Illinois Public Media News

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, novelist Shelby Van Pelt now makes her home in Wheaton, Illinois. Her debut novel, "Remarkably Bright Creatures," has been a huge hit, reportedly selling more than two million copies. It's also been made into a movie by Netflix. We'll talk with Van Pelt about her life and work.

Fraud is all around us, from pyramid schemes to spam phone calls. Illinois-based forensic accountant Kelly Richmond Pope writes about why people do it — and how we can better protect ourselves — in her book “Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry.”

From the Billy Goat to the Black Sox, the idea that the Cubs and White Sox were cursed is a key part of Illinois baseball lore. Author Addy Baird explores those stories and more in her new book, The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses.

This fall, Illinois voters in at least seven more counties will be asked whether they support splitting the state in two. One of the groups leading the push, New Illinois — tagline: "Leave Illinois Without Moving" — wants to carve off Cook County. That would leave the state's other 101 counties, from Lake and Winnebago in the north to Alexander and Massac in the south, to form "New Illinois."

The 21st Show has covered this movement before, but it's getting national attention this year thanks in part to reporting from Connor Towne O'Neill, who has covered the story for NPR, including a feature on All Things Considered and a full episode of The Sunday Story podcast. O'Neill also worked on NPR's White Lies podcast, whose first season was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Kevin Williams was a college sophomore in Ohio when he started driving around Michigan and Indiana, knocking on the doors of Amish women with a pitch: write a weekly newspaper column about your life, tack on a recipe, and he'd get it into print. He heard "no" most of the day. Then, in Adams County, Indiana, one woman said yes.

That column, "The Amish Cook," is still running — these days written by an Illinois woman named Gloria Yoder — and it set Williams on more than three decades of reporting on the Amish and other people dedicated to simple living.

His new memoir is Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers, and Other Plain People.