In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreams of wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, the astonishing truth about "packingtown," the busy, flourishing, filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in a jungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the "muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turn of the...

The position of women in a success-oriented society is epitomized by the story of Caroline Meeber, who leaves her small Mid-western hometown in 1889 to start life anew in Chicago and later in New York. In her quest for riches she becomes a famous actress, only to realize that despite her material acquisitions true happiness remains illusory.

"Stubbornness has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office. With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors. Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear. Worst of all, she's been implicated in a murder -- after the body of Deirdre Messenger, a prominent lawyer's wife, turns...

V.I. accepts a request from an old client to check up on an empty family mansion; subsequently surprises an intruder in the dark; and, giving chase, topples into a pond. Grasping for something to hold on to, her fingers close around a lifeless human hand. It is the body of a reporter who had been investigating events of forty-five years earlier, during the McCarthy era, and V.I.'s discovery quickly sucks her into the history of two great Chicago families-their...

A series of apparent suicides rings alarm bells with the police. Before he knows it Harry Dresden, professional wizard, is hired to investigate. At the first crime scene he finds an unmistakable magical taint - and a message specially designed for him, referencing the killing of witches.

In a plot to overthrow the U.S. government, Montana neo-Nazis abduct the daughter of the nation's top general and her male companion. The companion is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman and he turns the tables on the captors.

In 1893, thirteen-year-old Rosie and members of her family travel from their Illinois farm to Chicago to visit Aunt Euterpe and attend the World's Columbian Exposition which, along with an encounter with Buffalo Bill and Lillian Russell, turns out to be a life-changing experience for everyone.

Chicago's unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball. When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who's been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal when secrets from the city's racially charged history rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance.

Nine stories on PI V.I. Warshawski of Chicago, mostly involving friends and family. In one, at the request of an Italian cousin she searches for sheet music which belonged to her mother, in another a friend asks her aid in recovering a stolen family sculpture.

"Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski's specialty. Her client says he's the prominent banker, John Thayer. Turns out he's not. He says his son's girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that's not her real name. V.I.'s search turns up someone soon enough-the real John Thayer's son, and he's dead. Who's V.I.'s client? Why has she been set up and sent...