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Chicago’s Far North Side, a few decades ago—a rough-and-tumble place, awash with racial tensions and petty crime. Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, is pushing his way up through the cracked pavement of a chaotic life: parish festivals and block parties on long summer nights, fistfights in back alleys on boring empty days, long walks up and down Clark Street pocketing envelopes of collection money for his older brother, Lil’ Pat. It’s easy enough to pretend it’s all normal, until he sees Pat murder a man in a neighborhood drugstore. Now he’s haunted by the memory of blood pooling on the green tiles under the flickering fluorescent lights, torn by the conflict between love of family and disgust over what they do—and desperate to survive the insanity without being swept up in it. This revised second edition of Bill Hillmann’s modern classic features a new introduction by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. It’s a perfect primer for a great book that deserves a place alongside the likes of Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell on the top shelf of Chicago literature.

Chicago’s western suburbs. Young Joe Walsh is making a go of it at a new school, still haunted by his rough-and-tumble city upbringing. He’s got some great opportunities—a summer seminar at one of the world’s top physics laboratories, a hard-hitting Catholic clergyman and boxing instructor who thinks he’s got talent in the ring, and a beautiful girlfriend who’s giving him some much-needed love and support. But the challenges of Chicago have followed him to its outskirts; his sister’s struggling to recover after being shot by one of his former friends, his mom’s unvarnished ways are rubbing their wealthy neighbors the wrong way, and his brother’s fresh out of prison and falling into old habits. Like many young men before him, Joe’s taking out his frustrations in the boxing ring, and dreaming of a triumphant career—but will that, too, become a prison? This sequel to Bill Hillmann’s The Old Neighborhood hits like the end of a 1-2 punch. It’s another modern classic from one of the city’s best authors, a powerful read unlike anything you’ve read before.

Precocious Chicago teenager Joe Walsh witnesses his heroin-addicted brother commit murder, precipitating a violent spiral that tears his family apart.

This memoir overflows with hilarious, raunchy, terrifying, and philosophical stories from a decade of running with the bulls in Spain.

In 2014, author and bullrunning expert Bill Hillmann was gored in the streets of Pamplona by a bull named Brevito who left a baseball-sized wound in his thigh. Two years later he returned to Spain, eager to run with the bulls again. Bill was on a mission to run a hundred and one bull runs over the course of the summer, putting his marriage and his life on the line in a quest to explore the breadth and depth of the Spanish bullrunning tradition alongside the nation’s top runners, many of whom had become fast friends. It was an exhilarating trip, full of fun and danger in every town—a trip that almost cost him everything. Now he’s chronicled the experience, in a memoir of remarkable power and honesty. It’s a perfect book for an age when everyone, it seems, is looking to leave their boring ordinary life behind and become a viral internet sensation; more importantly, it’s a pure visceral thrill ride, a pulsing rush of blood and adrenalin. Open this book and you can follow Bill on his remarkable odyssey to the edge of human endurance, and past the limits of sanity. You, too, can hear the thunder of clattering hooves on the pavement behind you, feel the warm wet breath of the beasts on your bare skin, and glance back at the sharp tips of the horns as they thrust towards you. Come along...if you dare.

Tras años de peleas callejeras y problemas con todo tipo de sustancias, Bill Hillmann, un estadounidense al borde del abismo, decide seguir los pasos de Hemingway hacia Pamplona, donde descubre en los encierros de San Fermín una irrefrenable pasión por los toros y el toreo. Desde entonces, y de ello hace ya más de una década, Hillmann acude sin falta cada año a los sanfermines, una fiesta en la que ha encontrado, más que una escapatoria de la rutina, un sentido vital. Y todo pese a encontronazos con los toros como el que en 2014 casi le cuesta la vida...