"William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it's a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three...

A shooting in Chicago is nothing new, certainly not to V.I., who is hired by a veteran's family to clear his name after his arrest for the murder of a performer known as the Body Artist. As V.I. seeks answers, her investigation will take her from the North Side of Chicago to the far reaches of the Gulf War.

"New York Times-bestselling author Sara Paretsky's brilliant protagonist V.I. Warshawski returns in another hard-hitting entry, combining razor-sharp plotting and compelling characters with a heady mix of timely political and social themes. V.I. Warshawski's closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate,...

With everyone believing he died in a plane crash, Chicago celebrity Charles James re-evaluates his life after narrowly escaping death and decides to walk from Chicago to California, where he hopes to rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife.

Chicago fifth-grader Simon, an aspiring rapper who lacks self-confidence, uses his rhymes to help bring his community together.

When two teens, one gay and one straight, meet accidentally and discover that they share the same name, their lives become intertwined as one begins dating the other's best friend, who produces a play revealing his relationship with them both.

For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.

Best friends are forged by fire. For Winona Olsen and Lucille Pryce, that fire happened the night they met outside the police station, both deciding whether to turn their families in for abuse and mistreatment. They realize they can't wait until graduation to start their new lives. They need out. Now. All they need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible to take them from Michigan to Las Vegas can't hurt.

The only wizard in the Chicago phone book, Harry is given the task of investigating rumors of black magic in the Windy City, while, at the same time, searching for some malevolent entities that feed on fear who have been set loose on Chicago.