A monumental American novel about one man's rise from life as a penniless immigrant to the head of a family empire In the tradition of great writers like Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck, John Jakes crafts a sweeping family drama. In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, the tragedies and triumphs of the Crowns illustrate the power of the American Dream. As immigrants to America, their turbulent story spans a decade marked by the vicious Pullman Strike,...

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose shape-shifting exploits thrill tween girls all over the world. When Chicago's Carmilla Club holds an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, murdered vampire-style. The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families. And for V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers.