Central Kansas Library System

Worn out from nursing soldiers at a Milwaukee hospital and struggling to recover from a traumatic love affair, Amanda Starkey returns to her family's rural Wisconsin farm to stay with her beloved sister, Mattie, and a young niece, Ruth. An Oprah Book Club selection and bestseller in hardcover, Drowning Ruth, now in paperback, is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart. Schwarz's first novel explores...

"In rural Iowa, life is both the planter and uprooter of dreams. As love, long delayed, springs to life in the heart of a young Swedish immigrant, one man struggles with his withered ambitions--and new blessings that could take their place if he would but allow them room."--Page 4 of cover.

Grandkids try to fool grandpa on April Fools Day, but Grandma is the one to trick him.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke’s world.

A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip...

When Otis the tractor becomes trapped in a burning barn, after rescuing kittens, his animal friends and local firefighters come to his aid.

A New York lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with a pioneer Bohemian girl. A novel set in Nebraska about pioneering Bohemian farmers & of the courageous heroine, Antonia. First published in 1918. In Willa Cather's own estimation, My Antonia, first published in 1918, was "the best thing I've ever done." An enduring paperback bestseller on Houghton Mifflin's literary list, this hauntingly eloquent classic now boasts a new...

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. in a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and...

"Although most Old Order Amish women her age spend their hours managing a household and raising babies, Sylvia Fisher has just one focus - tending and nurturing her family's dairy herd. Then a dangerous connection with an old beau forces her to move, and she decides to pour her energy into reviving another family's failing farm. But after months in rehab, Aaron Blank returns home to sell his Daed's farm and give his parents an easier lifestyle. Can...

The people, animals, and objects on the farm explain their relationship with the dirt, which is used and needed by all.

A brother and sister spend a delightful day at Grammy's farm.