The Most-Anticipated Chicago Books of 2024

Who else is trying to read more this year? Add these Chicago books coming out in 2024 to your reading list.

‘Cottonmouth’

📘 This debut poetry collection from a Chicago spoken word artist explores what home does and doesn’t mean.

🖊️ Miya Coleman

🗓️ Jan. 23

‘The Mayor of Maxwell Street’

📘 Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, a wealthy Black debutante and a speakeasy manager team up to investigate a shadowy figure.

🖊️ Avery Cunningham

🗓️ Jan. 30

‘O Body’

📘 This Chicago-born poet discusses the male body, fatherhood, patriarchy, and his new home in Bloomington in a new collection.

🖊️ Dan “Sully” Sullivan”

🗓️ Feb. 6

‘The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson’

📘 Dropped off at a Chicago orphanage as a child and sold to a traveling circus, 94-year-old Cecily Larson must now explain her past to her family after a surprise DNA test.

🖊️ Ellen Baker

🗓️ Feb. 20

‘The House That Madigan Built’

📘 Read about how the state’s most powerful Democrat rose to and fell from power in this comprehensive book by a longtime Tribune journalist.

🖊️ Ray Long

🗓️ March 26

‘The City is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis’

📘 Another Tribune journalist dives into the four years under Chicago’s first Black gay woman mayor including how she handled the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, battles with the Chicago Teachers Union, and more.

🖊️ Gregory Royal Pratt

🗓️ April 2

‘We Are the Culture: Black Chicago's Influence on Everything’

📘 The Johnson Publishing Company, “Soul Train,” and basketball legend Michael Jordan are just a few of Black Chicago’s contributions to the world, according to a local journalist’s new book.

🖊️ Arionne Nettles

🗓️ April 16

‘To Washington Park, With Love’

📘 This photography book capturing Chicago's Washington Park will transport you back to the summer of 1987.

🖊️ Rose Blouin

🗓️ July 9

‘Chicago Latina Trailblazers: Testimonios of Political Activism’

📘 A new book documents the ways Mexican American and Puerto Rican women in Chicago have tried to improve their communities since the 1960s.

🖊️ Rita D. Hernández, Leticia Villarreal Sosa, and Elena R. Gutiérrez

🗓️ July 9