We are home right now, and not doing too much traveling. And probably you, like me, are getting a little restless and ready to go places.
So, let’s travel Route 66!
It’s historic. It covers a lot of the country. And there are all kinds of people who want to drive it every year!
We are going to make this trip easier on ourselves – and more library-themed. We are going to read our way across this historic drive.
We’re starting at the beginning: Illinois. Check out these books set in Illinois, and enjoy some travel across the state.
All the links on these books go to Amazon.com. If you click on one, and then buy anything at all, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits on the sale. It’s anonymous, so we won’t know it’s you – but we will still be grateful!
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
by Erik Larson
“In a thrilling narrative showcasing his gifts as storyteller and researcher, Erik Larson recounts the spellbinding tale of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
The White City (as it became known) was a magical creation constructed upon Chicago’s swampy Jackson Park by Daniel H. Burnham, the famed architect who coordinated the talents of Frederick Olmsted, Louis Sullivan, and others to build it. Dr. Henry H. Holmes combined the fair’s appeal with his own fatal charms to lure scores of women to their deaths. Whereas the fair marked the birth of a new epoch in American history, Holmes marked the emergence of a new American archetype, the serial killer, who thrived on the very forces then transforming the country.
In deft prose, Larson conveys Burnham’s herculean challenge to build the White City in less than 18 months. At the same time, he describes how, in a malign parody of the achievements of the fair’s builders, Holmes built his own World’s Fair Hotel – a torture palace complete with a gas chamber and crematorium. Throughout the book, tension mounts on two fronts: Will Burnham complete the White City before the millions of visitors arrive at its gates? Will anyone stop Holmes as he ensnares his victims?”
A Long Way From Chicago
by Richard Peck
“What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice — two city slickers from Chicago — make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel’s seemingly sleepy Illinois town? August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn’t resting easy.
August 1930: The Cowgill boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back.
August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma trespass, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry — all in one day. And there’s more, as Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma’s — each one funnier than the year before — in self-contained chapters that readers can enjoy as short stories or take together for a rollicking good novel. In the tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannery O’Connor, popular author Richard Peck has created a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining.”
Chicago Poems
by Carl Sandburg
“Chicago Poems (1916) was Carl Sandburg’s first-published book of verse. Written in the poet’s unique, personal idiom, these poems embody a soulfulness, lyric grace, and a love of and compassion for the common man that earned Sandburg a reputation as a “poet of the people.”
Among the dozens of poems in this collection are such well-known verses as “Chicago,” “Fog,” “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter,” “Who Am I?” and “Under the Harvest Moon,” as well as numerous others on themes of war, immigrant life, death, love, loneliness, and the beauty of nature. These early poems reveal the simplicity of style, honesty, and vision that characterized all of Sandburg’s work and earned him enormous popularity in the 1920s and ’30s and a Pulitzer prize in poetry in 1951.”
The Hostage (Great Chicago Fire Trilogy #1)
by Susan Wiggs
“Deborah Sinclair is a beautiful, accomplished young heiress with a staggering dowry. But her fortune does her no good when, one horrible night, Chicago is engulfed in flames.
Tom Silver will walk through fire to avenge a terrible injustice—and he may have to. But when he makes Deborah a pawn in his revenge, the heat of the inferno fades next to the attraction he feels for his captive. And the further he takes her from everything she’s known, the stronger their passion grows, until it threatens to consume them both.”
Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires Book 1)
by Chloe Neill
Sure, the life of a graduate student wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it was Merit’s. She was doing fine until a rogue vampire attacked her. But he only got a sip before he was scared away by another bloodsucker and this one decided the best way to save her life was to make her the walking undead.
Turns out her savior was the master vampire of Cadogan House. Now she’s traded sweating over her thesis for learning to fit in at a Hyde Park mansion full of vamps loyal to Ethan Lord o the Manor Sullivan. Of course, as a tall, green-eyed, four-hundred-year-old vampire, he has centuries’ worth of charm, but unfortunately he expects her gratitude—and servitude. But an inconvenient sunlight allergy and Ethan’s attitude are the least of Merit’s concerns. Someone’s still out to get her. Her initiation into Chicago’s nightlife may be the first skirmish in a war…and there will be blood.
One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season
by Chris Ballard
“In 1971, a small-town high school baseball team from rural Illinois
playing with hand-me-down uniforms and peace signs on their hats
defied convention and the odds. Led by an English teacher with no
coaching experience, the Macon Ironmen emerged from a field of 370
teams to become the smallest school in modern Illinois history to make the
state final, a distinction that still stands. There, sporting long
hair, and warming up to Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ironmen would play
a dramatic game against a Chicago powerhouse that would change their
lives forever.
In a gripping, cinematic narrative, Sports Illustrated writer Chris
Ballard tells the story of the team and its coach, Lynn Sweet, a
hippie, dreamer and intellectual who arrived in Macon in 1966,
bringing progressive ideas to a town stuck in the Eisenhower era.
Beloved by students but not administration, Sweet reluctantly took
over a rag-tag team, intent on teaching the boys as much about life as
baseball. Inspired by Sweet’s unconventional methods and led by fiery
star Steve Shartzer and spindly curveball artist John Heneberry, the
undersized, undermanned Macon Ironmen embarked on an improbable
postseason run that infuriated rival coaches and buoyed an entire
town.
Beginning with Sweet’s arrival, Ballard takes readers on a journey
back to the Ironmen’s historic season and then on to the present day,
returning to the 1971 Ironmen to explore the effect the game had on
their lives’ trajectories–and the men they’ve become because of it.”