Often funny, sometimes poignant short stories recall the authors experiences as a rebellious young girl from Chicago. Growing up in the upper middle-class neighborhood of South Shore, she perpetually feels like a misfit, yearning to get out. Only with her mothers much younger sister, her Aunt Flo, does she feel a comfortable sense of belonging. These memoirs take her out of the midwest and into the worlds of theatre and literature on the East Coast while the recurring theme of her supportive, witty, opinionated, progressive aunt remains with her and runs throughout. Anyone with a sense of humor, who has ever longed to be in another place in another time, will appreciate Sinclairs wit and vivid descriptions of the world as she knew it during the mid-decades of the twentieth century. These hilarious, sensitive stories cut right to the bone. A terrific read. Adele Scheele, Ph.D, Career Coach, Author of Skills for Success

Thelma and Louise get sporty (and survive) in this anthology of true stories about women whose idea of fun involves sharing adventures--big and small--in the great outdoors. In essays that not only take you to mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers but also explore the powerful and intimate bond of female companionship, the editor of Solo: On Her Own Adventure introduces sixteen daring women and their travel mates as they ski, climb, hike, bike, and drive all over the world. Trudge through the muddied roads of Australia's outback with thirty-something Sara Corbett and her childhood chum to find the legendary 80-year-old woman rumored to split wood faster than any man who challenges her. Go fishing with Holly Morris, kick back with Pam Houston and a good friend at a Denver ranch, or bike with Diane Ackerman and her friend through the "aubergine drapery of the forest" as they circumnavigate Otsego Lake. Hop in the car with Mary Morris and her baby daughter to meet the eccentrics living in the California desert, and climb the Himalayas with 54-year-old Jean Gould and her 70-year-old travel partner. Whether you are an armchair adventurer or a thrill seeker in your own right, these exhilarating essays will inspire you to dust off your bicycle, lace up your hiking boots, fill your gas tank, and take your dearest friend along for the time of your lives.

New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming tells a haunting love story set against of the more perplexing and least explored chapters of World War II. In Berlin, Berthe von Hoffman dreams of an angel in the depths, embracing her husband's submarine – and remembers Kristallnacht, when Hitler declared all-out war on the Jews. The stench of evil in that memory draws her to the headquarters of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, enigmatic head of the German secret service – and guiding spirit of the Schwarze Kapelle, the circle of courageous men and women who comprise the secret dangerous resistance to Nazism. Aboard the USS Spencer Lewis off Iceland, Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Trumbull Talbot is denouncing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's unconstitutional undeclared war against Germany when a torpedo fired by Berthe's husband, Kapitanleutnant Ernst von Hoffmann, cut the destroyer in half. Out of this conjunction grows a tormented tangle of love and jealousy and patriotic deceit when the three meet in Spain after Pearl Harbor has catapulted American into the war. By that time, Talbot's criticism of the president has wrecked both his naval career and his marriage to Annie Richman, daughter of a congressman whose power depends on FDR's political wizardry. When Talbot returns from Spain to urge negotiations with Canaris and other leaders of the German resistance, Annie, now a powerful journalist, becomes a player in the struggle for the mind of the intransigent, mortally ill president. At its gripping climax, Loyalties draws everyone into an anguished confrontation with the limits of patriotism and God's baffling role in the middle of human destiny. From murderous contests between rival intelligence agencies in Spain to the labyrinthine political machinations in Washington, London, and Berlin to warfare beneath the North Atlantic, Loyalties is a dazzling mosaic of men and women caught in the crossfire of history – yet finding in the midst of destruction and chaos inexplicable glimpse of meaning and hope.

This thesis reports on the search for dark matter in data taken with the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The identification of dark matter and the determination of its properties are among the highest priorities in elementary particle physics and cosmology. The most likely candidate, a weakly interacting massive particle, could be produced in the high energy proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The analysis presented here is unique in looking for dark matter produced together with a Higgs boson that decays into its dominant decay mode, a pair of b quarks. If dark matter were seen in this mode, we would learn directly about the production mechanism because of the presence of the Higgs boson. This thesis develops the search technique and presents the most stringent production limit to date.

Sharp and intimate, Douglas Cowie's reimagining of the turbulent love affair between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren asks what it means to love and be loved by the right person at the wrong time. Chicago, 1947: on a freezing February night, France's feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir calls up radical resident novelist Nelson Algren, asking him to show her around. After a whirlwind tour of dive bars, cabarets and the police lockup, the pair return to his apartment on Wabansia Avenue. Here, a passion is sparked that will last for the next two decades. Their relationship intensifies during intoxicating months spent together in Paris and Chicago. But in between are long, anguished periods apart filled with competing desires lovers old and new, writing, politi, gambling which ultimately expose the fragility of their unconventional marriage and put their devotion to the test.

Ready for more? Fall deeper into the world of the Chicago Blaze with books four through six in this hot, emotional hockey romance series. Book 4 - Knox Reese I’m done. Getting ditched at the altar is nothing compared to being humiliated there in front of three hundred shocked guests. Apparently I’m no good at spotting the signs your man’s a cheating liar. So I set off solo on my honeymoon to Hawaii, where I realize I’ve got this life thing down just fine on my own. Friendships and laughter? Yes. Adventures? Absolutely. But relationships? Hell no. Never again. Knox I’m a man of few words. My reputation as a moody prick is deserved, but only the handful of people who really know me see the man beneath the professional mask. I’m a protector. A warrior. That part is true. But the world doesn’t get to see the rest of me. And women don’t seem to mind my gruff exterior—my bed’s always warm. I’m content with life—loving it, even—or so I thought. But when I meet a beautiful pastry chef with a broken heart and a smile that softens me down to my soul, I realize I wasn’t really content at all before her. I only wish I had the words to let her know. Book 5 - Alexei Alexei I guess the party’s over—for now. When I wake up in the hospital after a DUI car crash, my new NHL team owner gives me an ultimatum – get sober or get packed for the minor leagues. So I talk the talk and go to rehab. I plan to breeze through, get sprung in 30 days or less and hit the road with my new team, the Chicago Blaze. All I have to do is charm my attractive, uptight rehab group leader into thinking I’ve changed—how hard could it be? Graysen I see right through Alexei Petrov. My calling to save addicts from themselves before they self-destruct is deeply personal. Alexei’s hot and successful, sure. But he’s not okay, and he’s got a lot of work to do before graduating from my group. No one’s ever tested my boundaries like he does, though. I fight my desire and keep things professional, because the stakes couldn’t be higher—it’s not just my job that’s on the line, but also his life. The deeper we fall, though, the more he makes me question the mantra I live by: never trust your heart to an addict. Book 6 - Easy Erik Nothing rattles me. Well…almost nothing. As the most even-tempered player on the Chicago Blaze, I take everything in stride – hockey, fame and life in general. No one knows that deep down, even I’ve got a trigger. She’s a tall brunette with a gorgeous smile and an iron will. The woman who crushed my heart long ago. I never plan to return to Greentree Falls, Wisconsin and lay eyes on Allie Douglas again - until suddenly, I’m left without a choice. Allie Somehow, I’m keeping it all together. Raising my nieces and nephew alone and working takes everything I’ve got and then some, but I get by. I don’t have time for love, and who needs a man, anyway? I gave up the love of my life a decade ago, and now he’s just a distant memory. Until one day, he comes back home. And once I see him, I’m not keeping it together anymore. Not even close.

This portrait of Chicago’s South Shore and its people is “a thought-provoking deep dive into a neighborhood that remains in perpetual transition” (Kirkus Reviews). An urban neighborhood remakes itself every day—and unmakes itself, too. It is houses and stores and streets, but it’s also people—the people who make it their home, some eagerly, others grudgingly. A neighborhood can thrive or it can decline, and neighbors move in and move out. Sometimes they stay but withdraw behind fences and burglar alarms. If a neighborhood becomes no longer a place of sociability and street life, but of privacy indoors and fearful distrust outdoors, is it still a neighborhood? In the late 1960s and 1970s Carlo Rotella grew up in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood—a place of neat bungalow blocks and desolate commercial strips, and sharp, sometimes painful social contrasts. In the decades since, the hollowing out of the middle class has left residents confronting—or avoiding—each other across an expanding gap that makes it ever harder for them to recognize each other as neighbors. Rotella tells the stories that reveal how that happened—stories of deindustrialization; stories of gorgeous apartments with vistas onto Lake Michigan and of Section 8 housing vouchers held by the poor. At every turn, South Shore is a study in contrasts, shaped and reshaped over the past half-century by individual stories and larger waves of change that make it an exemplar of many American urban neighborhoods. Talking with current and former residents and looking carefully at the interactions of race and class, persistence and change, Rotella explores the tension between residents’ deep investment of feeling and resources in the physical landscape of South Shore and their hesitation to make a similar commitment to the community of neighbors living there. “Unlike any work of contemporary urban studies that I know. It combines elements of journalism, archival research, ethnography, and memoir in a study of South Shore—the South Side, Chicago, neighborhood in which Carlo grew up, in the 1970s. It’s at times lyrical, at times analytic, and always engaging.” —Eric Klinenberg, Public Books

England, 1905. Lord Robert and Lady Isobel Dilberne, as well as their entire regal estate, with its hundred rooms, are busy planning for a lavish visit from King Edward VII and his mistress just a few months away. Preparations are elaborate and exhaustive: the menus and fashions must be just so. But even amidst the excitement, not everyone is happy. Lady Rosina—now widowed and wealthy— insists on publishing a scandalous book despite her mother's objections. Arthur Dilberne and Chicago Heiress Minnie O'Brien's two young sons—the eldest of whom is heir to the estate—are being reared to Lady Isobel's tastes, not Minnie's. After making a shocking discovery, Minnie will take drastic measures for the sake of her children. And when fate deals a hand in the middle of the royal shooting party, the entire Dilberne estate will face upheaval once again. The New Countess is the final novel in Fay Weldon's outstanding trilogy that began with Habits of the House and Long Live the King. As the bestselling novelist and award-winning writer for the pilot episode of the original Upstairs Downstairs, Weldon magnificently lifts the curtain on early twentieth-century British society, upstairs and downstairs, under one stately roof.

We all know there are simple things we could and should be doing on a daily basis to help us live better lives. We should drink more water, eat better, get lots of sleep, and exercise. Right? But that’s easier said than done! After trying a series of 30-day challenges to varying degrees of success, Julie van Amerongen found her tribe in an amazing community of runners known as streakers (no, not the ones who take their clothes off!) who run Every.Single.Day. without fail. She became hooked. Getting out the door every day is challenging for anyone, yet somehow, Julie managed to squeeze running in no matter where life took her—to multiple states and countries, in snow and on sand, while hungry and full, drunk or hungover, and well…everywhere. By turns intimate, funny, relatable, and inspirational, Julie peppers her adventures with insights how and why she has kept on running every day and how you (yes, you) can too.

An Eye For Murder is #1 in the Ellie Foreman Mystery series. GET IT FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME! An old man dies alone in a boarding house in Chicago. A scrap of paper is discovered in his coat pocket with the name Ellie Foreman scribbled on it, along with a telephone number. The landlady who found him contacts Ellie, telling her about the note and asking how she is related to the dead man, Ben Sinclair. "A masterful blend of politics, history, and suspense." Publishers Weekly Ellie, a documentary filmmaker, is baffled. She doesn't recognize his name. She goes to the dead man's apartment to try to find out what connection she could possibly have to the elderly man. Her search for answers only leads to more questions as she realizes that Ben was not who he had pretended to be. An old photograph, an unusual lighter, and a locked box seem to point to a mysterious past. "Complicated, Fascinating... Hellmann has a beautifully tuned ear, which makes many of her scenes seriously funny." Chicago Tribune But mystery gives way to terror when the landlady is killed and the young boy who taught the old man how to use the Internet to track Ellie is viciously attacked. Ellie finds herself thrown into the past as she is confronted with long-buried skeletons as well as current secrets that someone will kill to protect. Along the way, she takes a job producing a campaign film for a female candidate for the US Senate. The divorced mom also meets a man and sparks fly. But will she live long enough to act on those sparks? Dive into An Eye For Murder to find out! "A clever blend of thrills and humor...A compelling group of believable characters." Chicago Sun-Times Eye was nominated for an Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Grab it today!