper asking for information about her own mother, long dead. The paper leads V.I. to her newfound Italian cousin Vico, who’s looking for music composed by their great-grandmother. What’s the score? Clearly it’s something to kill for. . . . “The Pietro Andromache” finds V.I.’s friend Dr. Lotty Herschel with motive and means to dispatch her professional rival and steal his priceless statue. Lotty didn’t do it—but does she know who did? V.I. soon cuts to the art of the case—and it’s not a pretty picture at all! Summoned by an old high school friend to a race “At the Old Swimming Hole,” V.I. ends up swimming with the sharks—the FBI and a ruthless gambling kingpin—in a pool of blood. . . . And it’s only “Skin Deep” when a relaxing facial transformation transforms a client into a stiff. V.I.’s pal Sal needs help. Her beautician sister Evangeline is prime suspect—and V.I. has only eighteen hours to crack the case before it’s headline news. . . . “Three-Dot Po” proves there’s nothing like a dog. Especially a dog on the trail of her mistress’s killer, with V.I. in tow. . . . In “Strung Out,” love means nothing and V.I.’s quick to learn the score as her old friend’s tennis-champion daughter is under suspicion for strangling her father with a racket string. And there’s more, nine stories in all, in this masterful collection of short fiction starring V.I. Warshawski, “the most engaging woman in detective fiction since Dorothy Sayers’s Harriet Vane” (Newsweek).