
Gary Krist is the author of four previous narrative nonfiction books: The White Cascade, City of Scoundrels, Empire of Sin, and The Mirage Factory. He has also written three novels and two short story collections. A widely published journalist and book reviewer, Krist has been the recipient of the Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas gold medal for travel journalism, a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His newest book--Trespassers at the Golden Gate: A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco--will be published in March of 2025.
William Tobias Merrick, an energetic young man from the provinces, travels to the big city in a time of great optimism and ferment, hoping to make his mark on a frenzied, money-crazed society obsessed with the promise of new technologies.The city in question is London in the 1690s; but it is also New York in the 1990s. The new technologies are diving bells, pneumatic winches, and "suck
by Gary Krist
Rating: 4.0 ⭐
The never-before-told story of one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history in which two trains full of people, trapped high in the Cascade Mountains, are hit by a devastating avalancheIn February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped--but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny tow
"Krist reminds us of how much fun reading can be."-- The New York TimesChaos Theory is a shrewd, literate, and compulsively readable thriller set against the background of Washington, D.C., in the mid-1990s--a city on the brink of economic, social, and moral collapse.Jason Rourke, who is white, and Dennis Monroe, who is black, are good kids and good friends. One night
Suburban northern New Jersey, in the vicinity of Rte. 4, is the setting for many of the amusingly perceptive vignettes in this first collection of eight stories.
For the Garden State, his 1988 collection of short stories, Gary Krist received the highly prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The reviews were entusiastic. "Smart and tender short stories written with enticing crispness...Krist is a remarkable writer, and just starting," said the Los Angeles Times. Bone by Bone, like the Garden State, tak
Former Chicago police officer Kate Baker searches for her missing husband--a suspected international drug trafficker, murderer, and experimental drug user--and becomes entangled with a troubled teenage computer hacker
by Gary Krist
Rating: 3.6 ⭐
The masterfully told story of 12 volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous plac
by Gary Krist
Rating: 3.7 ⭐
From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans’ other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent CityEmpire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans’ thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city’s elite “better half” against its powerful and long-en
by Gary Krist
Rating: 4.0 ⭐
From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into realityLittle 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
by Gary Krist
Rating: 3.7 ⭐
The sensational, forgotten true story of a woman who murdered her married lover in Gilded Age San Francisco and the trial that epitomized the city's transformation from raucous frontier town into modern metropolis—from the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of SinShortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling a