Illinois

Martha Bergland, A Farm under a Lake. Fiction
A nurse driving her elderly charge to Illinois recalls the events of the summer before her marriage.

Carrie Brown, The Hatbox Baby. Fiction
A premature baby brought to an incubator exhibit at the World’s Fair touches many lives.

Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street. Fic
A girl in the Hispanic section of Chicago would rather live in a big white house like the ones on TV.

Barbara D’Amato, Authorized Personnel Only. Mystery
Two patrol officers become temporary detectives when the police force is stricken by food poisoning.

Stuart Dybek, The Coast of Chicago. Fiction
A series of interconnected stories that bring to life Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods and varied people.

David Ellis, Life Sentence. Fiction
A state senator’s legal counselor is blackmailed because of a secret in his past.

Sara Paretsky, Tunnel Vision. Mystery
V.I. Warshawski tries to help a homeless family she finds living in her condemned Loop office building.

Robert Rand, My Suburban Shtetl. Fiction
A novel about growing up in the Jewish community of Skokie in the 1960s and 1970s.

Indiana

Jeanne Dams, Silence Is Golden. Mystery
A Swedish immigrant maid in 1903 South Bend fears her brother may be hiding a deadly secret.

Sara Frommer, Murder & Sullivan. Mystery
A judge is murdered onstage during a performance of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

Haven Kimmel, The Solace of Leaving Early. Fiction
A woman returns to her hometown where she learns a childhood friend has died.

Marjorie Reynolds, The Starlite Drive-In. Fiction
In the summer of 1956, a girl’s mother is drawn to a drifter who comes to work at the family drive-in.

Jean Shepherd, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Fiction
A New York-based writer reminisces about his childhood in small-town Indiana in the Depression.

Iowa

Douglas Bauer, Book of Famous Iowans. Fiction
A journalist recalls the summer of 1957 when his mother had an affair that scandalized their town.

Ed Gorman, Save the Last Dance for Me. Mystery
A P.I. must solve the murder of a fundamentalist preacher before presidential candidate Richard Nixon arrives in town.

Donald Harstad, Eleven Days. Mystery
An Iowa deputy investigates ritual murders in a small town that may be linked to a Satanic cult.

Peter Hedges, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Fic
A young man feels trapped by his eccentric family until he meets the new girl in town.

Mary Howard, Discovering the Body. Fiction
A woman who helped convict a neighbor of a friend’s murder begins to doubt his guilt.

Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres. Fiction
Dark family secrets are revealed when a farmer announces his intention to turn his farm over to his three daughters and the youngest refuses.

Kentucky

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow. Fiction
A barber observes life in the small town of Port William in the middle of the 20th century.

Corson Hirschfeld, Too High. Mystery
An archeologist visiting Kentucky arrives to find his cousin dead and rattlesnakes on the loose.

Silas House, Clay’s Quilt. Fiction
A coal miner who witnessed his mother’s death as a boy tries to piece together her troubled life.

Karen Robards, Paradise County. Fiction
A woman returns to her family’s horse farm to find out why her father killed himself.

Gwen Rubio, Icy Sparks. Fiction
A girl with undiagnosed Tourette’s Syndrome grows up in the hill country of Kentucky.

Michigan

Loren Estleman, Smile on the Face of a Tiger. Mystery
Detroit P.I. Amos Walker tracks down an author who may know too much about a 1943 race riot.

Steve Hamilton, A Cold Day in Paradise. Mystery
An ex-cop on the Upper Peninsula is stalked by someone who appears to be the man currently in prison for killing his old partner.

Jim Harrison, Farmer. Fiction
A farmer in the Upper Peninsula is torn between what he knows and loves and a longing to escape.

Jon Jackson, Man with an Axe. Mystery
Detroit cop Fang Mulheisen discovers notebooks left by his late mentor linking the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa to a saxophone player.

Scott Lasser, Battle Creek. Fiction
An amateur baseball coach vows that this year his team will win the national championship.

John Smolens, Cold. Fiction
A convict’s escape in a blizzard on the Upper Pen-insula leads to a violent clash at a hunting lodge.

Minnesota

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River. Fiction
A father takes his kids across Minnesota & North Dakota looking for his son who escaped from prison.

Jon Hassler, Staggerford. Paperback Fiction
A week in the life of a bachelor schoolteacher in a small Minnesota town.

Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days. Fiction
A collection of tales of life in a small town.

William Kent Krueger, Iron Lake. Mystery
A detective thinks a judge’s apparent suicide and the disappearance of his paperboy are connected.

Lorna Landvik, Patty Jane’s House of Curl. Fiction
A woman with a missing husband opens a beauty salon with the help of her mother-in-law and sister.

Sinclair Lewis, Main Street. Fiction
A woman feels restricted by life in a small town.

John Sandford, Naked Prey. Fiction
Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport investigates an apparent lynching in the snowy north woods.

Faith Sullivan, The Cape Ann. Fiction
A girl and her mother living in rented rooms during the Depression dream of owning their own home.

Missouri

Jonis Agee, South of Resurrection. Fiction
Old issues arise when a woman returns to her Ozark hometown to sell her parents’ home.

Fannie Flagg, Standing in the Rainbow. Fiction
A boy whose mother hosts a radio show from their living room grows up in the 1940s and ‘50s.

Janis Harrison, Roots of Murder. Mystery
A florist investigates the death of an Amish man known for growing fine flowers.

Robert Randisi, Blood on the Arch. Mystery
A St. Louis cop investigates a murder on the tram to the top of the Gateway Arch.

Ohio

Jill Bialosky, House under Snow. Fiction
A Cleveland girl worries about her mother who is troubled and withdrawn after her husband’s death.

Craig Holden, The Jazz Bird. Fiction
A bootlegger confesses to killing his wife in 1920s Cincinnati, but his motive is unclear.

Les Roberts, The Duke of Cleveland. Mystery
A P.I. enters the world of artists in Cleveland Heights seeking a man who owes a client $18,000.

Mark Winegardner, Crooked River Burning. Fiction
The story of 20th century Cleveland centers on a man from the blue collar West Side who loves a girl from wealthy Shaker Heights.

Wisconsin

A. Manette Ansay, Midnight Champagne. Fiction
During a blizzard, one couple gets married in a chapel while another couple breaks up at a motel.

Mary Logue, Blood Country. Mystery
A deputy in the bluff country along the Mississippi investigates the death of her neighbor.

Christina Schwarz, Drowning Ruth. Fiction
A World War I nurse returns to her north Wisconsin home and stays on to care for her niece when her sister drowns in mysterious circumstances.

Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road. Fiction
The lives of three women in Green Bay from 1956 to the present.

Steve Thayer, The Wheat Field. Fiction
A married couple are found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a Wisconsin wheat field.