This book revises the picture of the glittering Chicago of impressive mansions and museums; it exposes the city's corrupt underbelly and the realities of life in an age which is often assumed to have been simpler and more moral than ours. Includes chapters on the Haymarket riot, the gamblers' wars, the notorious levee red-light district and institutionalized graft.

A history of Chicago from the Gilded Age through 1919, focusing on the netherworld as it existed in the city before Prohibition.

Lindberg, an accomplished local historian and true crime writer, presents a fascinating story of two contemporaneous serial killers, both weaving marriage and murder in and around Chicago during the 1890s and 1900s. Johann Hoch was a debonair bigamist and wife killer who boasted of having perfected a "scientific technique" to romance and seduction. Belle Gunness was a nesting "Black Widow" whose sprawling farm in Northwest Indiana was a fatal lure for lonely bachelors seeking the comforts of middle-age security by answering matrimonial advertisements placed by Gunness. Notorious in his own day, Hoch had faded into the dark background of Chicago crime history. But, in Heartland Serial Killers, Lindberg brings back vividly the horrors of one of Chicago's first celebrity criminals and uncovers new evidence of a close connection between Hoch and H.H. Holmes, the "Devil in the White City." Unlike Hoch, Belle Gunness, likely the most prolific and infamous female serial killer of the twentiethe century, has remained fascinating to the public. Here, Lindberg presents the most comprehensive and compelling study of the Gunness case to date, including new information regarding ongoing DNA testing of remains found at the site of Gunness' farm in LaPorte, Indiana, which may serve to resolve once and for all the mystery surrounding Gunness' death. Told in alternating chapters and rapidly paced, this book is true crime at its best—gripping, pulpy, and full of sharp historical tidbits. True crime fans, history buffs, and those interested in local lore will delight in this chilling tale of two ruthless killers.

Longlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize No. 1 National Bestseller Globe and Mail's "20 Books to Read in 2016," Maclean's bestseller, Toronto Star bestseller, Ottawa Citizen's "Best on the Shelf," Huffington Post's "Best Fall 2016 Books," Publishers Weekly "Books of the Week," National Post bestseller, Vanity Fair 2016 "Must Read Books of the Fall" "A dark tale of love, betrayal and murder that reaches from the slums of Victorian London to the diamond mines in South Africa, to the American Civil War and back. Superb storytelling." --Kurt Palka, author of The Piano Maker A magnificent literary historical-suspense novel in the tradition of Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers, and Michael Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, By Gaslight is destined to be one of the most acclaimed and talked-about books of the year. London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade. Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.

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City of Big Shoulders links key events in Chicago's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's robust metropolis. Robert G. Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city—from the tycoons and the politicians to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world. In this revised and updated second edition that brings Chicago's story into the twenty-first century, Spinney sweeps his historian's gaze across the colorful and dramatic panorama of the city's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called "the wild-garlic place" burgeon into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Could the gritty blue-collar hometown of Al Capone become a visionary global city? A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney brings it to life and highlights the key people, moments, and special places—from Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stock Yards to the Chicago Bulls—that make this incredible city one of the best places in the world.

Sarah Brandt is shattered when she learns that a woman has inquired at the Daughters of Hope Mission for Catherine, the abandoned child she has taken as her daughter. The woman claims she was Catherine’s nursemaid, and is now acting on behalf of the girl’s mother to reunite them. Unwilling to simply hand Catherine over to a complete stranger, Sarah asks Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to investigate. But when he goes to interview the woman at her tenement in Chelsea, he finds she has been murdered. Though her death leaves Sarah’s claim to Catherine unchallenged, her sense of justice compels her to work with Malloy to find the killer. Their search takes them from the marble mansions of the Upper West Side to the dilapidated dwellings of lower Manhattan and into the deepest and darkest secrets of Catherine’s past. And while Malloy helps Sarah determine the fate of the child she loves, he faces a challenge of his own—and his decision could change both their lives forever…

MURDER BY GASLIGHT THE AUTHENTICATED HISTORY OF H.H. HOLMES, HIS INSIDIOUS MURDER CASTLE, AND THE HORRORS OF GASLIGHT ERA CHICAGO Chicago during the Gaslight Era was a place that embodied both the elegance of America's Gilded Age and the vice, crime and sin of the most corrupt city in the country. During the 1880s and early 1890s, Chicago was home to killers, thieves, gamblers, con artists and whores - and hosted perhaps the greatest World's Fair in our nation's history. It was to this place that a man named H.H. Holmes was drawn like a moth to the flame and Chicago embraced him as one of its own. Charming and dapper, Holmes soon slashed his way into American history with devious schemes, unconscionable swindles - and bloody murders. Killing for profit and convenience, he claimed an unknown number of victims with his infamous "Castle" on Chicago's South Side, a grandiose monstrosity that was filled with trapdoors, winding passages, secret doors and staircases, torture chambers a crematorium and worse. Then, finally on the run from the law, he left a trail of corpses behind him before his past crimes finally caught up with him and led to what the newspapers called the "Trial of the Century." In this spellbinding book, author Troy Taylor tackles the chilling tale of H.H. Holmes, cutting through the myths and exaggerations that have plagued the strange story for years and presenting a clear and concise account of Holmes' murders, his swindles, his confessions and the myriad of lies that effortlessly spilled from his lips. How many people did Holmes really kill? Who was the intrepid detective that finally brought about his downfall? And did a supernatural curse really surround those who sent Holmes to the gallows? You'll find out in one of the author's best books so far!

Argues that music is an instrument of identity for ethnic groups and describes how music was used in Chicago to promote civic engagement and educate the community.