"In the small town of Big Burr, Kansas, ministers warn that "Satan was the first to demand equal rights," a lesbian-owned bed and breakfast mysteriously burns to the ground, and casually bigoted social media posts are the norm. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr "the most homophobic town in America" and sends in a task force in a Real World-style experiment - as residents for two years, they'll attempt to broaden hearts and minds - no one...

Written with the wisdom and grace readers have come to expect from the award-winning author of "The Virgin of Small Plains, " this brilliantly moving tale is one of family, murder, and redemptive love.

After her mother's suicide, fifteen year-old Lane Roanoke lived with her grandparents and cousin Allegra on their rural Kansas estate. Lane embraced life as one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But after discovering the dark truth about the family, she ran . . . fast and far away. Eleven years later, Allegra goes missing. Did she run too? Or something worse?

V.I. Warshawski travels to Kansas to investigate the disappearances of a young film student and a faded Hollywood star, but long-simmering racial tensions stir up more mysteries as the body count rises.

Abandoned by her fugitive ex-husband, Lily Brown is rebuilding her life on the edge of a Kansas town that still feels the sting of his crimes. Lily lies low, managing the isolated storage facility where she lives with her twelve-year-old son, Everett, and planning a better future for them both. That requires keeping secrets. Everett has them too. After breaking into a storage unit, Everett finds photographs and news clippings of five girls missing...

At first reluctant to move to Kansas despite his parents' enthusiasm, eight-year-old Charles has many adventures in his new home, from nearly falling through the ice on a frozen pond to fighting a prairie fire threatening their cabin.

In 1928, the boy who will discover Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, is on the family farm, grinding a lens for his own telescope under the immense Kansas sky. In Flagstaff, Arizona, the staff of Lowell Observatory is about to resume the late Percival Lowell's interrupted search for Planet X. Meanwhile, the immensely rich heir to a chemical fortune has decided to go west to hunt for dinosaurs and in Cambridge, Massachussetts, the most beautiful girl in America...

Marilynne Robinson discusses and reads from her book Gilead with James Wood.

Merinac, Kansas. Chicken Mimi's and Chicken Frannie's have spent a century vying to serve up the best friend chicken in the state. The legendary feud between the owners-- the Moores and the Pogociellos-- has caught widow Amanda Moore in the middle. She had worked for her mom at Mimi's before marrying Frank Pogociello and working for Frannie's. When she convinces Food Wars, a reality-TV competition, to cover the feud, Amanda and her sister Mae must...