Illinois Authors

The Illinois Center for the Book banner

Adam Langer

Born: 1967 in Chicago, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Langer grew up on North Mozart Street in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood. He attended Evanston Township High School and went away to college. He returned to Chicago in 1988 and stayed there for twelve years before moving to New York in 2000 after winning a fellowship to Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program.

Biography: Langer is a novelist, short story writer, playwright and journalist. He is the author of the novels ''Crossing California'', ''The Washington Story'', ''Ellington Boulevard'', ''The Theives of Manhattan'' and ''My Father's Bonus March''. Formerly a senior editor at ''Book Magazine'' and a columnist for ''The Book Standard'', he has written about books and authors for many other publications.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: Adam@AdamLanger.com
Website: http://www.adamlanger.com
Adam Langer on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=adam+langer


Selected Titles

Crossing California
ISBN: 9781440628290 OCLC: 743778824

Riverhead Books, New York : 2005.

Set in Chicago's Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park, this is the story of three families--adults and children alike--coming of age during the tumultuous, turbulent days of the Iran hostage crisis. At the close of the 1970s, the Rovners, the Wasserstroms, and the Wills-Silvermans will have to shed their pasts to cross into that new, shining decade of hope: the 80s.

Crossing California /
ISBN: 1594480818 OCLC: 60381053

Riverhead Books, New York : 2005.

Follows Jill Wasserman, Muley Wills, and other intelligent adolescents over two years in the late 1970s in Rogers Park, Illinois.

Ellington Boulevard :
ISBN: 0385522053 OCLC: 123391032

After the death of his landlord, with whom he had a handshake agreement rather than a lease, clarinetist Ike Morphy is about to be evicted by the landlord's son, who sees only the money he can make in Manhattan's lucrative real-estate market.

Ellington Boulevard :
ISBN: 9780385522069 OCLC: 399822989

Spiegel & Grau, New York : 2009.

My father's bonus march /
ISBN: 0385523726 OCLC: 290472071

Spiegel & Grau, New York : 2009.

Traces the author's research into post-depression Chicago to better understand his physician father, an effort marked by a contrast between his father's admired status and the author's conflicted memories.

My Father's Bonus March.
ISBN: 9780385523738 OCLC: 462882248

Spiegel & Grau 2010.

  The thieves of Manhattan
ISBN: 9781449828677 OCLC: 702094161

Playaway Digital Audio ; [Solon, Ohio] : [2011], â„—2010.

Langer introduces Ian Minoit--an aspiring writer who just can't seem to get published. When Ian's successful girlfriend leaves him for the talentless hack Blade Markham--whose acclaimed memoir Ian is convinced is a fake--he can't understand why he always gets the short end of the stick. Then an opportunity for revenge shows itself when an editor asks Ian to take his novel of murder and thievery and pass it off as a memoir.

The thieves of Manhattan :
ISBN: 1588369579 OCLC: 452284777

Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperbacks, New York : 2010.

Enraged about the literary successes of his ex-girlfriend and her new lover, Ian, an aspiring writer and coffee shop employee, becomes involved in a scheme to pen a bogus memoir and discovers unsettling industry hypocrisies.

The Washington story :
ISBN: 1594482187 OCLC: 71271935

Riverhead Books, New York : 2006.

 

 

Accessibility