Novelist
Marquis Cole
Two cities, two houses, one byline. The North Side Series is Milwaukee. Real Prison Stories is what happens after the door closes. The Wells Series is Chicago, and it is about the ground.
The catalogue
Books
The North Side Series
Complete in four · 414 PressFour novels following Darius Mitchell from a corner on Milwaukee’s North Side to a federal indictment, across four years.
On saleEvery crown is poured from concrete and blood.
On saleWhat you build will own you.
On saleBlood in, blood out. But nobody told you whose blood.
Paperback out now · ebook 29 SeptThe city code. The area code. The body count.
Real Prison Stories
Eight volumes planned · 414 PressNot why anybody went in. What it costs to be there. Ten voices a volume, from county cells, state yards and federal compounds. Inspired by true accounts. Names changed. Nothing softened.
Everybody inside got a story. Not all of them are true.
Ten men on one yard. Everybody rides with somebody.
The Wells Series
Four books · Quitclaim PressBronzeville, 2005 to 2009. A man rises on ground the city is erasing underneath him, and launders the money through the lots it leaves behind.
2027They handed out the paper first. The wrecking ball came later.
Blood washes off concrete. Paper keeps.
About
The man who listened
Marquis Cole writes about Milwaukee and about what happens after the cell door closes. For years he has sat with men doing county time, state time, and federal time — in visiting rooms, on fifteen-minute phone calls, and across kitchen tables in the first shaky weeks after release — listening to the stories nobody asked them to tell.
Real Prison Stories is where those voices live. The men are composites and the names are changed; the truth isn’t.
He is the author of the North Side Series.
- Were you locked up?
- No. I’m the one who listened. The men who lived it deserve the credit, and that’s why their names stay off the cover.
- Are the stories true?
- Inspired by true accounts. Every character is a composite, every name is changed, and nothing is softened.
- Two publishers?
- Two houses, one owner. 414 Press does Milwaukee. Quitclaim Press does Chicago. Separate catalogues, separate accounting, same byline.
- Where do I start?
- Concrete Crowns — book one of the North Side Series. Everything else reads better after it.
Imprints
The houses
The North Side Series and Real Prison Stories. Four novels in print, eight volumes of prison narrative to come.
414press.com → Chicago Quitclaim PressThe Wells Series. Crime fiction where the land is the crime — who was moved, who got paid, whose name is on the deed.
quitclaimpress.com →Mailing list
One list. Everything I write.
Both houses, all three series, one email. New releases, pre-orders, and the occasional first chapter before anybody else gets it.
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