Maya Aziz, seventeen, is caught between her India-born parents world of college and marrying a suitable Muslim boy and her dream world of film school and dating her classmate, Phil, when a terrorist attack changes her life forever.

The son of a grieving Jewish family in jazz age Chicago impresses patrons of a mob-controlled saloon with his piano talents, which become subject to a changing music era, his need to survive, and exacting mob demands.

In a brawling Chicago of crooks, con artists, second-story men, extravagant dreamers, snappy dressers, and cold-eyed pragmatists, Augie March undergoes his sentimental education an education that, though imbued with reality, will take him into realms progressively stranger, more marvelous, more filled with indecipherable meaning.

Sixteen-year-old Dove "Birdie" Randolph's close bond with her parents is threatened by a family secret, and by hiding her relationship with Booker, who has been in juvenile detention.

Meet the Evens family: three generations living together in a desolate neighborhood in Chicago's crime-ridden Southside. Life has not turned out the way Dorothy Evens, the head of the clan, dreamed it would. Now she returns home from a dead-end job every night and seeks comfort in a bottle of vodka to numb the pain. Her children find other ways to deal life in the hood. Danny is on a paper chase, trying to make money and stay alive in spite of threats...

A billionaire's commission draws an architect into a conspiracy of sex, lies, and murder The ship is dead in the water. Its lines are tangled and its sails are slack as it drifts toward the rocky coast. A fisherman spies the vessel and steps aboard, expecting it to be deserted. But there is 1 passenger: a lovely young woman with a rolled-up painting in her hand and 2 bullets in her chest.   Across Lake Michigan, Matthias Curland returns to Chicago...

In 1940s Chicago, fifteen-year-old Ruby hopes to escape poverty by becoming a taxi dancer in a nightclub, but the work has unforeseen dangers and hiding the truth from her family and friends becomes increasingly difficult.

As a baby in her mother's womb, as a schoolgirl in Manilla, and as a reluctant immigrant to Chicago at age sixteen, Angel burns with a desire to be an activist, but learning truths about her mother and grandmother help her find peace.

Jeszcze nigdy talent Jonathana Franzena do łączenia głębi i wyrazistości swoich bohaterów z szeroką perspektywą społeczną nie był tak olśniewający jak w Na rozdrożu. Dwudziestego trzeciego grudnia 1971 roku rodzina Hildebrandtów staje na rozdrożu. Ojciec rodziny, Russ, pełniący funkcję młodszego pastora w podmiejskim kościele w Chicago, lada moment wyrwie się z nieszczęśliwego, jego zdaniem, małżeństwa--chyba że pierwsza...