Troublemakers

Troublemakers is an often hilarious, sometimes frightening, occasionally off-the-wall collection of stories about men living on the edge. From the streets of Chicago's southwest side to the rural roads of Nebraska to the small towns of southern Illinois, these men tread a very fine line between right and wrong, love and hate, humor and horror.

Each story is a Pandora's box waiting to be opened: a high school boy with a new driver's license picks his brother up from jail; a UPS driver suspects his wife of having an affair but cannot find any tangible evidence of her indiscretion; an unemployed man's life begins to unravel after he discovers a dead man in a tree in his own backyard; two boys spend Halloween with an older thug; a young college teacher's patience is tested by both his annoying colleagues and the criminals who haunt his neighborhood. In story after story, McNally's troublemakers lead readers to a place no less thrilling or dangerous than the human heart itself.

John McNally is the author of three novels, After the Workshop, The Book of Ralph, and America’s Report Card, and two story collections, Troublemakers (Iowa, 2000) and Ghosts of Chicago. He has edited six anthologies, including When I Was a Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High School and Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color (Iowa, 2002). His fiction, book reviews, and essays have appeared in more than a hundred publications, including the Washington Post, the Sun, and Open City, and he is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review. A native of Chicago’s southwest side, he is an associate professor of English at Wake Forest University.