Features Thu Jan 03 2008

2007 Chicago Books in Review

Another year has come and gone, and this week the book club takes its annual look back at some of the notable fiction written by local writers and nonfiction books about Chicago published in 2007. As in years past, this list is far from comprehensive, but it includes enough great titles to keep you busy through 2008.

Fiction

Berg, Elizabeth. Dream When You're Feeling Blue. (Random)

Butcher, Jim. White Night. (Roc)

Chercover, Sean. Big City, Bad Blood. ( William Morrow)

Collins, Max Allan. Deadly Beloved. (Hard Case Crime)

Ferris, Joshua. Then We Came to the End. (Little, Brown)

Graff, Keir. My Fellow Americans. (Severn)

Harvey, Michael. The Chicago Way. (Knopf)

Hellmann, Libby Fischer, et al. Chicago Blues. (Bleak House Books)

Horan, Nancy. Loving Frank: A Novel. (Ballantine)

Hornschemeier, Paul. The Three Paradoxes. (Fantagraphics)

Kaminsky, Stuart M. The Dead Don't Lie. (Forge)

Konrath, J. A. Dirty Martini. (Hyperion)

Messinger, Jonathan. Hiding Out. (Featherproof)

Olds, Bruce. The Moments Lost: A Midwest Pilgrim's Progress. (Farrar)

Phillips, Susan Elizabeth. Natural Born Charmer. (Morrow)

Pride, Alexis J. Where the River Ends. (Utour)

Rapp, Adam. The Year of Endless Sorrows: A Novel. (Farrar)

Romano, Tony. When the World Was Young. (HarperCollins)

Sakey, Marcus. The Blade Itself. (St. Martin's/Minotaur)

Schwegel, Theresa. Person of Interest. (St. Martin's/Minotaur)

Wiley, Michael. The Last Striptease. (St. Martin's)

Nonfiction

Abbott, Karen. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul. (Random)

Alder, Ken. The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession. (Free Press)

Bachrach, Julia Sniderman et al. Inspired by Nature: The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago's West Side. (Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance)

Baer, Richard. Switching Time. (Crown)

Brownlee, Les. Les Brownlee: The Autobiography of a Pioneering African-American Journalist. (Marion Street)

Burke, Edward M. and Thomas J. O'Gorman. End of Watch. (Chicago's Books Press)

Davis, Kevin. Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office. (Atria)

Green, Adam. Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955. (University of Chicago Press)

Green, Larry W. et al. Water Tanks of Chicago: A Vanishing Urban Legacy. (Wicker Park Press)

Hanson, Karen. Today's Chicago Blues. (Lake Claremont Press)

Jacob, Mark et al. Chicago under Glass: The Chicago Daily News Negatives, 1901-1930. (University of Chicago Press)

King, Richard. My Maggie. (HPH Publishing)

Lesy, Michael. Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the 1920s. (Norton)

Mendell, David. Obama: From Promise to Power. (Amistad)

Okuda, Ted and Mark Yurkiw. Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie. (Lake Claremont Press)

Pattillo, Mary. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. (University of Chicago Press)

Paretsky, Sara. Writing in an Age of Silence. (Verso)

Rogak, Lisa. A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein. (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne)

Street, Paul Louis. Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)

Terkel, Studs. Touch and Go. (New Press)

Weigel, Jenniffer. Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side. (Hampton Roads)

Williams, Michael and Richard Cahan. Chicago: City on the Move. (CityFiles)

- Alice