Here's a place to talk about fiction/nonfiction set in Illinois.

Here's mine! I read the play A Raisin in the Sun, which is about a Black family looking for a new place to call home. I also read Carthage Conspiracy, which is about the trial of the murderers of Joseph Smith. That one was not as good, because it was really about legal proceedings at the time, and I found it rather boring.

The V I Warshawski series by Sara Paretsky is set in Chicago - starts with Indemnity Only.

One of the next few books I'll be reading is Indemnity Only.

Other Illinois-based books include many of those by Saul Bellow. There's also Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Ray Bradbury was a fellow Lake County, IL resident and some of his were set in a fictional Waukegan, IL.

Don't forget The Devil in the White City, about the Chicago World's Fair and The Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren, a modern classic, and Theodore Dreiser, who set his books in Chicago. Hmm, like New York, books set in Illinois tend to concentrate on a big city.

I put these in with various other states, designating them as "Illinois"

The Studs Lonigan trilogy by James T.Farrell

Some Came Running, by James Jones (takes place in Parkman, IL--near the IN border, (and some of it in Indiana). (?)

Humboldtʻs Gift, by Saul Bellow

Also in Chicago: The House on Mango Street and The Time Traveler's Wife.

One of my favorite non-fiction Illinois books is Bloody Williamson by Paul M. Angle. It was recommended to me several years ago by someone who grew up in Williamson County, IL, and who knew that my father had lived there as a young boy. The county was infamous for its criminal activity for many years. The book describes the Hatfield-McCoy type feud between two families in the latter part of the 19th century, the Herrin Massacre during the 1922 UMWA strike, the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, and gang rivalry during the Prohibition era.

Parts of Loving Frank take place in Oak Park, and Chicago, IL. Also Taliesin in Wisconsin and parts of Europe and Japan.

Jen Lancaster's memoirs take place in Chicago and surrounding areas: Bitter is the New Black, Bright Lights Big Ass and Such a Pretty Fat.

Since the more obvious Devil in the White City was already mentioned in #5 (it's the one I used for my list), I wanted to throw out a less obvious, but great novel by an Illinois author - Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin with some great details on living conditions in Chicago around the time of the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

The book reviewer in today's Chicago Tribune recommended Elizabeth Berg's Home Safe as "the Great Chicago Novel." I will have to check this one out.

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser is set in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken.

I just read So Big by Edna Ferber for Illinois - it is set in the Chicago area around the turn of the 20th century.

Picked up Native Son by Richard Wright over at the library this afternoon. Another book set in Chicago.