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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.

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 sucks.) 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.

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.

Precocious Chicago teenager Joe Walsh witnesses his heroin-addicted brother commit murder, precipitating a violent spiral that tears his family apart.

"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."--Provided by publisher.

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.

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.

"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 piänata 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 problem's are far from over - and Itzel's are just getting started"--

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.

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.

A fantastic literary debut from a new Chicago voiceAddiction autofictionEarning comparisons to classics of Chicago literature

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.

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.

Pitching trades; planning on pitching to space-related podcasts (including "Space and Things") and publicationsTwo of the blurbists--one of whom is an admin of the "Space Hipsters" Facebook group--said this was the best book of the series.Much shorter and faster read than the most recent book in the series.Stephen Walker (author of Beyond) helped with research and is reading it for blurb consideration.Past titles have a small but enthusiastic following--the author sometimes receives Facebook messages from random strangers gushing about the books.Well-researched (the author tracked down transcripts of interviews with the relatively-obscure main character, and read a wealth of sources to reconstruct a Soviet lunar mission) while still being literary and lively

Talented author with great connections in the literary fiction community; book is set to be blurbed by Pulitzer finalist Rebecca MakkaiPitching trades and planning on reaching out for local Chicago coverage; possible Midwest Booksellers email blastFocuses on an under-targeted demographic--rural/small-town AmericaDebut work

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.

An Episcopal priest has a fateful encounter with an Amsterdam teenager who may be a prostituteΓÇòor 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 black heart of the American small-town soul, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.