Mark Allen Boone

The Demise of Luleta Jones is that rare work where the literary novel and the mystery intersect, presenting an aspect of African American life that all-too-often is hidden from view. Set in Chicago, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee, The Demise of Luleta Jones, on its surface, is a whodunit in which investigative reporter Theophilous Pugh is obsessed with uncovering the facts surrounding the mysterious death of an enigmatic public school teacher from a newly gentrified neighborhood. Beneath the surface, however, is a scathing portrayal of the dire consequences that gifted African Americans often suffer when they violate their community's narrow conventions.

"In Guildworks you will hear voices as individual and powerful as those you will find in any urban collection of poetry and prose. They are representative of a people who live in a part of Chicago that refuses to be judged by what it lacks but, rather, by what it contributes to the life of a city that well knows how it feels to be perceived as a cultural stepchild. All labels aside, we are proud to introduce to a larger audience the best of the West Side Writers Guild."

Short stories from west side neighborhoods of Chicago. "The force of each writer's vision and language carries you into the living rooms and kitchens where the real folk of the West Side go about the business of living. 'West Side Stories' presents the everyday, the brutal, the glorious."