Apprentice House: 58 books

Inspired by the leaders, causes, and music of his youth, Chic Dambach set out to change the world. This is the fascinating life story of a ’60s antiwar and free speech leader who remained true to his values and helped build a more peaceful world. Along the way, he witnessed the torture of a black football...

Pat Brogan is a Gambling Squad detective in 1950s Buffalo, NY. Beneath the gritty smokestacks are thousands of bright, clanging pinball machines—banned from New York City but still legal here—tempting the well-heeled as well as factory hands in bars, stores and clubs. When a single machine could...

This is a collection of American Sentences A collection of 17-syllable sentences —the North American version of haiku, a form created by Allen Ginsberg—from a poet who has written one per day for 11 years.

Growing up in a prosperous neighborhood, B. Morrison was taught that poverty was a product of laziness and public assistance programs only rewarded irresponsibility. However, when her marriage soured, she abruptly found herself an impoverished single mother. Disowned by her parents and facing destitution...

There are 325 languages spoken in the United States and over a million adult immigrants enrolled in federally funded English classes. Most are beginners. In this collection of poems, an ESL teacher and former expat illustrates her students’ struggles and triumphs by addressing their linguistic challenges...

Christy Sampson-Kelly exposes a journey through the lived experience of being neither this nor that. Drinking in the world around her with a palate unrestricted by ancestry, her open and often privileged view as a perceived insider is vibrantly brought into focus. Whether echoing tenderness, perplexity...

From the ruins of ocean liners and model cities, to the dark impulses of Greek myths and biblical narratives, poet Megan Gannon casts a wide thematic net in tracing the legacy of desire in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With the lyric compression of Emily Dickinson, the syntactical momentum...

A Tale, Inspired by a True Story, of a Woman Who Would Not Become Bitter “It’s okay. Filip is only showing off in front of his friends. It’s what boys do. It’s best to pay no mind and to keep quiet. Smile at him, then turn away.” The lessons young Cătălina learned from her beloved grandmother...

In her eye-opening and heartrending fourth novel, award winning author Tanya J. Peterson takes us inside the anguished mind of Isaac Bittman-an average family man whose mysterious and progressively violent mood swings, many of which he cannot remember, begin to unravel the lives of those closest to...

When seven-year-old Anthony Little Eagle is found dead on the concrete patio beneath the balcony of a foster home, police and child welfare officials determine that it was a tragic accident. Sylvia Jensen, the foster care supervisor, comes to suspect that the boy's death may have involved foul play and...

Rocco Versaci grew up in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove and is the product of an Italian-American family, too much television, and countless books. He currently lives in San Diego, where he is an English professor at Palomar College. He has two sons, two bikes, and only a few regrets.

How does a person stay upbeat in life when she constantly fears death or other health catastrophes?  This humorous, absurd, yet relatable story offers a glimpse into the antics of a hypochondriac; from the rapturous to the downright ugly. She endures dance recitals gone wrong, first love amid the...

Washington, D.C., 1985. Peter, a gay dancer, dying of AIDS, thirsts for forgiveness for causing the death of a young man with whom he had sex. Martin, a straight college professor, grieves over the loss of his favorite student, killed by AIDS. He volunteers to act as a buddy to an AIDS patient and is...

In this layered collage of memory within memory, Hale recreates for readers her kaleidoscopic experience of a decades-long journey to acceptance and insight. Writer, prodigal daughter, single parent, Buddhist disciple, and, late in midlife, a newlywed, she is transformed through an unconventional relationship...