Download or read book The Grip of It written by Jac Jemc and published by FSG Originals. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon's Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017. Jac Jemc's The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real estate agent assures them with a smile. He is wrong. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling and his general inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to start afresh. But this house, which sits between a lake and a forest, has its own plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to establish a sense of normalcy, the home and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The framework— claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of painful, grisly bruises. Like the house that torments the troubled married couple living within its walls, The Grip of It oozes with palpable terror and skin-prickling dread. Its architect, Jac Jemc, meticulously traces Julie and James’s unsettling journey through the depths of their new home as they fight to free themselves from its crushing grip.

Download or read book Secret Chicago A Guide to the Weird Wonderful and Obscure written by Jessica Mlinaric and published by Reedy Press LLC. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embark on a scavenger hunt to the unknown and unusual corners of Chicago. This endlessly interesting city is home to tales as tall as our skyscrapers and secrets as deep as our pizzas. Explore a side of Chicago you’ve never seen, from a grave in a junkyard to a pool under the Loop. Discover where you can picnic on a nuclear pylon or snorkel a Lake Michigan shipwreck. Visit the site of the Western Hemisphere’s largest mass grave or run away to the circus in a church. Do you know where to find the birthplace of gospel music and a final resting place for Cubs fans? Surprises are hiding everywhere in Chicago, from a chapel atop a Loop skyscraper to an art gallery in a Beverly fieldhouse. From an energy vortex in Fulton Market to a salt cave in Portage Park, follow Secret Chicago across the city’s neighborhoods and into its little-known history. Find oddities and inspiration in Chicago’s uncommon sites, including hidden attractions, haunted locales, and unique landmarks. This guide delivers answers to questions around town that you didn’t even know you had and proves that when it comes to secrets, Chicago is second to none.

Download or read book Weird Chicago written by Troy Taylor and published by Haunted Illinois. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city of Chicago is unquestionably the weirdest and most haunted city in America! With a bloody history that is filled with violent events, mysterious happenings and more than its share of crime, there is no place like it in the country. This is the most complete book ever written about Chicago's ghosts and strange history.

Download or read book Awkward Rituals written by Dana W. Logan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-05-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh account of early American religious history that argues for a new understanding of ritual. In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, there was an awkward persistence of sovereign rituals, vestiges of a monarchical past that were not easy to shed. In Awkward Rituals, Dana Logan focuses our attention on these performances, revealing the ways in which governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king. With her unique focus on embodied action, rather than the more common focus on discourse or law, Logan makes an original contribution to debates about the relative completeness of America’s Revolution. Awkward Rituals theorizes an under-examined form of action: rituals that do not feel natural even if they sometimes feel good. This account challenges common notions of ritual as a force that binds society and synthesizes the self. Ranging from Freemason initiations to evangelical societies to missionaries posing as sailors, Logan shows how white Protestants promoted a class-based society while simultaneously trumpeting egalitarianism. She thus redescribes ritual as a box to check, a chore to complete, an embarrassing display of theatrical verve. In Awkward Rituals, Logan emphasizes how ritual distinctively captures what does not change through revolution.

Download or read book Chicago Curiosities written by Scotti Cohn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your round-trip ticket to the wildest, wackiest, most outrageous people, places, and things the Windy City has to offer! Whether you’re a born-and-raised Chicagoan, a recent transplant, or just passing through, Chicago Curiosities will have you laughing out loud as Scotti Cohn takes you on a rollicking tour of the strangest sides of the Windy City. Watch Daedalus and Icarus fly across the façade of the Savings of America Building—and wonder if the mural’s location might carry a message for the financial industry. . . . A baboon with wings? A predatory grasshopper? Figure out for yourself just what Picasso’s “gift to Chicago”—a sculpture unveiled in 1967—represents. Want to stand out? You can do so at the Ledge at Skydeck Chicago, an all-glass architectural wonder attached to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). Meet the man who travels the world impersonating President Obama.

Download or read book Weird Chicago written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Although there had been treaties and seemingly cordial trading between the Native Americans and the new settlers in that area, recent fighting in nearby areas like the Battle of Tippecanoe less than a year earlier kept all sides on edge, and the British aim to maintain a barrier between America and Canada by propping up Native American tribes led to a controversial battle in the Illinois Territory at Fort Dearborn, a fort built along the Chicago River, shortly after the War of 1812 broke out. When the war came, the close proximity of British forces compelled American military officers in the area to attempt to evacuate the garrison at Fort Dearborn, but misunderstandings and a lack of time resulted in Potawatomi warriors ambushing the soldiers and several civilians before they could retreat back to Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the wake of cutting down dozens of whites, the Potawatomi laid waste to Fort Dearborn itself, and though the fighting was technically a battle, in America the Battle of Fort Dearborn was known colloquially as the Fort Dearborn Massacre. Though it started as a 300 person settlement in 1832, Chicago's location near the Great Lakes and its access to the Mississippi River turned it into a major trading city overnight. The city became even more important when railroads were constructed to connect the country, making it the first major city in the "West" during the mid-19th century. By 1871, the original 300 person settlement was now home to about 300,000 people, and Chicago had become the first major city built by Americans rather than European colonial powers Thus, it had taken less than 40 years for the new settlement of 300 to become a city of nearly 300,000, but it only took two days in 1871 for much of it to be destroyed. On the night of October 8, 1871, a blaze in the southwestern section of Chicago began to burn out of control. The popular legend is that a cow in Mrs. Catherine O'Leary's barn had kicked over a lantern and started a fire. The story blaming the cow was a colorful fabrication, but the fire itself was very real, lasting almost two whole days and devouring several square miles of the city. The fire was so powerful that firefighters could not put it out, due to dry conditions, stiff winds, and the fact the city was mostly made of wood. Walking around Chicago today, it's easy to forget about its past as a rural frontier. That's due in no small part to the way Chicago responded to the Great Fire of 1871. Immediately after the fire, Chicago encouraged inhabitants and architects to build over the ruins, spurring creative architecture with elaborate designs. Architects descended upon the city for the opportunity to rebuild the area, and over the next few decades they had rebuilt Chicago with the country's most modern architecture and monuments. Chicago has a long and fascinating history, but there's another, more mysterious side to the Windy City. Ghosts have competed with gangsters in scaring the locals, while serial killers beat them both in instilling terror. Out on Lake Michigan, boats disappear and strange ruins lie under the water, while in graveyards, phantoms and even vampires are alleged to walk amid the tombstones. What follows is just a sampling of the many strange tales Chicago has to offer. Weird Chicago: A History of Mysteries, Strange Tales, and Hauntings across the Windy City is part of an ongoing series by Sean McLachlan and Charles River Editors that includes The Weird Wild West, Mysteries of the South, The Mysterious Midwest, and Mysterious New England, and more regional titles will be coming soon. This book offers a sampling of strange, unexplained, and just plain odd stories from Chicago that have fascinated people in and around the region for centuries.

Download or read book The Sprawl written by Jason Diamond and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, the story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. But what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as in any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés and pieties and these essays stretch across the country in an effort to show that this uniquely American milieu deserves another look.

Download or read book One Day We ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter written by Scaachi Koul and published by Picador. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of NPR's Best Books of the Year A DEBUT COLLECTION OF FIERCE, FUNNY ESSAYS ABOUT GROWING UP THE DAUGHTER OF INDIAN IMMIGRANTS IN WESTERN CULTURE, ADDRESSING SEXISM, STEREOTYPES, AND THE UNIVERSAL MISERIES OF LIFE In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself. With a sharp eye and biting wit, incomparable rising star and cultural observer Scaachi Koul offers a hilarious, scathing, and honest look at modern life.

Download or read book It Never Ends written by Tom Scharpling and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.

Download or read book The Belle of Amherst written by William Luce and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: In her Amherst, Massachusetts home, the reclusive nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson recollects her past through her work, her diaries and letters, and a few encounters with significant people in her life. William Luce’s classic play shows us both the pain and the joy of Dickinson’s secluded life.

Download or read book Beyond Weird written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.

Download or read book Curious Toys written by Elizabeth Hand and published by Mulholland Books. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intrepid young woman stalks a murderer through turn-of-the-century Chicago in "this rich, spooky, and atmospheric thriller that will appeal to fans of Henry Darger and Erik Larson alike." (Sarah McCarry) In the sweltering summer of 1915, Pin, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a carnival fortune-teller, dresses as a boy and joins a teenage gang that roams the famous Riverview amusement park, looking for trouble. Unbeknownst to the well-heeled city-dwellers and visitors who come to enjoy the midway, the park is also host to a ruthless killer who uses the shadows of the dark carnival attractions to conduct his crimes. When Pin sees a man enter the Hell Gate ride with a young girl, and emerge alone, she knows that something horrific has occurred. The crime will lead her to the iconic outsider artist Henry Darger, a brilliant but seemingly mad man. Together, the two navigate the seedy underbelly of a changing city to uncover a murderer few even know to look for.

Download or read book Haunted Illinois written by Troy Taylor and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2008-05-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illinois's mysterious and often violent history has made the state a haven for restless spirits.

Download or read book The Readymade Thief written by Augustus Rose and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The most must-read of all must-reads.” —Marie Claire “A kickass debut from start to finish.” —Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run. Betrayed by her family after taking the fall for a friend, Lee finds refuge in a cooperative of runaways holed up in an abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the façade of the Castle conceals a far more sinister agenda, one hatched by a society of fanatical men set on decoding a series of powerful secrets hidden in plain sight. And they believe Lee holds the key to it all. Aided by Tomi, a young hacker and artist with whom she has struck a wary alliance, Lee escapes into the unmapped corners of the city—empty aquariums, deserted motels, patrolled museums, and even the homes of vacationing families. But the deeper she goes underground, the more tightly she finds herself bound in the strange web she’s trying to elude. Desperate and out of options, Lee steps from the shadows to face who is after her—and why. A novel of puzzles, conspiracies, secret societies, urban exploration, art history, and a singular, indomitable heroine, The Readymade Thief heralds the arrival of a spellbinding and original new talent in fiction.

Download or read book Bring Out the Dog written by Will Mackin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this short story collection, a decorated U.S. Navy veteran gives readers a powerful depiction of life on the front lines of today's warfare. When so many missions take place behind night vision, ancient credos, and layers of secrecy, Mackin's stories capture the tragedy and heroism, degradation and exultation in the smallest details of war.

Download or read book The Order of Odd Fish written by James Kennedy and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2008-08-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: JO LAROUCHE HAS lived her 13 years in the California desert with her Aunt Lily, ever since she was dropped on Lily’s doorstep with this note: This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a dangerous baby. At Lily’s annual Christmas costume party, a variety of strange events take place that lead Jo and Lily out of California forever—and into the mysterious, strange, fantastical world of Eldritch City. There, Jo learns the scandalous truth about who she is, and she and Lily join the Order of Odd-Fish, a collection of knights who research useless information. Glamorous cockroach butlers, pointless quests, obsolete weapons, and bizarre festivals fill their days, but two villains are controlling their fate. Jo is inching closer and closer to the day when her destiny is fulfilled, and no one in Eldritch City will ever be the same.

Download or read book The President and the Frog written by Carolina De Robertis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "sublime and gripping novel ... about hope: that within the world's messy pain there is still room for transformation and healing" (Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe), from the acclaimed author of Cantoras. “In the president’s excruciating (and sometimes humorous) encounters with his strangely healing frog ... De Robertis daringly invites us to imagine a man’s Promethean struggle to wrest control of his broken psyche under the most dire circumstances possible.” —The New York Times Book Review At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog. As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.