Gary Krist

Describes the internal struggle in early-20th-century New Orleans between the city's upper crust and the underworld, focusing on the head of the red light district, Tom Anderson, who fought to keep his vice business at the top in a wicked city. By the best-selling author of City of Scoundrels. 30,000 first printing.

A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans

Empire of Sin

A wildly original and entertaining novel of speculative fever in seventeenth-century London and late twentieth-century New York--one the blends Tom Stoppard's inventiveness with Michael Lewis's financial savvy.

A Novel

Extravagance

From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California--bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges--seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world's iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles' meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city's identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up--of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun--were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained. 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.

Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles

The Mirage Factory

Documents the harrowing 12-day period in 1919 Chicago during which a blimp crash, a race riot, a crippling transit strike and a sensational child murder case challenged the city's modernization efforts. By the author of The White Cascade. 50,000 first printing.

The Twelve Days of Disaster that Gave Birth to Modern Chicago

City of Scoundrels

A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco

Trespassers at the Golden Gate

The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche

The White Cascade

"In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard hit Washington State. High in the Cascade Mountains near the tiny town of Wellington, two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found their railcars buried in rising drifts, parked precariously on th

A journey into a rundown Washington, D.C., neighborhood to buy marijuana turns deadly for two middle-class teenagers--one black, one white--when an undercover cop turns up dead and the two boys realize that they have stumbled into a conspiracy of mammoth proportions. Reprint.

Gary Krist

About

Books

Join the club