Urban City

A propulsive debut of visionary scale, Make Me a City embroiders fact with fiction to tell the story of Chicago's 19th century, tracing its rise from frontier settlement to industrial colossus.

Star Kyrell. Innocent. Pretty. Daughter of a kingpin. The kryptonite to Eddie Kane, an undercover operative for the FBI and Star’s personal bodyguard. Not only is Star plagued with the reputation of being the drug lord's princess, but she is also the ward to some pretty menacing and not so kind employees of her father.

For 1600 years, Nick Medea has guarded the gate between our world and Feirie, preventing the Wyld - the darkest Feirie of all - from coming into Chicago to find human prey. But since he defeated Oberon, more and more Wyld have been slipping through. Nick and his Feirie companion, the shapeshifter, Fetch, have been busy hunting them down. Nick keeps coming across the Dacian Draco, the sign of his ancient enemy Galerius, including a tattoo worn by a human thug. Unfortunately, every trail ends as if years old.

Since he became the guardian of the Gate between our world and Feirie 1600 years ago, Nick Medea, once Saint George, has battled to keep the darkest Feirie - the Wyld - from invading the mortal plane. With the dragon an unwilling part of him, Nick maintains balance between realms, often at great cost to him and those nearest to him. Nick and his ragtag confederates - including the shape-shifter Fetch and Nick's reincarnated love, Claryce - have battled the Wyld, but mortals as sinister as the darkest Feirie.

For more than 1600 years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over. Yet in the 50 years since the night the dragon breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk.

Police Officer Nate Hammond led a well-ordered life in Coldwater Bay until a chance meeting with a girl from his past drags him into an extraordinary adventure. Libby Parish never intended to visit her hometown again. Is the strange obsession to return related to a mysterious comic book? Or someone she left behind? Sucked into an alternate comic book universe, Nate and Libby find themselves in Second Chance City, home of half-hearted superheroes and a villain with a grudge. Can they find a way home or will their second chance at happily ever after end in death?

Katrina Templair gave up her human life to become an Odonata - a vampire killer. She’s never regretted it, and she keeps looking for one in particular. When she inadvertently rescues Abbey Marquez from a vampire attack, she realizes two things: one, she’s close; two, Abbey is the clingy sort. But Abbey has good information to pass along: The vamps in Los Angeles have become organized human traffickers, and the club they use is a good front. Determined to stop them once and for all, Katrina gears up for the fight of her un-life.

Nina is a harried young mother who spends her evenings spying on the older couple across the street through her son's binoculars. She is drawn to their quiet contentment - so unlike her own lonely, chaotic world of nursing. One night, she spies a young couple in the throes of passion. Who are these people, and what happened to her symbol of domestic bliss?

Jesus told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We love the idea of it, but many of us are so busy it can be hard to live out. The past few years our culture has become more polarized with division and disrespect. As tragedies and social issues fill the headlines, the church seems to be nearly absent in the conversation. Love Our City presents our problem, how we can overcome it, and solid ways to fulfill our God-given mission.

My name is Mike Raven. I hunt nightmares. Demons murdered my parents when I was eight. Turns out my folks were paranormal investigators, and hell always settles its scores. Naturally I decided to join the family business. For two decades, I've studied the occult and traveled the world fighting monsters. But my biggest challenge lay ahead. From the moment Celeste stepped into my office, I knew she was in trouble. Her father had promised her soul to a powerful demon on the day she was born. Now, 21 years later, the forces of darkness were gathering to collect their long-awaited prize.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation’s diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a Black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

All Sophia Fontanelle wanted was to be left alone. On the run from New Orleans and its vampire council, she heads to Los Angeles to start a new life. But when the Caballero, the ancient peacekeeper rumored to be the great Zorro himself, is murdered, Sophia finds herself caught up in a fight to clear her name. Threatened by a 1950s-era gangster turned vamp by the Caballero himself, can she survive in Vamp City?

Empire City tells the story of the dreams that inspired the changes in the landscape and the problems that eluded solution. Author David Scobey paints a remarkable panorama of New York's uneven development, a city-building process careening between obsessive calculation and speculative excess. Envisioning a new kind of national civilization, “bourgeois urbanists” attempted to make New York the nation's pre-eminent city.

The gods are back, and they are tearing this world apart. Zeus, Dagon, Loki, Lugh and countless other deities have come back to this Earth and rule over their individual districts with no goal other than satiating their own petty desires. The sole remaining functional province, Hellenica, decides to act. The deities build the Academy and are about to recruit 16 young gods with the hopes of training them to police this world.

Pete Axthelm follows the 1969 - 70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players’ efforts, accomplishments, and failures.

Italy is for lovers - unless those lovers are on opposite sides of a 900-year-old family feud. Mastering the intricacies of winemaking isn't the only challenge Amber is facing on her and Irix's trip to Northern Italy. Two prominent families with secrets of their own are on the edge of war, and a young romance might be the spark that ignites their hostilities into flame.

In the hood, a snitch is the worst thing a person can possibly be. Rolling over on your best friend, who has been with you through thick and thin, hungry and full, freedom and state bids - that’s “the cruelest lie told in silence”. While Jovan experiences the fruits of the hustle during his partner’s first stint, Bilal humbly does his time like a true soldier, taking a manslaughter charge for his one true friend. When these two are finally reunited on the streets, a chain of events lands them both behind bars facing multiple charges.

City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600's to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city - from the tycoons and the politicians, to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the 21st century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past.

The rise of Texas cities is a fascinating story that has not been previously told. Yet it is essential for understanding both the state's history and its contemporary character.

While waiting for brain surgery, high school grad Chad Wilde's otherwise carefree world of video games and pizza takes a necromantic turn for the worse when an old Latin spellbook is used to summon zombies. Joined by fellow-gamer and best friend Ricky Sharp and intellijock frenemy Mark Lloyd, Chad must take on the daunting undead legions and nethermagics of an angst-ridden, psycho, community college coed.