Itzel’s 13th birthday party starts in just about the unluckiest way possible—with her dad having a heart attack. In those frantic moments, the piñata and the frosted sheetcake and the Styrofoam cups of orange soda are forgotten; the day’s highlights end up being CPR, an ambulance ride, and angioplasty. But when her father gets home from the hospital, his problems are far from over—and Itzel’s are just getting started. Nothing’s Ever the Same chronicles a young girl’s coming of age in Chicago—growing up as her family grows apart. In masterful fashion, Cyn Vargas gives us a touching and memorable and universal story about a marriage on the brink and a teenager looking for love. It's a short book that packs a wallop; it’s also a beautiful meditation on dysfunction and forgiveness, and all the times in life to which we can never return. The New Chicago Classics are a disparate set of titles united around a common theme: showcasing the city's up-and-coming literary talents as they produce enduring works. These excellent titles are destined to stand in the first rank of literature about the second city.

Kay Redfield Jamison, award-winning professor and writer, changed the way we think about moods and madness. Now Jamison uses her characteristic honesty, wit and eloquence to look back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who died of cancer. Nothing was the Same is a penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself.

Warm and hopeful, this is a touching and honest depiction of a family changing together-and staying together. "I wonder what people would think if they could take the front off our house like a doll's house and watch us. All in the same house, but everyone separate. No one talking, but everyone thinking the same thing. Will we ever be a normal family again?" Izzy's family is under the spotlight when her dad comes out as Danielle, a trans woman. Izzy is terrified her family will be torn apart. Will she lose her dad? Will her parents break up? And what will people at school say? Now all eyes are on Izzy. Can she face her fears, find her voice, and stand up for her family and what's right?

A New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year: A look at the pleasures and surprises of rereading. Compared with reading, the act of rereading is far more personal—it involves a complex interaction of our past selves, our present selves, and literature. With candor and humor, this “inspired intellectual romp, part memoir, part criticism” takes us on a guided tour of the author’s own return to books she once knew—from the plays of Shakespeare to twentieth-century novels by Kingsley Amis and Ian McEwan, from the childhood favorite I Capture the Castle to classic novels such as Anna Karenina and Huckleberry Finn, from nonfiction by Henry Adams to poetry by Wordsworth—as she reflects on how the passage of time and the experience of aging has affected her perceptions of them (Lawrence Weschler). A cultural critic and the acclaimed author of Why I Read, Wendy Lesser conveys an infectious love of reading and inspires us all to take another look at the books we’ve read to find the unexpected treasures they might offer. “Delightful.” —Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce “Anyone who has ever approached a once favorite book later in life . . . will find in this memoir moments of bittersweet recognition.” —The New York Times Book Review “Reflect[s] deeply and candidly on how a reader’s life experiences alter her perceptions of literature . . . [Lesser] has truly fascinating and original things to say about a compelling assortment of writers, including George Orwell, George Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare.” —Booklist

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations. “[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.” —Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times “In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.” —Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review “Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations. “[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War...As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.” —Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times “In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war...[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.” —Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review “Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

An exploration of artistic freedom, survival, and the hidden places of the imagination, including James Baldwin in Provence, Josephine Baker in Paris, Kevin Killian in San Francisco, and E. M. Forster in Cambridge, among other groundbreaking queer artists of the twentieth century. Nothing Ever Just Disappears is radical new history of seven queer lives and the places that shaped these groundbreaking artists. At the turn of the century, in the shade of Cambridge's cloisters, a young E. M. Forster conceals his passion for other men, even as he daydreams about the sun-warmed bodies of ancient Greece. Under the dazzling lights of interwar Paris, Josephine Baker dances her way to fame and fortune and discovers sexual freedom backstage at the Folies Bergère. And on Jersey Island, in the darkest days of Nazi occupation, the transgressive surrealist Claude Cahun mounts an extraordinary resistance to save the island she loves, scattering hundreds of dissident artworks along its streets and shorelines. Nothing Ever Just Disappears brings to life the stories of seven remarkable figures and illuminates the connections between where they lived, who they loved, and the art they created. It shows that a queer sense of place is central to the history of the twentieth century and powerfully evokes how much is lost when queer spaces are forgotten. From the suffragettes in London and James Baldwin's home in Provence, to Kevin Killian's San Francisco and Derek Jarman’s cottage in Kent, this is both a thrilling new literary history and a celebration of freedom, survival, and the hidden places of the imagination.

For seventy years, Pat Sheridan has lived an extraordinary and lucky life. He faced lifes problems without ever losing his sense of humor, his spirit, or his optimistic outlook. His autobiography takes us inside a family of twelve children, raised in Detroit, and shows us the funny side of growing up in a large family in the post war years. He gives us a very candid look at life in the United States Army in the nineteen sixties. His civic and political activities led him to meetings and shared speaking engagements with U. S. Senators, Vice Presidents of the United States, and a meeting in the Oval Office with President Richard Nixon. We follow his business career with a no-holds barred look at the people he worked with as he progressed toward becoming the Chief Executive Officer of several companies. As Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of a Fortune 500 company, he worked with the financial giants of Wall Street. Pat and his wife, Diane, took their family on annual vacations that eventually brought them to thirty countries. His insights and the humorous incidences that they encounter make for an irreverent tour guide for traveling abroad. Having survived several cancer operations, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, dozens of kidney stones, and more than a dozen other surgeries and diseases, he calls himself, Gods lab rat. His latest cancers led his granddaughter to ask her mother, How come nothing ever kills granddad?

As a German philosopher once said: “Believing is not knowing”. Since, we live in a physical, hard, cold, cruel material world, it is a highly important subject matter, and a definite reality strug-gling, striving, and spending good portion of time to deal with it, literally makes life impossible to be straight forward, fair, and honest even with our own selves. Life, alarming us to wake up to realities, be smart creature, learn how to socialize, improvise, compromise, curb individual, inner desire, and control personal acts to fit into society, where we live or be ready to pay the painful price. It is an accidental event, neither to celebrate, nor to take it seriously to mourn over, but learn to live, and tolerate it the best one knows how. With human limited intelligence, it is impossible to decode its secret, or find any meaning for it, in fact life is a huge gambling table, whoever has been born lucky to throw the winning dice, is the winner for rest of losers to suffer bad luck. There are, no true, actual, real justice, good and evil, or right and wrong, but whoever has the power come out the winner. It is not only so very wrong to be right in a wrong world, but extremely confusing, sad, and, painful.

In this raw and transparent book, Deyona takes you on a journey through the power of forgiveness and healing after being violated most of her childhood and becoming a mama at the age of 12-years-old. Other people may have given up on God completely had they shared in her multiple experiences of abuse, homelessness, domestic violence, alcoholism, divorce and more. Many would have thought God had given up on her, but instead He kept her even when she didn�t want to be kept. Thirty years after becoming a 12-year-old mama, she shares valuable lessons learned and poses life-changing questions for you to ponder. Deyona demonstrates how God does not waste any life experiences. She shows the power of the grace, mercy, and the redemption of God.