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Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation unleashed on his family and community. This gripping story is about how children, families--and one boy--grow to understand American blackness.

Haunted after helping her father on his ghost-themed Chicago bus tour, twelve-year-old Claire must discover what the spectral boy from the bus wants before it is too late.

In The Nine Pound Hammer, John Bemis introduced middle-grade readers to a whole new approach to epic fantasy, founded on characters and themes from American mythology and lore, including the legend of John Henry. Now in the third and final book, the heroes come together at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago for a final confrontation with a businessman and tycoon who is in fact an ageless evil known as the Gog. With his Dark Machine, he intends...

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

After preventing the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, Mo Fitzgerald wants to return to a normal life, but finds she cannot ignore the magic inside herself.

Karen is moving to Chicago for six months. Will she like it, or will she miss her home and friends too much?

High school freshman Ryan Walsh, a Chicago Cubs fan, meets Nick when they both skip school on opening day, and their blossoming relationship becomes difficult for Ryan when she discovers that Nick is seriously ill and she again feels the pain of losing her father five years earlier.

"Even though Ida B. Wells urges Black Americans to boycott the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, young Lorraine Williams will do anything for a chance to see her idol, the Black opera singer Sissieretta Jones, perform at the fair"--

Upon arriving at her dorm room, eighteen-year-old Cecily decides to postpone her freshman year of college and return to her Chicago home, where she spends a year pondering what went wrong while forging new relationships with family and friends.

Thanks to Old Man Paddler the gang is off to Chicago, where they minister at a rescue mission, perform on the radio at Moody Bible Institute, see the sights and have a run-in with Bob Till.