Central Kansas Library System

Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.

One late fall Sunday in southern Minnesota, a farmer brings a load of soybeans to a local grain elevator- and a young man hits him on the head with a steel bar, drops him into the grain bin, waits until he's sure he's dead, and then calls the sheriff to report the "accident." Suspicious, the sheriff calls in Virgil Flowers, who quickly breaks the kid down...and the next day the boy's found hanging in his cell. Remorse? Virgil isn't so sure, and as...

In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You're about to get a visitor. It's an Israeli cop, and she is tailing a man who has smuggled out an extraordinary relic, a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon. Wait a minute, laughs Virgil. Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals? The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation,...

Summoned by Lucas Davenport to investigate a pair of murders in which the victims are found with lemons in their mouths, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers struggles to find a connection that could prevent additional killings.

As the lone female in a houseful of men, Merrill Krause dedicates her life to caring for her family and their business, as her dying mother asked. Besides, it suits her; she's never felt like she fits what most people expect in a girl. She'd rather work with her father's horses and assist with the ice harvest. And though she's been mostly content up to this point, a part of her wonders if there will ever be anyone who will notice her amid the bevy...

"From award-winning author Benjamin Percy comes an explosive, breakout speculative thriller in which a powerful new metal arrives on Earth in the wake of a meteor shower, triggering a massive new "Gold Rush" in the Midwest and turning life as we know it on its head. The first of a cycle of novels set in a shared universe"-- It began with a comet. At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became...

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance. This is the story of one such child. As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast...

After getting married and settling at Wild Plum Creek, David's and Caroline's lives are turned upside down when disaster strikes and David must go east to find work for the winter.

"It's 1956 and it's summertime in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. The Doo Dads are singing "My Girl" on the radio and on the porch of the big green house on Green Street, fourteen-year-old Gary is studying pictures of naked women, aware that Grandpa is looking down from the window of heaven and wondering how a Sanctified Brethren boy could turn out so badly. He has never so much as kissed a girl, except his rebellious cousin Kate, a sophisticate of seventeen...