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Author
Series
Lexile measure
950L
Language
English
Description
"Willa Cather's third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg, a character inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad. Thea's early life, however, has much in common with Cather's own. Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea's long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the Southwest, and to New York and the...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.4 - AR Pts: 26
Lexile measure
980L
Language
English
Description
"The story of a young woman from Wisconsin who goes to Chicago, becomes an actress, marries and moves to New York, and when her husband loses his job, returns to the stage." ***"A powerful account of a young working girl's rise to the 'tinsel and shine' of worldly success, and of the slow decline of her lover and protector Hurstwood." Oxford Companion to Engl Lit. ***"Plain, unaffected, and unconventional story of the actual life of the lower middle-classes...
3) Native son
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.1 - AR Pts: 24
Lexile measure
700L
Language
English
Description
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...
Author
Language
English
Description
"When Ruby King's mother is found murdered in their home in Chicago's South Side, the police dismiss it as another act of violence in a black neighborhood. But for Ruby, it's a devastating loss that leaves her on her own with her violent father. While she receives many condolences, her best friend, Layla, is the only one who understands how this puts Ruby in jeopardy. Their closeness is tested when Layla's father, the pastor of their church, demands...
Author
Language
English
Description
Winner of the first National Book Award in 1950, this modern classic takes us into the gritty underbelly of post-World War II America. It is the story of Frankie Machine, a veteran, drug addict, and card-dealer in an illicit poker game being run in Chicago's Near Northwest Side. Frankie has just returned from the federal prison for narcotics addicts in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was exposed to all the pressures, anxieties, and temptations that...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from the precinct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago."--
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The Harvester is set in Gene Stratton Porter's Limberlost Swamp series. David Langston lives a simple life harvesting medicinal herbs to sell in the city. He believes that he has all that he needs in life, that is until he meets Ruth and everything changes. A gentle love story that changes everyone who reads it.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A stunning, cinematic debut novel set at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Moon's Crossing explores a unique time in American history, when the romantic heritage of the nineteenth century merged with the industrial temperament of the modern age.
Jim Moon, an idealistic Union Army veteran, leaves his young wife and son to visit the World's Columbian Exposition, which has attracted America's greatest artists and thinkers as well as its drifters and schemers....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Never Come Morning is unique among the novels of Algren. The author's only romance, the novel concerns Brun Bicek, a would-be pub from Chicago's Northwest side, and Steffi, the woman who shares his dream while living his nightmare. This new edition features an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and an interview with Nelson Algren by H.E.F. Donohue.
10) Invisible world
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
An invitation from a dead man propels a Chicago plumber on a perilous journey from Hong Kong to Inner Mongolia in search of a fabled map of the Invisible WorldAndrew Mann's mundane existence ends the day his jet-setting childhood friend, Clayton Smith, sends Andrew an airplane ticket to Asia along with an invitation to his own funeral, dispatched shortly before his mysterious suicide. Stylish, elegant and thrilling, Stuart Cohen's debut novel draws...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
It is the year of our lord, 1893. The crackle of electricity's first sparks, the mechanical whine of Ferris's wheel, the tinkling of crystal from the majestic city atop the hill-the sounds of a new era pervade the air as the century's last World's Fair commences in Chicago.
But darkness lurks beneath the metropolis so austere it has been dubbed the White City. Strikes loom on the horizon, racism runs rampant, and a murderer unlike any America has...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Judd Steiner and Artie Straus have it all: wealth, intelligence, and the world at their feet as part of the elite, upper-crust Jewish community of 1920s Chicago. Artie is handsome, athletic, and popular, but he possesses a hidden, powerful sadistic streak and a desire to dominate. Judd is a weedy introvert, a genius who longs for a companion whom he can idolize and worship. Obsessed with Nietzsche's idea of the superhuman, both boys decide to prove...
13) Bedrock faith
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Gerald "Stew Pot" Reeves returns to his mother's home in Chicago's Parkland neighborhood after fourteen years in prison. His return provokes fear and suspicion among the residents especially when he claims he has had a religious awakening. With his pit bull, John the Baptist, his mentor, Brother Crown, and a few others who believe in him, he sets off to change his neighborhood for the better.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
As rock and roll novelist Tom Carson writes in his introduction, "The Neon Wilderness is the pivotal book of Nelson Algren's career--the one which bid a subdued but determined farewell to everything that had earlier made him no more than just another good writer, and inaugurated the idiosyncratic, bedevilled, cantankerously poetic sensibility that would see him ranked among the few literary originals of his times."
Algren's classic 1947 short story...
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Series
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English
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Description
"Meiselman has had enough. After a lifetime spent playing by the rules, this lonely thirty-six-year-old man -- 'number two' at the New Niles Public Library in suburban Chicago, 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. And no one -- not his newly observant physical therapist wife, not the Holocaust survivor neighbor who regularly disturbs his...
16) Chicago: a novel
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
From his perch at the Chicago Tribune, Mike Hodge had gotten to know Chicago's underbelly like few others. Politicians, gangsters, prostitutes, bootleggers, opium addicts, jazz musicians, and con artists -- he'd observed them all. So perhaps he should have known better when he fell for Annie Walsh, whose family was a bit too connected. Then again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh should have known better than to trifle with Mike Hodge.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In a world so full of lonely people and broken hearts, Chris Hawkins, a black sound engineer from Chicago's south side, and Sidonie Frame--white, suburban-raised, the head manager of one of the city's most elite venues--meet by work-related happenstance and fall quickly in love, convinced that by that act alone they can inspire peace, joy, and happiness in the world around them. The world, however, has other ideas. Their meeting is serendipitous....
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