It's the hit HBO show from the 21st century, True Detective, that has brought Robert W. Chambers' 1895 book of "weird" stories back into the mainstream public eye for the first time in 120 years; but those in the know have been aware of The King in Yellow this entire time, with its Wikipedia page listing such modern notables as H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, and Blue Oyster Cult as fans who have self-professed this book as a major influence. And why shouldn't they? An inauspicious volume from an artist just starting his career, who up to then had been a visual painter who suddenly switched mediums without any given explanation, there wasn't much of a reason to expect great things from this mid-list story collection; but it turned out to be one of the very first volumes to help define what horror became in the modern era, the fabled "bridge between Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King" that's been cited since in so many term papers on the subject. A meta "stories about stories about stories" project that was also one of the first tales of existential dread ever published (the major force driving Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology as well), and with the kind of elaborate alt-history world-building usually only seen in space operas, this is truly a 20th-century text that magically first appeared in the 19th, and it's no surprise that it still has the power to legitimately creep people out well into the 21st. Come enter the dark world of Carcosa, where the yellow king rules over the black stars in a flat circle of time, and see why these powerful tales of madness and the spiritual abyss still hold our fascination more than a century later. (The first in the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography's new "CCLaP Victoriana" series, this edition also features an exclusive new scholarly introduction by executive director Jason Pettus.)

The King In Yellow: CCLaP Victoriana Edition

Literature & Fiction

CHAMBERS, ROBERT W.

Pettus, Jason

Genre Fiction

Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

An official painter for the Lithuanian Communist Party, Martynas Kudirka enjoys a pleasant, unremarkable life with a beautiful wife and all the privileges that come with being a party member. Yet in the summer of 1989, his ordinary world suddenly turns upside down. Political revolt is breaking out across Eastern Europe, and Martynas comes home to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor with a knife in her back. Realizing the police will not investigate, he sets out to find his wife's killer. Instead, he stumbles upon her secret life. Martynas finds himself drawn into the middle of an independence movement, on a quest to find confidential documents that could free a nation. Cold War betrayals echo down through the years as author Bronwyn Mauldin takes the reader along a modern-day path of discovery to find out Martynas' true identity. Fans of historical fiction will travel back in time to 1989, the Baltic Way protest and Lithuania's "singing revolution," experiencing a nation's determination for freedom and how far they would fight to regain it.

Love Songs of the Revolution

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mauldin, Bronwyn

Mystery

Know thyself and nothing in excess. Just as the doomed sailors of Homer's Odyssey fail to heed one or the other of these maxims, and end up getting turned to swine or lured to their peril by the singing sirens, so too do the doomed characters in Joseph G. Peterson's new collection of stories fail idiotically in one way or another and end up, like those ancient sailors, facing the prospect of their own mortal twilight. Set mostly in Chicago and by turns gruesome, violent, comic, lurid and perverse, these stories are suffused with a metaphorical light that lends beauty and joy to the experience of reading them.

Twilight of the Idiots

Peterson, Joseph G.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Chicago goes by many nicknames -- the City on the Lake, the Windy City, the Third Coast, the City of Big Shoulders, the Second City. But for the people who call it home, perhaps the most fitting sobriquet is the City of Neighborhoods, hundreds of them altogether, each containing their own defining character, physical boundaries, and identity. Representing almost two dozen students of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, this second annual CCLaP "city all-star" anthology takes you on a tour of many of these neighborhoods, from the north side's Rogers Park to the west side's Austin, to Bronzeville on the south side and beyond. With an introduction by famed local author Patricia Ann McNair, the voices in this collection are as different as the neighborhoods they represent, and in them you'll get a snapshot of what the next generation of Chicago writers have to say about their hometown, whether born here or adopted into the city.

The View From Here: Stories About Chicago Neighborhoods

Palmer, JH

Literary

Charles and Sarah are a typical New York creative class couple -- he's in finance, she works at a hipster small press, yet both are indie-rock East Village veterans who aren't above snorting a little heroin on the weekends. But when they decide to take the logical next step and buy a condo in one of the glass-and-steel skyscrapers now dotting the waterfront of Williamsburg, their lives start to fall apart almost the moment after they sign their mortgage; and this is to say nothing of their creepy neighbors, their possibly haunted apartment, job crises in both their industries, and former friends still in Manhattan who are determined to pull them back into the debauchery. A touching ode to the a--holes ruining Brooklyn, this literary debut of "the Millennial John Updike" is a funny yet wistful dramedy about young urban life during the Great Recession, and you do not need to be a New Yorker yourself to enjoy his smart insights about city living and growing older...although that certainly doesn't hurt.

Condominium

Falatko, Daniel

The Pongs are an American immigrant family that has seen it all. They helped build the transcontinental railroads of the Victorian Age. They were mistakenly interned with Japanese-Americans during World War II. They may even have co-invented the landmark video game that bears the family's last name. But despite all they've endured, each new generation's patriarch has had one thing in common: a penchant for degeneracy. Sulliver Pong was supposed to be the exception. Married and living in Copenhagen, he was supposed to have escaped his toxic hometown of Bordirtoun; and most importantly, its mayor, his father Saul. When Saul visits unannounced, he begins to draw his son back into his corrupt world of city politics and redevelopment schemes. Yoked to his feelings of guilt for his abused mother and his lust for a now-married adolescent crush, book-smart but life-dumb Sulliver finds himself running for mayor against his father--a decision that will carry hilarious and unfortunate consequences for all involved. A laugh-out-loud black comedy about a dysfunctional family that has endured almost every major injustice in Asian-American history, but can't endure each other, Leland Cheuk's irreverent debut is perfect for existing fans of Jonathan Franzen or the Coen Brothers. "Equal parts laugh-out-loud satire and dysfunctional family comedy, Leland Cheuk's The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong brims with Vonnegut-flavored humor and Delillo-esque commentary as it sends up Asian-American struggles and father-son rivalries. This is the hilarious and assured debut of a wise and wacky new talent." --Laurie Foos, author of The Blue Girl and Ex Utero "As sneakily addictive as a game of Pong (which was named, we're told, after the narrator's dad), this zany zip-line of a novel takes the piss out of the Asian-American 'good immigrant' story. Full of charming antiheroes making comically bad choices, the story dazzles us with its absurdity, which makes its eventual wisdom--about lineage, ethnicity, and the meaning of family--all the more wonderfully surprising." --Michael Lowenthal, author of The Paternity Test and Charity Girl

The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong

Cheuk, Leland

United States

After over a decade in prison, a young sculptor, Yuri Dilienko, returns to his old neighborhood in Cicero, Illinois. He finds the town stripped of so many places he used to know, while the town's familiar streets, bricks and steeples trigger memories of his traumatic youth. To convalesce, he sculpts from collected scrap metal, but his arrival in town soon rouses a young girl, Lita Avila, to curiosity. Could this reclusive and oddly quiet man, whose art is sensitive yet intense, truly be guilty of setting fire to his parents' bungalow and burning them alive? At once an homage to the urban grit of Nelson Algren and the family sagas of Leo Tolstoy, The Fugue is a true epic that spans three generations and over fifty years, a major new achievement in the history of Chicago literature. It considers the effects of war and the silent, haunting traumas inherited by children of displaced refugees. Gint Aras's lucid yet lyrical prose braids and weaves a tale where memory and imagination merge, time races and drags, and identity collapses and shifts without warning.

The Fugue

Aras, Gint

After over a decade in prison, a young sculptor, Yuri Dilienko, returns to his old neighborhood in Cicero, Illinois. He finds the town stripped of so many places he used to know, while the town's familiar streets, bricks and steeples trigger memories of his traumatic youth. To convalesce, he sculpts from collected scrap metal, but his arrival in town soon rouses a young girl, Lita Avila, to curiosity. Could this reclusive and oddly quiet man, whose art is sensitive yet intense, truly be guilty of setting fire to his parents' bungalow and burning them alive? At once an homage to the urban grit of Nelson Algren and the family sagas of Leo Tolstoy, The Fugue is a true epic that spans three generations and over fifty years, a major new achievement in the history of Chicago literature. It considers the effects of war and the silent, haunting traumas inherited by children of displaced refugees. Gint Aras's lucid yet lyrical prose braids and weaves a tale where memory and imagination merge, time races and drags, and identity collapses and shifts without warning.

The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography had a busy year at its website and blog in 2015, with critics Karl Wolff, Chris Schahfer and Jason Pettus penning a total of 89 book reviews over the twelve months. And now here's CCLaP's look at the best 40 of those books, based not only on traditional criteria (which were written best) but unorthodox ones too (like which were their favorite guilty pleasures). From award-winning mainstream fiction to the most obscure of self-published volumes, you're sure to find dozens of great recommendations within this funny, insightful look back at 2015 and all the great literature it produced.

CCLaP's The Year In Books 2015

Wolff, Karl

Schahfer, Chris

History & Criticism

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Books by Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The King In Yellow: CCLaP Victoriana Edition

Love Songs of the Revolution

Twilight of the Idiots

The View From Here: Stories About Chicago Neighborhoods

Condominium

The Misadventures of Sulliver Pong

The Fugue

The Fugue

CCLaP's The Year In Books 2015