A gas station at the corner of Rosemont and Western in 1962 Chicago. That's the setting for this brand new story from author Barry Gifford. more ›

Dan Sinker has taken over the feed for Huffington Post's Books section to write an exclusive story. more ›

Author Jim Butcher is back with his 13th book in The Dresden Files series, featuring Chicago's very own wizard detective. more ›

The Borrower is a fictional story of escape, and it also deals with the very heavy realities that LGBT teens and youth face when being persecuted for their sexuality. more ›

The world had gone quiet around me. The deafness fell like a heavy snow. Slow and steady. Since then I have been waiting for the crunch of footsteps to join me. Using my senses in an unconscious way. And I always hold a silver micrometer (rhymes with thermometer). If I've had enough to drink, it gets dropped in a pocket. Then a little more to drink and out it comes again. more ›

We talk with famed writer Barry Gifford about the "Sailor & Lula" novels, David Lynch, and much more. more ›

Stuck at work with no one else around? Still on vacation with little to do except surf the internet? Consider picking up a copy of - or browsing on the interwebz - The Reader's 2009 edition of their annual Fiction Issue. This year's issue features stories from Benjamin Kumming, Stephen Markley, Natalie Edwards, Will Fletcher, and Robert Cass. And, while you're at it, be sure to check out the exclusive short story "The Starving Dogs of Little Croatia" we got from renowned writer Barry Gifford. more ›

We have a real holiday treat for you: a previously unpublished Christmas tale by master storyteller Barry Gifford, a Chicago native and author of such books as Wild at Heart and, most recently, Memories from a Sinking Ship (Seven Stories Press.) He also co-wrote the screenplay of Lost Highway with David Lynch, and earlier this year he played Nelson Algren in a stage production at the Steppenwolf honoring the centennial of Algren's birth. more ›

A hundred years after he was born, could Nelson Algren finally be getting some of the respect he so richly deserves? more ›