The year of her 15th birthday is one that Lara Grellier will never forget. The first Gulf War is raging in the Middle East; her unstable mother has become increasingly erratic in her behavior; the townspeople in Lawrence, Kan., are leery of the two unmarried women who have moved into the area and are rumored to be Wiccans, and Lara's brother has run off to join the Army.

Nearly 25 years after Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." Gilead tells the story of America and will break your heart.

To her parents, she's Victoria Iphigenia. To her friends, she's Vic. But to clients seeking her talents as a detective, she's V.I. And her new case will lead her from her native Chicago... and into Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star. Accompanied by her dog, V.I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished -- and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions,...

"2016. The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals is in trouble. Ariel discovers that her mother Mona's animal sanctuary in Western Kansas has not only been the target of anti-Semitic hate crimes, it is also for sale, due to hidden financial ruin. Ariel, living a new life in progressive Lawrence, and estranged from her mother for six years, returns to her childhood home - and finds her first love, a ranch hand named Gideon, still working at the Bright...

Kansas, 1881. On a trip to visit relatives, Emma Switzer's Amish family is robbed of all their possessions. Walking into the nearest trading settlement, they pray to the Lord for someone to help. When a man lands in the dust at her feet, Emma looks down and thinks, The Lord might have cleaned him up first. But Curtis Carson, heading up his first cattle drive, was not planning on being the answer to anyone's prayers. But it looks as though God has...

"Growing up on their hardscrabble farm in rural Kentucky, fifteen-year-old Albertina "Bertie" Winslow has learned a lot from her mama, Polly. She knows how to lance a boil, make a pie crust, butcher a pig, and tend to every chore that needs doing. What she doesn't know, but is forced to reckon with all too soon, is how to look after children as a mother should ...When Polly succumbs to a long illness, Bertie takes on responsibility for her four younger...

"'Some years ago, in Dodge, I was a sporting woman. I didn't mind whoring--it can be good work in the right house--but it demands a great deal of keeping still, and I'm one of those itchy, fidgety sorts who's always looking out the window or glancing toward the door, so it was only a matter of time until I had to move on.' In the Spring of 1877, Bridget-sixteen years old and already disillusioned after caring for her alcoholic father--is orphaned...

"Suzanne Zimmerman was only seventeen and pregnant when her shamed mother quietly sent her away from their Old Order Mennonite community in Kansas. With her old home, family, and first love firmly behind her, Suzanne moved to Indiana, became a nurse, and raised a daughter, Alexa, on her own. Now, nearly twenty years later, an unexpected letter arrives from Kansas. Her brother asks her to bring her nursing abilities home and care for their ailing mother....

6 Starred Reviews and a New York Public Library Best Book of 2017!

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson's epic tale—told through three unforgettable points of view—is a masterful exploration of how love, determination, and hope can change a person's fate.

2065: Adri has been handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived

...

The story covers one Labor Day week-end in a small Kansas town, and tells about the impact a virile drifter has on the lives of several women in town.