Adam Langer

Cyclorama

Enraged about the literary successes of his ex-girlfriend and her new lover, Ian, an aspiring writer and coffee shop employee, becomes involved in a scheme to pen a bogus memoir and discovers unsettling industry hypocrisies.

A Novel

The Thieves of Manhattan

"Adam is a writer and stay-at-home dad in Bloomington, Indiana, drawn into an uneasy friendship with the charismatic and bestselling thriller author Connor Joyce. Conner is having trouble writing his next book, and when a menacing stranger approaches himwith an odd and lucrative proposal, events quickly begin to spiral out of control"--P. [4] of cover.

The Salinger Contract

Crossing California is a cinematic and unforgettable look at the end of an era, the turning point when the idealism of the sixties gave way to the pragmatism of the eighties. California Avenue, in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, separates the upper-middle-class Jewish families on the west from the mostly middle-class Jewish households east of the divide. This funny and heartbreaking novel, which spans the Iran hostage crisis through the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president, tells the story of three families and their teenage children living on either side of California. It follows their loves, heartaches, friendships, and losses during a memorable and defining moment of American history.

Crossing California

Where to go and what to do in order to succeed in art, comedy, dance, film/TV/radio, literature, music, theater, or improvisation in Chicago.

A Guide to Living and Working in Chicago

The Madness of Art

Chicago high-school sweethearts Jill and Muley, their families, and their friends share triumphs and despair over the course of five years that are marked by such events as the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the return of Halley's comet. By the author of Crossing California. Reprint.

A Novel in Five Spheres

The Washington Story

The famously false memoirs of James Frey may be yesterday’s news, but as this funny riff reminds us, literary fakes are as old as literature itself. Ian Minot is an aspiring writer who labors over short stories that seem destined to remain unread. His beautiful Romanian girlfriend, Anya Petrescu, finds success more easily—and leaves Ian for Blade Markham, a bloviating ex-gangbanger whose “so-called memoir” is a best-seller. When Ian is approached by ex-editor Jed Roth, who wants Ian to publish Jed’s pulpy tale of book theft and murder as a memoir, then renounce it, it’s a chance for both of them to get revenge: Jed on his former employer, and Ian on the world. Although Langer may be too cute for some (he employs made-up slang in which a penis is a portnoy), he does an engaging job with the hall-of-mirrors plot. And if readers can predict that the book they’re reading is the one that Ian ends up writing, they’ll never guess the ending. Just when you want a surprising twist, Langer delivers several.

Clarinetist Ike Morphy, his dog Herbie Mann, and a pair of pigeons who roost on his air conditioner are about to be evicted from their apartment on West 106th Street, also known as Duke Ellington Boulevard. Ike has never had a lease, just a handshake agreement with the recently deceased landlord; and now that landlord’s son stands to make a killing on apartment 2B. Centering on the fate of one apartment before, during, and after the height of New York’s real estate boom, Ellington Boulevard’s characters include the Tenant and His Dog; the Landlord, a recovered alcoholic and womanizer who has newly found Judaism and a wife half his age; the Broker, an out-of-work actor whose new profession finally allows him to afford theater tickets he has no time to use; the Broker’s New Boyfriend, a second-rate actor who composes a musical about the sale of 2B (“Is there no one I can lien on if this boom goes bust?”). There’s also the Buyer, a trusting young editor at a dying cultural magazine, who falls in love with the Tenant; the Buyer’s Husband, a disaffected graduate student taken to writing bawdy faux-academic papers; and the Buyer’s Husband’s Girlfriend, a children’s book writer with a tragic past. With the humor and poignancy that made Langer’s first novel, Crossing California, a favorite book of the year among critics across the country, Ellington Boulevard is an ode to New York. It’s the story of why people come to a city they can’t afford, take jobs they despise, sacrifice love, find love, and eventually become the people they never thought they’d be—for better and for worse.

A Novel in A-Flat

Ellington Boulevard

Gerda G. Baardman

Het leven en de onderlinge relaties van drie gezinnen rond California Avenue in de voornamelijk joodse wijk West Rogers Park in Chicago rond 1980.

Kruispunt California

After the death of his landlord, with whom he had a handshake agreement rather than a lease, clarinetist Ike Morphy is about to be evicted by the landlord's son, who sees only the money he can make in Manhattan's lucrative real-estate market.

Adam Langer

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