The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade by Fessler, Ann Monday, August 18, 7:30pm In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.

Harold!: Photographs from the Harold Washington Years by Dickey, Antonio, Pokempner, Marc, Muwakkil, Salim This handsome book captures in words and pictures the powerful emotions that circled around one man in Chicago in the early 1980's: Harold Washington. More than one hundred pictures, from candid shots on the campaign trail to triumphant public appearances, give readers a window onto a man who won over an entire city. Washington's mayoral win represented a faltering of the previously all-powerful Chicago Machine, and his campaign was a part of a larger civil rights crusade that forged unity in the black community in Chicago. Antonio Dickey and Marc PoKempner were there with Washington throughout 1982-87, Dickey as his campaign and personal photographer and PoKempner on assignment for the" New York Times," "People," and "Time," capturing the force of his personality and the inspiration he brought to Chicago. Their photographs have become the definitive documentation of the Harold years and were featured in the Chicago Historical Society's 2003-2004 exhibit "Harold Washington: The Man and the Movement." They were there for his underdog rise, his win, his first term, and his untimely death just seven months into his second term. The year 2007 marks the twentieth anniversary of Washington's death, and this loving tribute in words and pictures will keep his message alive for future generations.

The House of Paper by Dominguez, Carlos Maria, Sis, Peter, Caistor, Nick "I was utterly charmed by this short, lyrical, literary, almost otherworldly mystery of bibliomania taken to its extreme. With illustrations by Peter Sis." --Dale Szczeblowski, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA

The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show: by Gore, Ariel Orphaned at age four and raised by her black-clad, rosary-mumbling, preoccupied grandmother, Frankka discovered the ability to perform the stigmata as a way to attract her grandmother's attention. Now twenty-eight, Frankka's still using this extraordinary talent, crisscrossing the country with "The Death and Resurrection Show," a Catholic-themed traveling freak show and cast of misfits who have quickly become her new family. But when a reporter from the "Los Angeles Times" shows up to review the show, Frankka finds herself on the front page of the newspaper -- the unwitting center of a religious debate. Now unsure of who she is and where she belongs, Frankka disappears in search of herself and a place to call home.