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An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago.

 Chicago house music originated in the city’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You’ll learn about house music’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar “Artek” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It’s a story about much more than music—it’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon.

Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today. 

Chicago Heights was long the seat of one of the major street crews of the Chicago Outfit, but its importance has often been overlooked and misunderstood.

The crew's origins predate Prohibition, when Chicago Heights was a developing manufacturing center with a large Italian immigrant population. Its earliest bosses struggled for control until a violent gang war left the crew solidified under the auspices of Al Capone. For the remainder of the twentieth century, the boys from Chicago Heights generated large streams of revenue for the Outfit through its vast gambling enterprises, union infiltration and stolen auto rackets. For the first time, the history of the Chicago Heights street crew is traced from its inception through its last known boss.

Screw Capital of the World. Forest City. Home of the Rockford Peaches of A League of Their Own fame. Rockford, Illinois, has many identities, most oriented toward the past. These days, the fastener industry has mostly rusted away, the trees are less plentiful than they once were, and professional women’s baseball is no more. What defines Rockford today?

According to The Rockford Anthology, it’s the people. Those who grew up here, who came by choice or by circumstance, or who decided to leave. People who lost someone or found a voice or built community here.

In this installment of Belt’s City Anthology series, the people of Rockford represent themselves in essays, poetry, and photographs. Here, you’ll meet someone who found the space to start a business after leaving the crowd in Chicago. Academy Award–nominee Bing Liu takes you on a personal tour of his childhood houses and the ghosts that lurk there. A local attorney and activist shares how the city pushed back when ICE wanted to bring a detention center to Rockford. And you’ll learn why New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby, stand-up comedian Ashley Ray-Harris, and an introverted expat living in Taiwan always say they’re from Rockford . . . not Chicago. Whether through stories of growing up or chronicles of fights to make the city better, a sense of Rockford’s present—and future—starts to come into focus.

The Architecture of Chicago’s Beverly Hills/Morgan Park is the first complete large-format visual record published of these Southwest Side twin communities in Chicago. The historic and significant architecture and distinctive landscape of these neighborhoods is gorgeously captured by Mati Maldre in hundreds of photographic plates, maps, and illustrations, supplemented by essays by Timothy Barton, Harold Wolff, Robert Wagner, and Paul Sprague.

Many of Chicago’s most important designers are represented in this community, including Frank Lloyd Wright, George Washington Maher, Daniel H. Burnham, Robert E. Seyfarth, Dwight H. Perkins, Robert S. Smith, and Walter Burley Griffin. This community also called on noteworthy local architects, including Harry Hale Waterman, Rudolph P. Boehm, and John Todd Hetherington and his son Murray. The book also documents nationally and locally designated historic districts such as the Ridge Historic District, Longwood Drive, the Walter Burley Griffin Place District, and the Beverly/Morgan Park Railroad Station District, as well as individual designated historic houses.

This is the story of Chicago's vibrant music scene in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 1960s and 1970s was a time when jazz, rock and roll, country and western, folk, blues, and R & B flowed through the streets of Chicagoland. Much has been written about the national and international talent of that time, but not enough has been written regarding local music scenes. This story focuses on the city of Chicago (along with its suburban club scene) and the homegrown performers who made the 1960s and 1970s one of the most electrifying and memorable periods in music history. Some of those players went all the way to the big time, while others made their mark and disappeared. But they all made a difference in their own way, and for those who were there, it is a time they will never forget.

The Balaban and Katz Theater Corporationperfected the movie palaceconcept in Chicago, creating an extremely popular pastime that contributed greatly to Chicago's cultural identity.

The Balabans started in the movie theater business in 1908 by leasing the 100-seat Kedzie Nickelodeonon Kedzie Avenue. Balaban brothers Barney and A. J. dreamed of operating 5,000-seat movie palaces, so in 1916, they joined family friends Sam and Morris Katz to form the Balaban and Katz Theater Corporation. Their mission was to offer an unrivaled theater-going experience with the finest live performances and service. They built ornate theaters, such as the Chicago, the Uptown, and the Congress Theaters, filling them with fine furnishings, antiques, and artwork.Balaban and Katzproduced live stage shows between the movies with the likes of Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong, and Benny Goodman. Sadly, only a few of these gorgeous theaters still stand today.

Author David Balaban is named after his grandfather, one of the seven Balaban brothers who ran Balaban and Katz. Join him as he shares the stories and images of grandfather and great-uncles movie theaters.

Discover the untold story of the Windy City’s Ghost Shadows.

Even in a town notorious for gangsters like Al Capone, much of Chicago’s lawless lore has remained uncharted. Chicago’s Chinatown, in particular, was home to a vast criminal enterprise, strictly bound by old country rituals, rules and traditions. Few know of Moy Dong Chew, aka “Opium Dong,” one of Chinatown’s original godfathers, much less Frank Moy, his fedora-wearing predecessor. While incidents like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre dominated newspaper headlines, the Tong Wars were being waged in the shadows. Author Harrison Fillmore relates the long and sordid history of Chinatown’s underbelly from the early 1880s to the late 1980s when a Federal Indictment essentially ended organized crime’s grip on their good citizens

Rockford rightly prizes its prosperous heritage, earned by manufacturing concerns like the Rockford Watch Factory and the Manny Reaper Company. But the town once named Midway also harbors a history of crime and calamity.

Gunfire broke out in the streets when networks of Prohibition informants slid sideways. In 1893, John Hart forced his own sisters to drink poison. Three years later, James French shot down his wife in the street. Over the years, a courthouse collapsed, a factory exploded and trains collided. Join local historian Kathi Kresol as she explores the mayhem milling about in Rockford's past.

In this true crime history, a Chicago cop uncovers the epic gangland saga that led to a former bootlegger’s assassination in 1959.

When beat cop Don Herion and his partner responded to shots fired on December 16, 1959, they didn't know that they had heard the final, fatal salvo in one of the most contorted conflicts in the history of organized crime. Back in the 1930s, bootlegger and Irish mob boss Roger Touhy went to war with Al Capone and his Chicago Outfit. Then he was framed for a fake kidnapping. After twenty-six years in prison, Touhy was finally released. Less than a month later, he was murdered in an ambush. 

Touhy’s epic story of crime and punishment involves nearly all the notorious men of his day: Frank Nitti, John "Jake the Barber" Factor, Mayor Cermak, Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Baby Face Nelson, Dan "Tubbo" Gilbert, FDR and JFK. As Touhy's life was ending on his sister's front porch, Herion's quest to unravel the tangle of events that led to his assassination had just begun.

The hidden history of witchcraft in the Land of Lincoln is revealed in this unique study by the author of Haunting Illinois.

Although the Salem Witch Trials have drawn focus to New England as the center of witchcraft in American history, the practice was widespread across the Midwest. In Illinois, witchcraft—and witch persecution—have been part of local culture since French explorers arrived in the 17th century. In Witchcraft in Illinois, historian Michael Kleen presents the full story of the Prairie State's dalliance with the dark arts.

On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a witch doctor to break a hex. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, Lauron William de Laurence's occult publishing house churned out manuals for performing bizarre rituals intended to attract love and exact revenge.

Now you can put your own creative touch on the images of the Windy City found in the beloved alphabet book "C is for Chicago". With the same images and text found in the book, C is for Chicago: The Coloring Book features iconic places, food and music that make Chicago so special.

From the world-famous Art Institute Lions and to the Lincoln Park Zoo, C is for Chicago: The Coloring Book walks you through an A-Z tour of the Second City. Images include famous locations like the Millennium Park "Bean" and Grant Park's Buckingham fountain, as well as Deep-Dish Pizza, Chicago Hot Dogs, The El, and iconic jerseys of Chicago's greatest sports legends.

C is for Chicago: The Coloring Book makes a great gift for a visitor or a native Chicagoan.

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder. 

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

When the police caught up with Johann Hoch, he’d already proposed to what they believed would have been wife number fifty-five.

For a decade, he traveled the country, marrying and deserting desperate women—and five of his wives were lying in their graves. He married Marie Walcker in Chicago in 1904, and when Marie died five weeks later, he proposed to her sister while the corpse lay on the bed. The sister agreed, only to be swindled out of her savings. Adam Selzer trails jovial, big-talking Hoch through a twisting tale of Chicago journalism, Chicago justice and the coming together of some of most daring and corrupt characters the city had to offer.

Discover the haunting history—and supernatural mysteries—of this Midwestern city and its resident ghosts.

From the clamor of bygone parades to the phantom scent of burned rubber on Route 66, ghoulish and supernatural visions flourish in Bloomington-Normal . . .

Claimed by a devastating fire in 1859, the spirit of a young girl haunts Kelly’s Bakery. Visitors to Kemp Hall report seeing the specter of a lady in red. Cantankerous pitcher Charles “Old Hoss” Radhourn trolls Evergreen Memorial Cemetery. In this spooky book, Deborah Carr Senger embarks on a tour of Bloomington-Normal’s haunted heritage.

Slumbering beneath a shroud of deep forest and deliberate secrecy, Bachelors Grove Cemetery still exerts a powerful pull on paranormal pilgrims and curiosity-seekers around the world.

Shielding the orphaned burial ground from ritual and idle vandalism has also buried the rich history of this magical place. Still, its eerie presence has dominated the folklore of the southwest side of Chicago for every generation since 1838.

Brave the woods with Ursula Bielski to unearth decades of mysteries and myriad ghost stories, from the Magic House to the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove.

Unlock the secrets of shopping estate sales—and why doing so is good for your home, your style, your wallet, the planet, and even your sense of empathy.

Have you ever wanted to get into shopping estate sales but felt intimidated by the unspoken rules and norms? Bring Cash is your pocket-sized guide to navigating estate sales like a pro. Whether you’re wondering when to arrive, if haggling is allowed, or how to identify true vintage, Kate Davis of Midwest Estate Sailing on Substack is your intrepid captain. You’ll learn how to decode sign-up sheets, how to date clothing, and that—of course—cash is king.

With helpful photos, practical tips, and thoughtful insights into why estate sales are worth exploring, especially in the Midwest, Bring Cash is as entertaining as it is informative. Davis shares advice and personal anecdotes like a savvy friend, and crowd-sourced stories of great estate-sale finds help inspire you to find your own Big Find—or small prize. Slip this into your bag and take it with you to turn weekend outings into rewarding adventures.

A memoir of a life in activism by one of the original defendants in the Trial of the Chicago 7, subject of the 2020 Oscar-nominated Aaron Sorkin film of the same name.

In March 1969, eight young men were indicted by the federal government for conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. First dubbed the Conspiracy 8 and later the Chicago 7, the group included firebrands like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale. But it also included a little-known community activist and social worker from the South Side of Chicago named Lee Weiner, who was just as surprised as the rest of the country when his name was included in the indictment. The ensuing trial of the Chicago 7 became a media sensation, and it changed Weiner's life forever. In this irreverent, freewheeling memoir of an indelible moment in history--which Kirkus Reviews called a welcome addition to the library of the countercultural 1960s left--Conspiracy to Riot shows how a commitment to your ideals can change your destiny forever.

With startling relevance to today's polarized political climate, Conspiracy to Riot is a book for anyone who hopes for a better, more just world, and offers a blueprint for how to make it happen.

Divided by state lines and the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities share a common haunted heritage.

If anything, the seam that runs through the region is especially rife with spirits, from the Black Angel of Moline’s Riverside Cemetery to the spectral Confederate POWs of Arsenal Island. Of course, the city centers have their own illustrious supernatural residents - the Hanging Ghost occupies Davenport’s City Hall, while the Phantom Washwoman wanders Bettendorf’s Central Avenue. At Igor’s Bistro in Rock Island, every day is Halloween. Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin hunt down the haunted lore of this vibrant midwestern community.

Springfield has launched a lot of history, from the career of Abraham Lincoln to the wagon train that bore the doomed Donner party. But some pieces of that history stubbornly linger to haunt the present. Meet the Gibson Girl who introduced her society circle to séances and the vengeful actor who held down a leading role as mischief maker after death. From the shadows in Oak Ridge Cemetery’s Receiving Vault to specters at the Vinegar Hill Mall, Garret Moffett offers an expanded tour of the eerie corners of Springfield’s past.

With vivid, design-centric illustrations that and short whimsical rhymes, C is for Chicago shows off the iconic people, places, food and music of Chicago. This A-Z tour of the Windy City takes readers through iconic landmarks in the Second City, including Millennium Park and "The Bean", Grant Park and Buckingham Fountain, The El, The Chicago River and Navy Pier. "C is for Chicago" also highlights the food and music that make Chicago great: Chicago Hot Dogs, Deep Dish Pizza and the Chicago Blues.

Chicago ports fans won't be disappointed either with a stop at Wrigley Field and iconic Chicago sports legends' jerseys. Can you guess them all?

This Chicago children's book is a full-size picture book with gorgeous illustrations printed on premium gloss paper. Whether on a coffee table or on the nightstand, this large-format book is sure to make any local or visitor smile.

Welcome to Chicago! In this board book from bestselling children's author-illustrator Martha Day Zschock, a parent and child bear explore Chicago, Illinois. Join them on their visit to The Windy City where they take the elevated train around The Loop, ride the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier, cheer for The Cubs at Wrigley Field, eat deep dish pizza, and meet some new friends at the Lincoln Park Zoo! For ages 0-3. Made in the USA.

“A brief, cogent analysis of gentrification in Chicago . . . an incisive and useful narrative on the puzzle of urban development.”—Kirkus Reviews

There was a time when Chicago’s affluent Lincoln Park was the forefront of a battle for a new kind of urban life. In the years after World War II, a movement began to reverse the middle-class flight to the suburbs. In place of the old, poorly maintained apartments and dense streetscapes of taverns and butchers in the North Side neighborhood, rehabbers imagined a new kind of community—a renovated, modern one that held on to the convenience, diversity, and character of a historic urban quarter but also enjoyed the prosperity and privileges of a new subdivision.

But as the old buildings came down, cheap studios were combined to create ever more spacious, luxurious homes. Property values swiftly rose, and the people who were being evicted to make room for progress began to assert their own ideas about the future of Lincoln Park, with the help of the Young Lords Organization. Over the course of the 1960s, divisions within the community deepened. Letters and picket lines gave way to increasingly violent strikes and counterstrikes as each camp tried to settle the same existential questions that beguile so many cities today: Who is a neighborhood for? And who gets to decide?

This revised edition features striking archival photos, new maps, and a foreword by devin michelle bunten explaining the lasting impact and relevance of the book to Chicagoans, planners, urbanists, and all who are curious about the way cities change.

A history of betting on the East Side. Making it as a professional gambler in the first part of the twentieth century was a long shot, but wagering on the wide open scene of East St. Louis could help even the odds. Folks who were feeling lucky enough might grab a copy of Louis Cella’s racing form, or get the inside scoop from turf men like Barney Schreiber. Students of the art of bookmaking had plentiful mentors in local legends like Adam “Mulepole” Fritz. But even then, a hot streak could attract the attention of a representative of the Chicago Outfit such as Frank “Buster” Wortman. The nephew of Vic and Jim Doyle, who built the Ringside Casino into the Midwest's largest casino, author James Doyle connects the dice rolls of bygone St. Louis Kingpins to high stakes players in New York and New Orleans.

At the close of the nineteenth century, Chicago offered the world a glimpse of humanity’s most breathtaking possibilities and its most jaw-dropping horrors.

Even as the White City emerged from the ashes of the Great Fire, serial killers like H.H. Holmes stalked the sparkling new boulevards and tragic accidents plagued the factories, slums and railroads that powered the churn of industrial innovation. Ship captains spoke to the dead, while undertakers discovered reanimated corpses no longer requiring services. From posh mansions built on massacre grounds to the drowned quarries of a forest preserve, Ursula Bielski follows the dark undercurrents beneath the electric lights of the World’s Fair.

Ghost stories from the City of Gardens have never been so creepy, fun, and full of mystery!

Welcome to the spooky streets of Rockford, Illinois!

Stay alert! Ghosts lurk around every corner. Even the most unexpected places might be haunted by wandering phantoms.

Did you know the Burpee Museum is haunted by the ghosts of years past? Or that if you take a cruise down Blood Point Road, you may be chased by haunted hounds and a pickup truck determined to run you off the road? Have you heard the of the witch who kidnapped children as an act of vengeance?

Pulled right from history, these ghostly tales will change the way you see Rockford forever, and have you sleeping with the lights on!

Ghost stories from the Midwestern United States have never been so creepy, fun, and full of mystery! 

The haunted history of the Midwest comes to life—even when the main players are dead. Visit Ohio, the oldest state in the Midwest, to glimpse ghosts in the Butler County Historical Museum. Or travel to Crown Point, Indiana, and see Ruffle Shirt Hill’s Underground Railroad site. Dive into this spooky chapter book for suspenseful tales of bumps in the night, paranormal investigations, and the unexplained all across America’s Midwestern states; just be sure to keep the light on.

The true story behind a Jazz Age crime that shook the Chicago region and shaped the fates of three very different men. 

On the morning of April 14, 1926, the Inland Steel payroll delivery was hijacked in Indiana Harbor. Later that afternoon, Will County deputy sheriff and Mokena resident Walter Fisher died in a hail of gunfire just outside Orland Park. That night, the bullet-riddled body of Santo Calabrese turned up on a Broadview road.

The exact sequence of events remains uncertain, but a jury was able to trace enough of the day’s violent trajectory to send Daniel Hesly on the path to Alcatraz.

Author Matthew Galik leaps into a drama of high-speed pursuit and mistaken identity that shocked the jaded sensibilities of Prohibition-era Chicago and plunged the town of Mokena into mourning.

Follow local historian and “Ghost Lady” Kathi Kresol as she researches the spirits, curses, and curiosities from the Forest City’s shadowy past.

Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford’s rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy, a troubled and turbulent past leaving scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon’s final struggle echoes throughout the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room before gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years.

From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shares the legends and lore of Rockford’s haunted history.

Aurora was the first Illinois city to have electric streetlights, but a dark history has resisted illumination as stubborn as the chilly corner of the old roundhouse repels the summer heat.

Learn why Aurora counts City of Cemeteries among its nicknames as Diane Ladley, America's Ghost Storyteller, describes the nineteenth-century doctor suspected of trading bodies between his cancer center and a neighboring graveyard. Other eerie legends and strange stories revealed in this book include the marauding brave brought to justice in the Devil's Cave by his own tribe, the sweet legacy of NFL great Walter Payton and the elephants that saved a circus from a tornado.

Sometimes the coolest places are right outside your front door. Learning about Chicago’s interesting and unique culture has never been so super fun!

Did you know that Chicago’s Home Insurance Building was the world’s first skyscraper? Or that lacrosse was originally created by the Algonquian people? Have you ever heard that Walt Disney was born in Chicago? From the Great Chicago Fire, to delicious deep-dish pizza, Super Cities!: Chicago covers it all, and is sure to engage any reader with fun facts about the history, culture, and people who make this city great. Dive into Lake Michigan, explore Little Italy, and join in the fun at Lollapalooza, all right here. Take a peek inside to learn more about the impressive, unusual, super history of Chicago!

Historic, haunted, chilling tales of the town of Naperville, Illinois as told by America's Ghost Storyteller. A must-read for fans of the paranormal.

Established in 1831, Naperville is one of the oldest settlements in the Greater Chicago area. The city's rich and fascinating heritage has been carefully passed down from one proud generation to the next; however, nowhere has Naperville's ghostly oral tradition and haunted history been preserved until now.

Most of Naperville's unique legends--compiled for the first time ever in these pages--arose from accounts of actual historic events and from the lives of notable personages in the city's long history. As the tragic events and persons faded from living memory, all that might remain of them would be ghost stories whispered by firelight and, later, by flashlight tucked under a teenager's chin at slumber parties.

Some eerie legends in these pages have origins that are lost in time, and still other hair-raising ghost stories included in this work are chilling contemporary, firsthand accounts of paranormal encounters within Naperville's sprawling boundaries . . . perhaps from even just down the street.

When the police caught up with Johann Hoch, he’d already proposed to what they believed would have been wife number fifty-five.

For a decade, he traveled the country, marrying and deserting desperate women—and five of his wives were lying in their graves. He married Marie Walcker in Chicago in 1904, and when Marie died five weeks later, he proposed to her sister while the corpse lay on the bed. The sister agreed, only to be swindled out of her savings. Adam Selzer trails jovial, big-talking Hoch through a twisting tale of Chicago journalism, Chicago justice and the coming together of some of most daring and corrupt characters the city had to offer.

Financial ambition, a tortured marriage, and an American city on the rise are brilliantly depicted in Frank Norris’ 1903 masterpiece. Curtis Jadwin is obsessed with speculating on the market, manipulating it so he can control the nation’s wheat supply. He neglects his wife, Laura, who seeks refuge in the arts, and in particular one artist, Sheldon Corthell. The Jadwin’s wealth buys them a mansion on Lincoln Park with an art gallery that strangers gawk at, but inside they struggle. And is Jadwin’s gambling sustainable, or is there a bear market in his future?

Curtis and Laura play out this American Dream scenario in the streets of Chicago, where they attend the opera at the Auditorium Building, visit the new art museum on the lake, and, from the comfort of their carriage, watch the trains and grain elevators. At the Board of Trade, in the pit, men yell and knock against each other, performing the theater of capitalism in front of an always crowded visitor’s gallery.

Few novels depict the struggles of marriage, the world of finance, or the rise of Chicago from the flatlands of the Midwest, as viscerally as this novel, originally published in 1903. Norris’s novel may immerse readers in a historic setting, but it’s punishing and profound themes are anything but dated.

This Belt Revivals edition features archival photographs and an introduction by Whet Moser.

With vivid, design-centric illustrations that and short whimsical rhymes, C is for Chicago Board Book shows off the iconic people, places, food and music of Chicago. This A-Z tour of the Windy City takes readers through iconic landmarks in the Second City, including Millennium Park and "The Bean", Grant Park and Buckingham Fountain, The El, The Chicago River and Navy Pier. "C is for Chicago" also highlights the food and music that make Chicago great: Chicago Hot Dogs, Deep Dish Pizza and the Chicago Blues.

Chicago ports fans won't be disappointed either with a stop at Wrigley Field and iconic Chicago sports legends' jerseys. Can you guess them all?

This Chicago children's book is a durable version of the beloved picture book C is for Chicago and is great for traveling and little hands. Whether on a coffee table or on the nightstand, this large-format book is sure to make any local or visitor smile.

Ghostly reverberations pulse for eternity in the most haunted crime scenes in Chicago.

The rat-a-tat of machine guns echoes at the site of Al Capone's St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The ghost of Louisa Luetgert makes the occasional appearance on the grounds of the old Luetgert Sausage and Packing Company—her husband, the “Sausage King,” cooked her down in a vat of meat tenderizer in 1897. Ghostly screams ring out and dogs get their hackles up at the site of serial killer H.H. Holmes's “Murder Castle” on West 63rd Street. Hundreds died at the Iroquois Theatre fire in 1903—inspectors had overlooked violations that made the venue on West Randolph Street a veritable tinderbox. Today, passersby are greeted by cold spots and pleas for help from the long-dead and perpetually tortured. The City with Broad Shoulders is burdened by souls whose lives were stolen and are seemingly in pursuit of justice and comfort—or perhaps vengeance. Author Eva Pilch guides readers on a citywide tour of the most haunted crime scenes in Chicago.

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder. 

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

Some Illinois travelers are so taken by their destination, they hunker down for eternity.

There’s something about old hotels and locales that tourists flock to. The places are experiences unto themselves, but they also thrum, sometimes quite literally, with the lingering presence of those who previously paid them a visit. At the Mineral Springs Hotel in Alton, traces of floral perfume from a woman who took her life more than a century ago greet visitors in room 220. Spirits abound at the DeSoto House Hotel in Galena, one bearing an unsettling likeness to Abraham Lincoln. At the Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago, children from the past still laugh after dark. From the polite spirit at the Inn at 835 Boutique Hotel in Springfield, who encourages guests to “turn the page,” to the specter of the jilted chambermaid at St. Charles’s Hotel Baker, author Maria Salvo Benson guides intrepid readers through hotels and getaways where previous guests never truly checked out.

Author Maria Salvo-Benson guides the intrepid through the most haunted hotels and getaways throughout the Prairie State.

First with the Chicago Sun, then the Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, the Duchess's newspaper career ran parallel to the 20th Century. She covered, as she called it, "blood, guts and sex," as well as presidents, natural disasters, women's issues, and-notably-humanitarian causes.

This volume, the first on the life and career of Virginia Marmaduke, reprints many of the famous articles from her Chicago heyday. Additionally, it documents her childhood in Carbondale, Illinois, her first newspaper job, and her return to Southern Illinois where she became a community booster, humanitarian, and beloved "all-Illinoisian."