Michigan

Grand River: From Detroit to Lake Michigan

Grand River Avenue, or Michigan US-16 as it was ultimately designated, is one of Michigan's true "Blue Highways"--an original two-lane, blacktop road still serving as a direct path through roadside America. Originally a Native American trail, this ancient path has been a westbound route from the Straits of Detroit to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan for more than 1,000 years. Over time, it has served as a footpath, horse trail, wagon rut, stagecoach route, plank road, and ultimately a two-lane highway that gave some of America's earliest motorists their first taste of long-distance automobile travel.

Join authors Jon Milan and Gail Offen for an evening of fascinating local history. Jon and Gail will answer all your questions and invite you to share your own memories. You may even be inspired to plan a road trip of your own.

 

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

The Canton Seniors Book Group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month (except December) from 2:00-3:00 PM. No registration required.  The December meeting is used to share favorite titles and make suggestions for the coming year. Join us in this open, no-registration-required conversation.

January 25, 2018

The red tent by Anita Diamant
Also available in: audiobook | video

The story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, is told from her point of view, beginning with the story of her mothers, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. These wives of Jacob give her the gifts that are to sustain her through a damaged youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land.

Canton Seniors Book Discussion: April 26, 2018

Wolf's Mouth by John Smolens
Also available in: e-book

In 1944, Italian officer Captain Francesco Verdi is captured by Allied forces in North Africa and shipped to a POW camp in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The senior POW, the ruthless Kommandant Vogel, demands that all prisoners adhere to his Nazi dictates. His life threatened, Verdi escapes from the camp and meets up with an American woman, Chiara Frangiapani, who helps him elude capture as they flee to the Lower Peninsula. By 1956 they have become Frank and Claire Green, a young married couple building a new life in postwar Detroit. When INS agent James Giannopoulos tracks them down, Frank learns that Vogel is executing men like Frank for their wartime transgressions. As a series of brutal murders rivets Detroit, Frank is caught between American justice and Nazi vengeance. In Wolf 's Mouth, the recollections of Francesco Verdi/Frank Green give voice to the hopes, fears, and hard choices of a survivor as he strives to escape the ghosts of history.

Upcoming sessions

There are no upcoming sessions available.

From the author of A. Lincoln, a major new biography of one of America's greatest generals--and most misunderstood presidents In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield commander-turned-commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first.  Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the government's policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs . 

Also available in: e-book

We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages--of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure to delight book lovers of all stripes with its lush, full-color illustrations, The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity's most important--and universal--information technology.

"While working at the Newark Star-Ledger, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall created a popular column debating the merits of then-current television. Eventually they went on to successful careers as critics elsewhere, but the debate raged on and now comes to an epic conclusion in TV (THE BOOK). Alan and Matt have established The Pantheon of top TV shows using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing ranking system by which to order and stack them up against each other. With a mix of lively entries on critically acclaimed and commercially successful classics such as Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Star Trek, The Simpsons and Twin Peaks and illuminating essays on short-lived favorites such as Taxi, Freaks and Geeks, and My So-Called Life, TV (THE BOOK) is sure to spark conversation and debate among readers. TV (THE BOOK) is a must-have for long-time television and film buffs and for young enthusiasts who, fresh off their latest Netflix binge, are looking to expand their knowledge of the medium and wondering what show to start streaming next"--.

Looking for a good mystery and a way to earn the Connect Your Summer 2016 Super Bookworm: My Mitten badge?  Check out this selection of mysteries set in Michigan.

The 10th installment of the beloved Woods Cop Mystery series! The traditional firearm deer season in Michigan lasts two weeks, a time in which the most hunters are afield during the year and the time when most things happen. Game wardens cannot count on having any life but work during this period, and in this case Grady Service, who takes longtime violator and archrival Limpy Allerdyce on as his partner for deer season runs into the most bizarre string of big cases involving deer that he has ever encountered. Buckular Dystrophy is the term coined by Conservation Officers to describe the condition whereby people cannot help killing deer, not for sport or food, but for other reasons - an addiction of sorts, and unlike other addictions, one not medically organized, but just as real.
 

Tracking the beast by Henry Kisor

When the remains of three little girls turn up inside railroad hopper cars, Sheriff Steve Martinez faces a troublesome case, for the cars had sat for years on a siding deep inside his beloved Porcupine County. After Steve and his comrades do the spadework, the FBI moves in, thinking their Unsub is both rapist and murderer. But Steve believes the killer--or killers--instead hired someone to dispose of the bodies. With the help of lawmen of all kinds, including the Ontario Provincial Police, and even Detroit mobsters, Steve doggedly tracks "the Beast." This intricate police procedural, set in the wilds of Upper Michigan, features not only an exciting high-tech chase around Lake Superior but also the revival of a clever World War II deception.

A courtoom drama of premeditated murder as a jealous army lieutenant pleads innocent to murdering the rapist of his beautiful wife. Based on the book by Robert Traver. Set in the Upper Peninsula.

A  young couple hoping to improve both their health and their marriage, visits the spa/hospital founded and run by the inventor of corn flakes, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. He may know his breakfast food, but some of his ideas about physical fitness are a little strange.Set in Battle Creek.

1970s, Flint, Michigan. Jackie Moon is a former pop sensation who somehow made enough money from a couple of hit records to buy Flint's semi-pro basketball team, the Tropics. The team consists of a bunch of disorganized losers with one genuine talent named Coffee Black. Despite knowing little about the game, Jackie is the Tropics' coach as well as a player. His greater love involves coming up with bizarre marketing stunts to draw in an audience. His stunts include wrestling a bear and attempting a motorcycle jump over a line of cheerleaders. When the league plans to merge with the NBA and in order to survive, the Tropics must do the seemingly impossible - win. Set in Flint.

Caged warrior by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

From age three, McCutcheon Daniels, now sixteen, has been trained in mixed martial arts and must keep winning to feed his five-year-old sister and father, but chance presents an opportunity to get out of the Detroit slums using his brain instead of his fighting skills.

Titans by Victoria Scott

Seventeen-year-old Astrid Sullivan belongs to a family of compulsive gamblers, and now that her father has been laid off from his job in Detroit and lost all their money betting on the Titans, which are half-horse, half car, and race around impossible tracks, her family is falling apart--but when Astrid's new friends give her the chance to participate in this year's Titan races, she thinks she sees a way to win some money and keep her family together.

The vanishing season by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Missing city life after moving to a sleepy town in Michigan, Maggie bonds with restless but dutiful Pauline during a summer that is shattered by a serial killer who is targeting teen girls.

"In 1925 a sailboat named Bernida wins the inaugural Port Huron to Mackinac Race. She wins again in 1927. But then for decades the boat is neglected and passed from owner to owner. In 2012 with new owners, the ship once more enters the race and wins"--.

The day the Great Lakes drained away by Charles Ferguson Barker

Explore what would happen if all of the water drained from the Great Lakes and what their lake floors might look like under all that water.

An orange for Frankie by Patricia Polacco

Frankie and his eight brothers and sisters learn lessons about giving, family, and tradition during a snowy Michigan Christmas long ago.

Hidden by Helen Frost

Years after Darra Monson's father stole a minivan with Wren Abbott hiding in the back, the girls come face to face at summer camp and together they try to work through what happened to them and the impact it had on their lives.

Willow Run by Patricia Reilly Giff

During World War II, after moving with her parents to Willow Run, Michigan, when her father gets a job in the B-24 bomber-building factory, eleven-year-old Meggie learns about different kinds of bravery from all of the people around her.

Having earned a scholarship to a private girls' high school, self-proclaimed psychic investigator Gilda Joyce investigates the circumstances surrounding the drowning death of a student whose ghost supposedly haunts the campus.

Michigan author Joseph Heywood will visit the Adrian District Library on Saturday, April 23, at 1:00 p.m.

Heywood is the author of the Woods Cop mystery series featuring Conservation Officer Grady Service.  Buckular Dystrophy, the tenth book in the series, was released March 1.  In addition to being an author, Heywood is a photographer, artist, cartoonist and poet.  

Following Heywood’s presentation there will time for questions and book signing.  Copies of his new book will be available to purchase.

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