The story of the Bergson family and their friends and neighbors. Describes the pioneers' struggle for survival in the barren, underdeveloped Nebraska tableland.

At the age of 17, Randall Hunsacker shoots his mother's boyfriend, steals a car and comes close to killing himself. His second chance lies in a small Nebraska farm town, where the landmarks include McKibben's Mobil Station, Frmka's Superette, and a sign that says The Wages of Sin is Hell. This is Goodnight, a place so ingrown and provincial that Randall calls it "Sludgeville"-until he starts thinking of it as home.
In this pitch-perfect...

In Sixteen Brides, Civil War widows living in St. Louis are lured west by promises of prime homesteads in a booming community. When the unsuspecting women arrive at Plum Grove, Nebraska, sparks fly as they meet bachelors convinced they've come to marry them. The widows will need all the courage and faith they can muster to survive these unwanted circumstances-especially since appearances are so deceiving.

Timothy Schaffert has created his most memorable character yet in Essie, an octogenarian obituary writer for her family's small town newspaper. When a young country girl is reported to be missing, perhaps whisked away by an itinerant aerial photographer, Essie stumbles onto the story of her life. Or, it all could be simply a hoax, or a delusion, the child and child-thief invented from the desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn woman. Either

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The brutal murders of three young boys paralyze the citizens of Platte City, Nebraska. What's worse is the grim realization that the man recently executed for the crimes was a copycat. When Sheriff Nick Morrelli is called to the scene of another grisly murder, it becomes clear that the real predator is still at large, waiting to kill again.

Morrelli understands the urgency of the case terrorizing his community, but it's the experienced

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In the rural town of Verdon, Nebraska, in the early days of the 20th century, you can't go ten feet without running into one of the Fargos. So, Grant Fargo argues to his grandfather Lincoln, it's perfectly all right that he's desperately in love with his first cousin, Bella-she's the only source of intelligent conversation for miles, and in a town like Verdon, it would be hard not to end up with a relative of one kind or another. Before it all...

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven year old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, returns to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a coma, Mark believes that this woman is really an impostor who looks just like his sister. Shattered, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, who eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines

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Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of the making of a young American soldier Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist of this beautifully modulated novel, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with...

"Edythe Amsel is delighted with her first teaching assignment: a one-room schoolhouse in Walnut Hill, Nebraska. Independent, headstrong, and a strong believer in a well-rounded education, Edythe is ready to open the world to the students in this tiny community. But is Walnut Hill ready for her? Joel Townsend is thrilled to learn the town council hired a female teacher to replace the ruthless man who terrorized his nephews for the past two years. Having...