Gary Krist – författare

The masterfully told story of twelve volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder transfixed and roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World." But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose and the city''s highest ambitions were suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place.It began on a balmy Monday afternoon when a blimp in flames crashed through the roof of a busy downtown bank, incinerating those inside. Within days, a racial incident at a hot, crowded South Side beach spiraled into one of the worst urban riots in American history, followed by a transit strike that paralyzed the city. Then, when it seemed as if things could get no worse, police searching for a six-year-old girl discovered her body in a dark North Side basement.Meticulously researched and expertly paced, City of Scoundrels captures the tumultuous birth of the modern American city, with all of its light and dark aspects in vivid relief.

A vivid account of the creation of modern Los Angeles, a city born from the fantasies of strong-willed visionaries, from bestselling author and masterful storyteller Gary Krist.Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California was sleepy semi-desert farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world''s largest and most iconic cities emerged. At the heart of the seemingly impossible, meteoric rise of Los Angeles were the visions of three ingenious but deeply flawed people. William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life possible in this water-starved corner of the country. D.W. Griffith, who virtually invented the basic grammar of moviemaking, would give Los Angeles the industry it needed to grow. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a young evangelist, faith healer, and radio preacher, would provide the city with its identity as a worldwide center for spiritual realization and reinvention. They were all masters of their craft--and each would self-destruct in spectacular fashion. Blinded by hubris, crucified in the tabloids, and confronted by literal, catastrophic failure of design, Mulholland, Griffith and McPherson would see their personal empires crumble even as the one they built collectively came into its own. Spanning the years from 1900 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and imagination.

Men Seeking Women: Love and Sex On-line is an exciting and original collection of new short fiction by men about men seeking women, and women seeking men in the digital age.The Internet revolution has altered the look of the traditional relationship. Through e-mail correspondence, chat room chats, and message board postings, the manner in which we meet and mate has drastically changed. While the search for love is a timeless one, how and where we look has never been more a sign of the digital times.Here, ten talented storytellers offer thoroughly contemporary portraits of relationships in the world of new media and high technology in chat rooms, porn sites and other on-line realms. Men Seeking Women is a fresh and unconventional look at the cyber-landscape of love, sex, and companionship.

William Tobias Merrick, an energetic young man from the provinces, travels to the big city in a time of great optimism and ferment, hoping to make his mark on a frenzied, money-crazed society obsessed with the promise of new technologies. The city in question is London in the 1690s; but it is also New York in the 1990s. The new technologies are diving bells, pneumatic winches, and "sucking-worm" drainage engines; but they are also wireless telecommunication devices, patented biotechnology processes, and revolutionary electronic Internet routers. Only the sense of unlimited possibility remains the same throughout.Unfolding simultaneously in two distant--but remarkably similar--periods of history, Extravagance is a comic, pictaresque novel of financial mania, the story of a world gripped by a terminal case of irrational exuberance. Navigating the perils of both eras is a single cast of characters: Will himself, a young man on the make, eager to do whatever it takes to make his fortune; Will''s uncle (and sponsor) Gilbert Hawking, a shrewd businessman with one foot in the Old Economy and one in the New; Benjamin Fletcher, the developer of a pioneering new technology destined to set the world on fire; and Theodore Witherspoon, the cheerfully unscrupulous wizard of the financial markets who promises to make them all wealthy beyond their dreams.Meanwhile, Will''s aspirations are complicated by his pursuit of Ben Fletcher''s sister, Eliza, the gorgeous and disconcertingly aggressive woman who is as desirable as she is elusive. Can Will succeed in his efforts to win both Eliza and the fortune that her brother''s new technology seems likely to bring him? And can he make it all happen before the general euphoria of the age reaches its inevitable climax?Extravagance is a uniquely conceived work of high comic entertainment -- an ultra-smart time machine of a novel that proves that both love and greed are timeless.From the Hardcover edition.

From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans’ other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City        Empire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans’ thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city’s elite “better half” against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city''s Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.