Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

A Mystery 

Will Anderson and Elizabeth Hume are called to the vast Eloise Insane Asylum outside of Detroit, where Elizabeth's cousin Robbie is a patient and now a murder suspect. The victim, like three others before him at the asylum in recent months, was killed with the infamous "Punjab lasso," the murder weapon of the Phantom of the Opera.

Certain of Robbie's innocence, they begin an investigation with the help of Detective Riordan. Will has himself committed to the asylum to investigate from the inside, and Elizabeth volunteers at Eloise and questions people outside the asylum. While Will endures horrific conditions in his search for the killer, Elizabeth and Riordan follow the trail of a murder suspect all the way to Kalamazoo, where they realize the killer might still be at Eloise, putting Will in extreme danger. They race back to Detroit, but will they arrive in time to save Will and bring the killer to justice?

Filled with Johnson's trademark roller-coaster plot, nuanced characters, and brilliant historical research,Detroit Breakdown is a compelling, dark mystery set in the once- flourishing Paris of the West.

Detroit Breakdown

3e8c48cd-1ebf-42e4-b40d-2a3bd178dbea-1

William X. Kienzle

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New York

Eminence

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Zev Chafets

And Other True Tales of Detroit

Detroit's racial, religious, and economic problems through the experiences of black intellectuals, police officers, Muslim and Christian clerics, middle-class suburban whites, and Mayor Coleman Young

Devil's Night

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Michigan

In Rwanda during the genocide, Hutu thugs storm into a church and kill everyone except Father Terry Dunn, on the alter saying his first mass. He's powerless to do anything about it--until one day he faces several of the killers and exacts a chilling penance.  But is Terry Dunn really a priest?   He doesn't always appear to act like one. He comes home to Detroit and runs into Debbie Dewey who's doing standup at a comedy club. In her set, Debbie tells what it was like in prison, down for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Terry and Debie hit it off; they have the same sense of humor and similar goals in that both are out to raise money. Terry says for the Little Orphans of Rwanda; Debbie to score off a guy who conned her out of sixty-seven thousand dollars. This is Randy, now wealthy, who runs a fashionable restaurant and is connected to the Detroit Mafia. It's Debbie who keeps prying until she learns the bizarre truth about Terry; Debbie who sells him on going in together for a much bigger payoff than either could manage alone.  What happened in Rwanda remains alive through the unexpected twists and turns of the plot. But even with this tragic background. Pagan Babies comes off as Leonard's funniest straight-faced novel to date.

Pagan Babies

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Kevin Boyle

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

An electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle

In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly,shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet'sstory, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.

Arc of Justiceis the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Arc of Justice

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Jonathan Rand

Discovering a strange "window" through time, Nick and Summer visit the time of the dinosaurs and bring back a dinosaur egg as proof, but soon other dinosaurs find their way through the time portal and begin to wreak havoc on Detroit.

Michigan Chillers #8 Dinosaurs Destroy Detroit

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“Sharp as an ice pick….You will love this excellent book.” —New York Times Book Review Elmore Leonard is the undisputed master, the “King Daddy of crime writers” (Seattle Times), in the august company of the all-time greats of mystery/noir/crime fiction genre: John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, et al. The creator of such unforgettable classics as Stick, Out of Sight, and Get Shorty—not to mention the character of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, lately of TV’s hit series Justified—Leonard is in fine form with Mr. Paradise. A riveting Detroit-based thriller enlivened by Leonard’s trademark razor-sharp dialogue, Mr. Paradise follows a smart Victoria’s Secret model’s attempt to score big after surviving a double murder in a millionaire’s mansion…with a lonely cop acting as spoiler.

Mr. Paradise

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Angela Flournoy

Creased on back cover. Front cover dented and dulled finish. See photos. 

A novel centered on the journey of the Turner family and its thirteen siblings, particularly the eldest and youngest, as they face the ghosts of their pasts both an actual haint and the specter of addiction the imminent loss of their mother, and the necessary abandonment of their family home in struggling Detroit"

The Turner House

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Patricia Gussin

A Laura Nelson Thriller

Pull a trigger and everything changes. Medical student Laura Nelson had just finished examining her first patient when she is forced to make a split-second decision that will alter the course of her life - forever. One life will end, and one life will never be the same. But keeping her dreadful secret will be one of the toughest challenges Laura will ever face. With a persistent and perceptive detective hot on her trail and a host of eerie incidents suggesting that maybe her secret isn't really a secret, Laura is drawn into an unseemly web of peril, deceit, and treachery and is forced to risk both her freedom and her sanity. Will her deadly secret come to light, or must she live forever in the shadow of death? Set amidst the upheaval and smoldering chaos of the Detroit riots of 1967, Shadow of Death is a haunting tale of unrest, fear, and consequences. Hailed as a stunning debut novel, Shadow of Death provides a spine-chilling glimpse of what lurks in the shadows.

Shadow of Death

e9c5d760-cd2f-4d3c-9e8d-bdd4571aaf18-1

Francesca Berardi

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Minnesota

Between February 2013 and November 2014 I visited Detroit six times, for a total of 77 days. After three years living in Brooklyn, I found in Detroit what I had been looking for when I left Italy and crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Space, both physical and for the imagination. That is why it only took me two days to decide to write my first book. An emotional and practical book about the city, mapped through a series of encounters with its people. I raised the money needed to start the project, managed to drive an automatic car and learned how to fix a bike tire. Over the course of two years I have collected stories, ideas and feelings, set within what seems to be a real movement of urban resistance. I trained my eye to observe silent urban landscapes, on which huge blocks of sky and abandoned buildings impose themselves, and I realized that fear and fascination for decay quickly take second place. It has been like developing a way of seeing that is more like a way of listening, toward a world which can be complex and harsh at times, but also full of an energy that only appears when determination and potential meet. I invited an artist, Antonio Rovaldi, to join me and illustrate this journey. This is the result of our work. (F.B.)

Detour in Detroit

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Steve Luxenberg

Mild wear on edges of cover. See photos. 

A Journey into a Family Secret

Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Or so everyone thought. Six months after Beth's death, her secret emerged. It had a name: Annie.

Praise for Annie's Ghosts

"Annie's Ghosts is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read . . . From mental institutions to the Holocaust, from mothers and fathers to children and childhood, with its mysteries, sadness, and joy--this book is one emotional ride."--Bob Woodward, author of The War Within and State of Denial

"Steve Luxenberg sleuths his family's hidden history with the skills of an investigative reporter, the instincts of a mystery writer, and the sympathy of a loving son. His rediscovery of one lost woman illuminates the shocking fate of thousands of Americans who disappeared just a generation ago."--Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Confederates in the Attic

"I started reading within minutes of picking up this book, and was instantly mesmerized. It's a riveting detective story, a moving family saga, an enlightening if heartbreaking chapter in the history of America's treatment of people born with what we now call special needs." -- Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and You're Wearing That

"This is a memoir that pushes the journalistic envelope . . . Luxenberg has written a fascinating personal story as well as a report on our communal response to the mentally ill." -- Helen Epstein, author of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust

"A wise, affecting new memoir of family secrets and posthumous absolution." -- The Washington Post

"Annie's Ghosts will resonate for many, whether the chords have to do with family secrets, the Depression, memories of a thriving Detroit, the Holocaust's horrors, or the immigrant experience." -- The Detroit Free Press

Annie's Ghosts

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Josh Linkner

How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation

Companies, communities, and individuals fall for many reasons, but one of the most common—and easily avoidable—is the failure to reinvent. When people and organizations rest on prior successes rather than driving purposeful transformation, they discover too late that they have lost their market position altogether to competitors and external forces. The most successful companies, brands, and individuals make reinvention a regular part of their business strategies. Transformation demands an ongoing process of discovery and imagination, and The Road to Reinvention lays out a systematic approach for continually challenging and reinventing yourself and your business. Venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Josh Linkner identifies six elements in any business that are ripe for reinvention and shares examples, methods, and step-by-step techniques for creating deliberate, productive disruption. Throughout The Road to Reinvention, Linkner also explores the history—the great rise, unprecedented fall, and now rebirth—of his beloved hometown, Detroit. First rising to greatness as the result of breathtaking innovation, Detroit had generations of booming growth before succumbing to apathy, atrophy, and finally bankruptcy. Now, the city is rising from the ashes and driving sustainable success through an intense focus on reinvention. Linkner brings an insider's view of this incredible story of grit, determination, and creativity, sharing his perspective on Detroit's successes and setbacks as a profound example of large-scale organizational and personal transformation. Change is inevitable. You need to decide: Will you drive that change, or be driven away by it? Will you disrupt or be disrupted? By choosing to deliberately reimagine your own status quo, you can secure a strong future for both your company and your career.

The Road to Reinvention

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Charlie LeDuff

Washington

An American Autopsy

An explosive exposé of America’s lost prosperity by Pulitzer Prize­–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff “One cannot read Mr. LeDuff's amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he casts on hard truths . . . A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some good-Samaritan—it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff's.” —The Wall Street Journal “Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist LeDuff . . . writes with honesty and compassion about a city that’s destroying itself–and breaking his heart.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A book full of both literary grace and hard-won world-weariness.” —Kirkus Back in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff searches the ruins of Detroit for clues to his family’s troubled past. Having led us on the way up, Detroit now seems to be leading us on the way down. Once the richest city in America, Detroit is now the nation’s poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass-production, blue-collar jobs, and automobiles—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark, and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses, LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He beats on the doors of union bosses and homeless squatters, powerful businessmen and struggling homeowners and the ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination. Detroit: An American Autopsy is an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer.

Detroit

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A. J. Verdelle

Like-new with some very light surface and edge wear (pictured).

Vermont

A Novel

“Haunting . . . To read The Good Negress is to fall under a spell, to open a window, to fly.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review Twenty years after its initial publication, The Good Negress continues to be an important part of the literary canon, as relevant and necessary as ever. Set in 1960s Detroit, the novel centers around Denise Palms, who leaves her grandmother’s home in rural Virginia to reunite with her mother, stepfather, and older brothers. As a black teenage girl, Denise is given scarce opportunity beyond cooking, cleaning, and raising her mother’s baby. But an idealistic, demanding teacher opens Denise’s eyes to a future she has never considered, and soon she begins to question the limits of the life prescribed to her. With lyrical, evocative prose, A. J. Verdelle captures Denise’s journey from adolescence to womanhood as she navigates the tension between loyalty and independence, and between circumstance and desire. The Good Negress is an unforgettable debut—simultaneously the portrait of a family and a glimpse into an era of twentieth-century America. Winner of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

The Good Negress

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Pennsylvania

A. J. Baime

Cancelled library book. Replaced dog ears on prologue page xv and final filler page. Rest of book is in great shape. No scribbles and little wear. Jacket has a bit of mileage. Not bad shape. Please see photos for reference.

Ohio

FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War

ANew York Times Bestseller


A dramatic, intimate narrative of how Ford Motor Company went from making automobiles to producing the airplanes that would mean the difference between winning and losing World War II.
 
In 1941, as Hitler's threat loomed ever larger, President Roosevelt realized he needed weaponry to fight the Nazis--most important, airplanes--and he needed them fast. So he turned to Detroit and the auto industry for help.

The Arsenal of Democracy tells the incredible story of how Detroit answered the call, centering on Henry Ford and his tortured son Edsel, who, when asked if they could deliver 50,000 airplanes, made an outrageous claim: Ford Motor Company would erect a plant that could yield a "bomber an hour." Critics scoffed: Ford didn't make planes; they made simple, affordable cars. But bucking his father's resistance, Edsel charged ahead. Ford would apply assembly-line production to the American military's largest, fastest, most destructive bomber; they would build a plant vast in size and ambition on a plot of farmland and call it Willow Run; they would bring in tens of thousands of workers from across the country, transforming Detroit, almost overnight, from Motor City to the "great arsenal of democracy." And eventually they would help the Allies win the war.

Drawing on exhaustive research from the Ford Archives, the National Archives, and the FDR Library, A. J. Baime has crafted an enthralling, character-driven narrative of American innovation that has never been fully told, leaving readers with a vivid new portrait of America--and Detroit--during the war.

The Arsenal of Democracy

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Good Night Michigan highlights Detroit, the scenic Upper Peninsula, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Tahquamenon Falls, Mackinac Island, Henry Ford, Air Zoo, Ann Arbor Street Fair, Frankenmuth, and college sports. Young readers will feel the pride of Michigan as they travel around the state exploring iconic landmarks, sights, and must see attractions. This book is part of the bestselling Good Night Our World series, which includes hundreds of titles exploring iconic locations and exciting, child-friendly themes. Many of North America’s most beloved regions are artfully celebrated in these board books designed to soothe children before bedtime while instilling an early appreciation for North America's natural and cultural wonders. Each book stars a multicultural group of people visiting the featured area’s attractions as rhythmic language guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons while saluting the iconic aspects of each place.

Good Night Michigan

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Shelley Lazarus

The Steve Yzerman Storybook

Describes the life and career of NHL superstar Steve Yzerman, from his early hockey-playing days in Nepean, Ontario, through his second consecutive Stanley Cup championship with the Detroit Red Wings in 1998.

Hockeytown Hero + free book!

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Mark Binelli

The Afterlife of an American Metropolis

"Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neo-pastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists--all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new, Detroit-area native and Rolling Stone writer Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence. Throughout the city's "museum of neglect"--its swaths of abandoned buildings, its miles of urban prairie--he tracks the signs of blight repurposed, from the school for pregnant teenagers to the killer ex-con turned street patroller, from the organic farming on empty lots to GM's wager on the Volt electric car and the mayor's realignment plan (the most ambitious on record) to move residents of half-empty neighborhoods into a viable, new urban center. Sharp and impassioned, Detroit City Is the Place to Be is alive with the sense of possibility that comes when a city hits rock bottom. Beyond the usual portrait of crime, poverty, and ruin, we glimpse a future Detroit that is smaller, less segregated, greener, economically diverse, and better functioning--what might just be the first post-industrial city of our new century"--

Detroit City Is the Place to Be

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Kevin J. Ryan

Sean Combs

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Unlikely Rise of a Detroit Kid Who Forever Changed the Esports Industry

Be inspired to shatter your self-limiting beliefs and dare to pursue your life's greatest achievements by the story of Delane Parnell, the unlikeliest of CEOs now leading a gaming empire at the center of the booming, multimillion-dollar Esports industry. Delane Parnell is not your typical tech entrepreneur. The 27-year-old was raised in the gang-riddled Detroit neighborhood known as 7 Mile & Burgess. This makes it all the more astonishing that Delane is founder and CEO of PlayVS, a 100-person company that is forever changing the gaming landscape in America. In April 2018, Esports (playing video games competitively) was added to the official list of sanctioned high school sports, and Parnell's $400 million company is providing the infrastructure that hosts, compiles the statistics, and streams the matches, playoff tournaments, and state championships. Ahead of the Game is more than the incredible story of Delane and the motley group of underdogs and hustlers that helped build his company. Readers will also: Learn how the growing Esports industry is changing the lives of students across the country who were previously not engaged in the high school experience. Get a glimpse into a successful entrepreneur path unlike any other by following the story of how Delane Parnell created PlayVs in spite of the greatest of challenges. Be inspired that there is hope and opportunity available to people who go against conventional paths to realize their dreams.

Ahead of the Game

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#hardcover #nonfiction #detroit #memoir
Has inscription inside front cover otherwise in like new condition.

California

A South of 8-Mile Memoir

Paul Clemens grew up in the northeast corner of Detroit, just south of the city's famed 8 Mile border. In this moving and affectionate memoir, Clemens, born the year Detroit's first black mayor (the legendary Coleman Young) was elected, tracks his own growth to maturity against the background of the city's long decline during Young's twenty years at the helm. Made in Detroitdescribes what it was like to grow up white and working class in a city that had become emblematic of white flight and urban decay. Clemens writes with passion and unflinching honesty about the crime and the prejudices, both black and white, that marked his days in Detroit, and about the linguistic confusions that attend being a minority in a city where minorities are the majority. His neighborhood's common denominator, Catholicism, helped keep Detroit's disorder at a distance. Likewise, Clemens's father, a car enthusiast and weekend drag racer of the kind only Detroit can produce, helped keep at arm's length the racism that infected much of white Detroit. Though he may have grumbled about the corruption and inefficiency of the Young administration, he would not tolerate expressions of racial hostility. Made in Detroitis the story of a young man's education in social and racial realities most writers would rather avoid. But it is also the story of a literary apprenticeship in the classic American mold. In addition to his youthful Catholicism, Clemens acquired another belief-in reading and writing-and he embraced the writer's vocation with the enthusiasm that only those raised in a household devoid of books can. Yet, in coming to grips with Detroit, and race relations in America in general, he discovered that there are places-geographic, mental, emotional-where even literature cannot help. This is a story about being caught in the middle: about being white in a black city, urban in suburban America, blue collar in an increasingly obsolete Rust Belt, and Catholic in a place where churches close at an unprecedented pace. Sparing no one-including himself-Clemens depicts with raw authenticity and redemptive grace the realities of one city's, and one family's, recent history.

Made in Detroit

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Learning that after a half-century of family life that their house on Detroit's East Side is worth only a fraction of its mortgage, the members of the Turner family gather to reckon with their pasts and decide the house's fate. A first novel. 20,000 first printing.

Bridgett M. Davis

My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers

A singular memoir highlighting "the outstanding humanity of black America" that tells the story of one unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and the life they lead in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s (James McBride) In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out of her tattered apartment on Delaware Street, in one of Detroit's worst sections. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis' mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more than a numbers runner: she was a kind of Ulysses, guiding both her husbands, five children and a grandson through the decimation of a once-proud city using her wit, style, guts, and even gun. She ran her numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts." A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" to provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time. This original, timely, and deeply relatable portrait of one American family is essential reading.

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D. E. Johnson

Detroit Breakdown

William X. Kienzle

Eminence

Zev Chafets

Devil's Night

Elmore Leonard

Pagan Babies

Kevin Boyle

Arc of Justice

Jonathan Rand

Michigan Chillers #8 Dinosaurs Destroy Detroit

Elmore Leonard

Mr. Paradise

Angela Flournoy

The Turner House

Patricia Gussin

Shadow of Death

Francesca Berardi

Detour in Detroit

Steve Luxenberg

Annie's Ghosts

Josh Linkner

The Road to Reinvention

Charlie LeDuff

Detroit

A. J. Verdelle

The Good Negress

Charlie LeDuff

Detroit

A. J. Baime

The Arsenal of Democracy

Adam Gamble; Anne Rosen (Illustrator)

Good Night Michigan

Shelley Lazarus

Hockeytown Hero + free book!

Mark Binelli

Detroit City Is the Place to Be

Kevin J. Ryan; Sean Combs

Ahead of the Game

Paul Clemens

Made in Detroit

Jonathan Rand

Michigan Chillers #8 Dinosaurs Destroy Detroit

Angela Flournoy

The Turner House

Bridgett M. Davis

The World According to Fannie Davis