Author: Stephen M. Silverman

About the Author

Stephen M. Silverman is a twenty-year veteran of Time Inc. and was the founding editor of People.com. He is the author of The Amusement Park as well as The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America among many other titles. His work has appeared in Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times, The Times (London), Vogue, and The Washington Post. He lives in New York City.

Title: The Amusement Park: 900 Years of Thrills and Spills, and the Dreamers and Schemers Who Built Them.

Description

The electrifying, never-before-told history of amusement parks, from the middle ages to present day, populated by the colorful (and sometimes criminal) characters who built them, and the regular folks who sought their magical, albeit temporary, charms.

Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the rise and fall and rise again of some of the most elaborate parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them and features, among many, showmen like Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Marcus Loew, railroad barons such as Andrew Mellon and Henry E. Huntington, and the men who ultimately destroyed the parks including Robert Moses and Fred Trump. The many gifted artisans and craftspeople who brought these parks to life are also featured, along with an amazing cast of supporting players from Al Capone to Annie Oakley. And, of course, there are the rides, whose marvels of engineering and heart-stopping thrills are celebrated at full throttle. The parks and fairs featured include the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, Euclid Beach Park, Cedar Point, Palisades Park, Ferrari World, Dollywood, Sea World, Six Flags Great Adventure, Universal Studios, Disney World and Disneyland, and many more.

Date: June 29, 2019

Day: Saturday

Time: 2:00 PM

Author: Neil Gordon

Neil Gordon is the author of the sensationally terrifying book Joe Batters, the definitive work on Tony Accardo and The Chicago Outfit. A creation of nonfiction, this is the last untold story of the 20th century.

​Gordon’s story began as a kid. While growing up in Phoenix, his father Dean, a novelist of Caribbean intrigue, surrounded his son with tales of mystery, suspense, and adventure. In 1972 when The Godfather premiered at the Cine Capri Theater, it was an eye-opener, and Gordon was hooked into the history and lore of the Mafia. 

​A graduate of DU’s Hotel and Restaurant School, Gordon career included owner/operator of a Scottsdale steakhouse and blues club, and ten year stints as Senior Buyer with City Meats Phoenix and Vice President of Meat Operations at Braunger Foods in Sioux City, Iowa.

While vacationing in Nova Scotia where his father grew up, a stop at what was once his great-great uncle’s house changed Gordon’s life. The man renovating the house happened to be Chicago’s mob boss Tony Accardo’s illegitimate son, Stephen. Stephen’s mother, who survived a mob hit and attempted kidnapping, was one of many affairs Tony Accardo took to his grave. The story of Joe Batters started to manifest. After nearly ten years of research,Neil Gordon is the author of the sensationally terrifying book Joe Batters, the definitive work on Tony Accardo and The Chicago Outfit. A creation of nonfiction, this is the last untold story of the 20th century.Neil Gordon is excited to share Joe Batters with Mafia fans around the globe.

Title: Tony Accardo is Joe Batters

Accardo had secrets, not the boyish yarns of pranks and horseplay, but Hitchcockian tales of the macabre. He owned Las Vegas, from the Desert Inn and Sahara to the Stardust and Caesars. Why has this story never been told? Accardo killed everyone in his path. Ruling his criminal empire from the depths of the shadows, he influenced national policy, exploited the FBI, owned Supreme Court Justices and fixed presidential elections. Add in the mobbed-up careers of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, every gangster from Al Capone to John Gotti crossed his path.

With the passing of Tony Accardo (aka Joe Batters) in 1992, America lost forever the inside story on Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Giancana, Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, Johnny Roselli, Lee Harvey Oswald, Marilyn Monroe, and President John F. Kennedy. 

Arguably some of the most scandalous assassinations of the 20th century, if anyone in history knew where the bodies were buried, it was “Joe Batters.” 

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Date: June 7, 2019

Day: Friday

Time: 7:00 PM

Author: Joseph Barr Topinka

Joseph Baar Topinka, a 1990 University ofIllinois graduate, recently published a biography about his late mother, Judy Baar Topinka, a journalist turned elected official who became the first woman elected state treasurer (1995-2007).

The "Just Judy" author believes the principles his mother lived by — good government, civility, ethics and a love of heritage — will resonate with readers, particularly those who aren't familiar with her career, which also included terms as a state representative, state senator and comptroller and a 2006 run for governor. The first Republican nominated for that office lost to Rod Blagojevich.

"I thought a good thing for promoting my mother's legacy was going after the young people," Topinka said. "The biography is about her with lots of lessons, essay questions, references and pictures. It's designed to be something school teachers can use in their classes to illustrate some of the standards that Illinois is promoting in terms of civics." [ Source:   Friday, April 12, 2019]

Title: Just Judy: A Citizen & Leader for Illinois (The Story of Judy Barr Topinka)

Just Judy: A Citizen and Leader for Illinois is a wonderful resource for 6th grade and up, with over 100 interactive classroom activities, critical thinking and self-reflection essay questions, and research prompts to fuel additional learning based on the same principles that are covered throughout Judy’s story. Judy Baar Topinka continues to inspire us all and, through the voice of her son, encourages us to follow in her footsteps to support our local communities, actively participate in our civic duties, respect one another, take pride in our own unique heritage, and embrace life-long learning.

Date: July 6, 2019

Day: Saturday

Time: 2:00 PM

Titles: Antiques Ravin'

The votes are in! Eccentric seventy-something Vivian Borne—elected county sheriff, to everyone’s amazement but her own—springs into action. In her new role, the community playhouse diva appoints daughter Brandy reluctant deputy and makes their spunky shih tzu Sushi a K-9 unit of one.  
 

Soon the amateur-sleuths-turned-pro have a challenging case to solve as a series of creepy crimes plague an ill-fated Edgar Allan Poe festival, where a fiend is misguidedly dispensing Poe-etic justice. Small-town Antiqua, known for its quaint main street of antique shops, has set out to celebrate the gothic poet with food, fun, and rare memorabilia, only to have the Master of the Macabre’s twisted tales come to deadly life. 
 
A purloined tome, a black cat, a musty mausoleum, and mysterious disappearances—these tell the tale of a heartless murderer. But Vivian and Brandy Borne are determined to decipher the cryptic clues to make sure a ravin’-mad killer strikes “nevermore”! 

Don’t miss Brandy Borne’s tips on hunting for valuable antiques!

Barbara Allan is the joint pseudonym of acclaimed short story writer Barbara Collins (Too Many Tomcats) and New York Times bestselling mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition). Their previous collaborations have included one son, a short story collecion and two novels. They live in Iowa in a house filled with trash and treasures.

Mike Hammer: Murder by Love

Hammer is summoned to a meeting with Jamie Winters, United States Senator from New York, and Jamie's lovely, very smart wife, Nicole, considered by many to be the power behind the throne. Winters is being blackmailed, and Hammer is given a list of suspects who may be behind the threats to the Senator's career. But when the suspects begin to drop like flies, Hammer realises there is more to this case than just a salacious tape.

  *(Also, Antiques Wanted and Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago will be available in paperback editions    by the time of the signing.)

Authors: Max Allan & Barbara Collins

Date: June 9, 2019

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00 PM

Title: This Tender Land: A Novel

From the author of Ordinary Grace, a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the early years of the Great Depression—a book that shines new light on a pivotal time in American history.
1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.

Author: William Kent Krueger

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers.

Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. The companion novel, This Tender Land, is scheduled for publication in September 2019.

Date: October 24, 2019

Day: Thursday

Time: 7:00 PM

Title: This Is Really War:

         The Incredible True Story of a Nay Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines

Author: Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi

Date; June 23, 2019

Day: Sunday

Time: 2:00 PM

Description

In January 1940, Navy nurse Dorothy Still eagerly anticipated her new assignment at a military hospital in the Philippines. Her first year abroad was an adventure. She dated sailors, attended dances and watched the sparkling evening lights from her balcony. But as 1941 progressed, signs of war became imminent. Military wives and children were shipped home to the states, and the sailors increased their daily drills. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Dorothy and the other nurses braced for a direct assault. When the all-clear sounded, they raced across the yard to the hospital and prepared for the wounded to arrive. In that frantic dash, Dorothy transformed from a navy nurse to a war nurse. Along with the other women on the nursing staff, she provided compassionate, tireless, critical care.
When the Philippines fell to Japan in early January 1942, Dorothy was held captive in a hospital and then transferred to a university along with thousands of civilian prisoners. Cramped conditions, disease and poor nutrition meant the navy nurses and their army counterparts were overwhelmed caring for the camp. They endured disease, starvation, severe overcrowding, and abuse from guards, but also experienced friendship, hope, and some, including Dorothy, even found love.

About the Author

Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi is the author of Ugly Prey and has contributed to the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, Seattle Times and Crain’s Chicago Business. She has taught courses in media history, media criticism and journalism and is a frequent guest lecturer in graduate and undergraduate media courses. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

A Celebration of Allium Press of Chicago’s Tenth Anniversary

Date: June 6, 2019

Day: Thursday

Time: 7-9:00 PM

   Come help Allium Press celebrate their 10^th anniversary with the launch of their newest title, K. P. Kyle’s Sync.                   The author will talk about her book, a contemporary techo thriller, and be available for signing.

   Also joining the celebration will be Allium authors Frances McNamara, D. M. Pirrone,                                                          Libby Fischer Hellmann, Tony Romano, and J. Bard-Collins. Their books will be available for purchase and signing. 

   Allium Press was founded in Forest Park in 2009 as a small independent press and publishes fiction with a                         Chicago connection—including literary fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, thrillers, and young adult fiction. 

The latest author and title added to Allium Press of Chicago's Catalog of Fine Novels:

Description

   "Brigid Sullivan is divorced, depressed, and working as a telemarketer to pay the bills for her Alzheimer-afflicted mother's medical care. When she spots a hitchhiker in midwinter, she takes a chance and gives a stranger a ride—sending her predictable life into chaos. For Jason is an escapee from a secretive research lab who has the ability to shift into alternate realities. He's also on the run, and soon, the bad guys appear at Brigid's home, looking for Jason. Thanks to Brigid's emotional support dog, Lithium, and her own willingness to beat up a home intruder, the attacker is driven off, but this is the start of Brigid's new, dangerous life. As she and Jason flee from the police and more ominous forces, Brigid learns about Jason's powers and his traumatic history. While Jason wrestles with fear, guilt, and the physical side effects of his powers, Brigid rises to the crisis with strengths she didn't know she possessed. When Jason is recaptured, it's up to Brigid to find allies, expose the project, and free Jason and everyone else. For his part, Jason will finally learn the purpose that the project's current managers have been hiding, but will the truth ultimately destroy him? The stakes and the villains throughout remain realistic and believable, and Brigid's aggressive normalcy lends her great charm as a protagonist. There's a solid supporting cast as well; even relatively minor characters like Jason's family get strong, poignant moments to shine and to help save the day." [Kirkus Review March 13, 2019]

Author

 K. P. Kyle was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, where her mother was the founder and owner of the much-beloved independent bookstore Narnia Children’s Books. She received her BA from the University of Chicago and her DVM from Cornell University. She has lived in South Boston, Massachusetts for the past sixteen years, with the exception of two years spent in Senegal. She works as a veterinarian and shares her home with a bush dog and a black dog. This is her debut novel. 

Title: How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Author: Daniel Immerwahr

Date: May 4, 2019

Day: Saturday

Time: 2-4:00 PM

Description

A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

About the Author

Daniel Immerwahr (Ph.D., Berkeley, 2011) is an associate professor, specializing in twentieth-century U.S. history within a global context. His first book, Thinking Small: The United State and the Lure of Community Development, (Harvard, 2015), offers a critical account of grassroots development campaigns launched by the United States at home and abroad. Professor Immerwahr  won the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Prize.  At Northwestern, he teaches courses of U.S. foreign relations, global history, intellectual history, and the history of capitalism. His writings have appeared in Modern Intellectual History, the Journal of the History of Ideas, Dissent, n+1, and Jacobin, among other places. 

Immerwahr regularly offers undergraduate courses on global history, U.S. foreign relations, and U.S. intellectual history. He has taught graduate seminars on international development, global history, modern empires, the United States’ empire, and pedagogy.

Recent Awards and Honors

• Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, 2017-18.
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Huntington Library, 2015–2016.
• Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations annual award for “excellence in teaching and research in the field of foreign relations” by a younger scholar, 2015.
• Honorable Mention for the Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations award for best dissertation on any subject in U.S. foreign relations, awarded biannually, 2013.
• Weinberg College Award for Outstanding Freshman Advising, Northwestern University, 2013.
• Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History, Economic History Association award for best dissertation in U.S. or Canadian History, 2012.

Title: The Mykonos Mob (10th Chief Inspaector Andreas Kaldis Mystery set in Modern Greece)

Author: Jeffrey Siger

Date; May 3, 2019

Day: Friday

Time: 7-9:00 PM

Description:

The Mykonos Mob reveals the wildly lucrative dark side of an internationally renowned Greek island playground for the world’s rich and famous, those battling for control of its vices, and the innocents affected by it all.

The case begins for Athens’ Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis with a literal bang—a corrupt former police colonel who runs a protection racket on Mykonos is gunned down. And Kaldis is suddenly face to face with Greece’s top crime bosses, all just as surprised and baffled as he is at the assassination. Who is making a move—if a move it is—and what else might it be?—to take over the island’s vice operations. Maybe legitimate businesses too?

One of the Aegean’s Cyclades islands, Mykonos was poor until a few decades ago, but today is a renowned 24/7 summer hot spot filled with tourists who enjoy its beaches and iconic landmarks by day and party in its bars and massive dance clubs by night. As an international playground and cruise port, Mykonos is just begging for more exploitation—and not just by the Greeks.

While Andreas and his Special Crimes unit wrestle for answers, his wife Lila is similarly engaged but her focus is what meaningful role beyond wife and mother will she fill? Daughter of a wealthy family, it isn’t about money. Her quest takes her to her parents’ home on Mykonos where she meets Toni, an American ex-pat, a fixer and finder of stolen goods, playing piano in a gender-bending bar with a zest for life and no apparent regard for rules. How does what Lila and Toni discover together about themselves—and how they mentor young island girls trapped in an exploitative and patriarchal culture—intersect with Andreas’ investigation?

Dangerously… !

The Mykonos Mob is 10th in a series of “…thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales.”—The New York Times. They are thoughtful, and attuned to both ancient and modern Greek society, but they are also unsparingly filled with thrills.The Mykonos Mob reveals the wildly lucrative dark side of an internationally renowned Greek island playground for the world’s rich and famous, those battling for control of its vices, and the innocents affected by it all.

Jeff

I am an American living on the Aegean Greek island of Mykonos. A Pittsburgh native and former Wall Street lawyer, I gave up my career as a name partner in my own New York City law firm to write mystery thrillers that tell more than just a fast-paced story. My novels are aimed at exploring serious societal issues confronting modern day Greece in a tell-it-like-it-is style while touching upon the country's ancient roots.

The New York Times Book Review has honored my work by designating me as Greece’s thriller novelist of Record, and the Greek Government’s General Secretariat of Media and Communications has selected me as one of six authors—and the only American—writing mysteries that serve as a guide to Greece.

Some Mykonian friends told me if I started sprinkling murders with a message across my adopted country's tourist paradises, I'd likely be banished, if not hung. No one was more amazed than I when my debut novel, Murder in Mykonos (a sort of Mamma Mia setting for a No Country for Old Men story), became Greece's #1 best selling English-language novel (and a best-seller in Greek, as well).

As of April 2019 there are ten Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis novels out there and I receive no more than the customary number of death threats. I'm diligently trying to improve my percentage in that regard with posts about Greece each Saturday on the Murder is Everywhere blogsite I share with nine renowned mystery writers from around the world.

It's been a remarkable journey, punctuated most notably by The New York Times selecting the fourth in my Andreas Kaldis series (Target: Tinos) as one of its five "picks for the beach" while calling the entire series, "thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales;" Left Coast Crime's nomination of the fifth in the series (Mykonos After Midnight) in 2014 as Best Mystery in a Foreign Setting; a 2016 Barry Award Best Novel Nomination for my seventh in the series (Devil of Delphi); Library Journal selecting my ninth book as “one of the best books of 2018” (An Aegean April); starred reviews and official government citations; and this quote from Fodor's Greek Islands Travel Guide under a section titled "Mykonos After Dark," which colleagues say I should consider the equivalent of winning an Oscar: "Some say that after midnight, Mykonos is all nightlife—this throbbing beat is the backdrop to Jeffrey Siger's popular mystery, Murder in Mykonos."