Illinois book series in reading order

by Charlene Ann Baumbich

Jill Churchill was the pen name of Janice Young Brooks (1943-2023), an American author whose first Jane Jeffry novel took both the Agatha and the Macavity Award. The Jane Jeffry mysteries place a single mother as the detective in Chicago, and the Grace & Favor series runs alongside them. Churchill also wrote historical romance and nonfiction, beginning with Kings and Queens: The Plantagenets of England in 1975. Thirty-eight catalogued books close with The Accidental Florist (2007).

Andrew M. Greeley's catalogue spans fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and runs to 82 books published between 1967 and 2010. Subjects settle on the Catholic Church, its clergy, Irish Americans and Chicago. Blackie Ryan and Nuala Anne McGrail are the recurring detectives; other groupings include the O'Malley's family saga, Time Between The Stars, Passover and the World Of Maggie Ward. The listing opens with Letters to Nancy (1967) and ends with Chicago Catholics and the Struggles Within Their Church (2010).

Kimberla Lawson Roby writes about African American families, marriage and the church. The Reverend Curtis Black series, opening with Casting the First Stone (2000), is the long-running sequence, and Behind Closed Doors (1996) came before it. Clergy, spouses of clergy and life in Illinois are recurring subjects. Twenty-nine books run to Sister Friends Forever in 2022, and nothing new has appeared since.

Denise Swanson is an American mystery writer. The Scumble River Mysteries are set in a fictional Illinois town, and the Devereaux's Dime Store Mysteries in a small fictional town in Missouri. Catalogue subjects name Skye Denison as a recurring fictional character and list school psychologists, murder, investigation and women sleuths. The catalogue holds 46 books running from Murder of a Small-Town Honey (2000) to Wedding Jitters and Stormy Rivers (2026). Welcome Back To Scumble River, Chef-To-Go Mysteries, Stephanie Danielson and Forever Charmed Mysteries are the other series listed. Swanson has been nominated for the Agatha Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

Dan Simmons

41 books• 9 series

Dan Simmons (1948-2026) wrote science fiction and horror, often mixing the two inside a single novel. The Hyperion Cantos is Simmons's central work, opening with Hyperion (1989) and continuing in The Fall of Hyperion (1990); the Ilium cycle is the other major sequence. Song of Kali (1985), his first book, won the World Fantasy Award. Simmons also wrote mysteries and thrillers, some following the recurring character Joe Kurtz, plus standalone horror, short fiction and non-fiction. 41 catalogued titles run to Omega Canyon (2020) at a median of 480 pages, with the 1990s his heaviest decade.

Ralph McInerny (February 24, 1929 to January 29, 2010) was an American novelist and a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Father Dowling is the priest at the centre of the most popular McInerny mysteries, which were adapted as the Father Dowling Mysteries television series from 1987 to 1991. The catalogue holds 110 books from Jolly Rogerson (1967) to A Student's Guide to Philosophy (2014), including philosophy titles such as Thomism in an Age of Renewal (1968). Other series include Sister Mary Teresa, Andrew Broom and Notre Dame. McInerny also used the pen names Monica Quill, Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey and Edward Mackin.

Ray Bradbury

132 books• 13 series

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is the novel Ray Bradbury is best known for, alongside the short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951) and The October Country (1955). Bradbury (22 August 1920 – 5 June 2012) was an American author and screenwriter whose work covered fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery and realistic fiction. Dandelion Wine (1957) is a coming-of-age novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) a dark fantasy, and Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) a fictionalized memoir. The catalogue reaches back to Kaleidoscope (1940) and Dark Carnival (1947), and Green Town and Crumley Mysteries are among the series.

Glendy Vanderah has 3 catalogued books: Where the Forest Meets the Stars (2019), The Light Through the Leaves (2021) and The Oceanography of the Moon (2022). Illinois is the setting recorded in the subjects. No new title has appeared since 2022, and the catalogue is marked dormant.