When Wendy Boychucks father, a Chicago cop, was escorted from their property in handcuffs, she knew her life would never be the same. Her father gets a years-long jail sentence, her family falls on hard times, and the whispers around their neighborhood are impossible to ignore. If that wasnt bad enough, she gets jumped walking home from a party one night. Wendy quickly realizes that in order to survive her fathers reputation, shell have to make one...

Being a cop runs in Billy Harney's family. The son of Chicago's Chief of Detectives whose twin sister, Patty, also followed in their father's footsteps, there's nothing Billy won't give up for the job, including his life. Left for dead alongside his former partner and a district attorney, Billy miraculously survives. But he remembers nothing about the events leading up to the shootout. The investigation leads to an unexpected address -- an exclusive...

"Kindle County, Where skies are generally gray and the truth is seldom simple, is one of the most renowned and fascinating locales in contemporary American fiction. In Pleading Guilty Scott Turow takes us there again, in an edge-of-the-chair story rife with indelible characters and riveting suspense - 1993's most unforgettable reading experience." "Our guide is McCormack A. "Mack" Malloy, fiftyish ex-cop, almost ex-drunk, and partner-on-the-wane at...

Sixth-grader Amalia learns many important life-lessons while spending Friday afternoons with her beloved grandmother, and the teaching goes on even after Abuelita's sudden death as Amalia finds a way to connect with relatives and a friend who has moved away.

Living with her Israeli father in Chicago, seventeen-year-old Amy Nelson-Barak feels like a walking disaster, worried about her "non-boyfriend" in the Israeli army, her mother, new stepfather, and the baby they are expecting, a new boy named Nathan who has moved into her apartment building and goes to her school, and whether or not she really is the selfish snob that Nathan says she is.

When Frankie's mother died and her father left her and her siblings at an orphanage in Chicago, it was supposed to be only temporary - just long enough for him to get back on his feet and be able to provide for them once again. That's why she is not prepared for the day that he arrives for his weekend visit with a new woman on his arm and out-of-state train tickets in his pocket. Now Frankie and her sister, Toni, are abandoned alongside so many other...

There's a new kid in the small neighborhood of Brundon Park, Chicago. Her name is Angela Moretti, she's thirteen, and she's obsessed with mysteries. So when a crime is committed on her first day at her new school, Angela decides to enlist the help of her new friends to help crack the case. There's just one catch. They'll need to use science to solve the mystery! Will these science-loving seventh graders catch the criminal before it's too late? Join...

Told in alternating voices, years after it began, seventeen-year-old Ivy and her mom Dana's shared story comes down to a reckoning among a daughter, a mother, and the dark forces they never should have messed with. Ivy's summer break kicks off with an accident, a punishment, and a mystery: a stranger whose appearance in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, heralds a string of increasingly unsettling events. As the days pass, Ivy grapples...

Fifth-grader Brittany struggles to plan, or even imagine, a future away from her mother's abusive boyfriend and the poverty and crime of Chicago's West Side.

When thirteen high-value pieces of art are stolen from a secret museum, Calder, Petra, and Tommy are grouped with two new companions to solve puzzles that are complicated by the clever Mrs. Sharpe.