Books

Over the past 13 years, Springfield author Joseph Flynn has written 12 page-turning novels, most of them thrillers. He has been called a “master of high octane plotting” by the Chicago Tribune and compared to John Grisham by the Denver Post. He has been published by Signet and Bantam.  Originally from Chicago, Flynn has learned […]

She’s done it again! Martha Miller, our local crime-fiction author whose two previous Springfield detective books are so stellar, has a newcomer. It’s the best yet. It’s titled Retirement Plan: A Crime Novel, and in a recent talk at the Sangamo Club Literary Circle, Martha said of it, “It’s ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ but with […]

But For the Crash, George A. M. Heroux. Connecticut: Eloquent Books, 2010.  Paperback $13.95, Kindle Ed. $9.99. ISBN 978-1-60911-453-4. George Heroux lives in Springfield and is an attorney and the executive director/attorney for Victim Impact Speakers, a nonprofit organization that assists families and victims of drunk driving crashes. He has worked for Mothers Against Drunk […]

A friend laughed when I said I was reading a book about OK. “I can see a paragraph,” he said, “but a whole book?” Well, yes, that is exactly what Allan Metcalf, professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, has done – written a 200-page book called OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest […]

The late Pat Smith was a former Springfield resident, one of the three founders of Brainchild, a women’s writing collective that lasted more than 30 years and published a number of books. Now Pat Smith, who died in St. Louis on Thanksgiving Day, 2009, has a book published, a volume of more than 150 fine […]

Coal, to Jeff Biggers, is a symbol of lives lost, land destroyed and the worst of big business with too much political clout. But, to him, the black and dusty rock is also a symbol of his and so many Illinoisans’ heritage – one that in many ways has been all but erased. Amid the […]

The third book in Mike Shepherd’s historical fiction trilogy of Mick Scott’s adventures as a soldier and a spy has an Illinois flavor, like the others, though it ranges to distant Cambodia, Vietnam and even New York City. Who in Springfield, doesn’t have friends who attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale? Shepherd, who today resides in […]

Sleigh rides in Springfield. Christmas at Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s house in Nauvoo. Recipes from Collinsville’s “Queen of Cookies.” A Greenville Civil War soldier’s Christmas letter to his wife. The nation’s oldest Santa Claus parade in Peoria. Chicago carol singalongs with Studs Terkel. A Great Depression Christmas in Marion. And ethnic Christmas traditions statewide. Christmas […]

Nearly 10 years ago Rosemary Thornton drove to Springfield from Alton to give a talk at Lincoln Library about Sears homes. As the library’s program director, I remember her coming early in the day so we could drive through various Springfield neighborhoods “hunting.” Our game? The elusive “Savoy,” “Kilbourne,” “Ashmore” or “Oakdale.” Reading her new […]

This year’s crop of Illinois books and Illinois authors is particularly rich and interesting. To put Illinoisans in the spirit of the season, University of Illinois Press offers Christmas in Illinois: A Collection of Holiday Memories, Recipes and Images. There are memories of Christmas in Kaskaskia in 1700, an 1860 Christmas brawl in Springfield, and […]

During the Prohibition Era of speakeasies, swanky gangsters and machine gun massacres, Illinois was home to some of the most powerful and respected figures in the underworld. When it comes to Illinois bootleggers, most people think of Al Capone in Chicago, but the rest of the state had its own collection of criminal figures who […]

Fans of fanciful, history-inspired books like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter will surely find Lincoln and Darwin – Shared Visions of Race, Science and Religion a tough slog through the mid-19th century. This book seriously searches for, and finds, common ground for two intellectual giants, separated by an ocean, who never even met. But once you’re […]