Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Willa Cather, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, considered My Ãntonia to be one of her best works, and critic H.L. Mencken claimed it was one of the best American novels ever written. Published in 1918, the novel compassionately and intimately traces the story of a Bohemian family as they settle on the Great Plains in Nebraska. This American classic is still lauded internationally by scholars and everyday... (more)

Room One: A Mystery or Two

by Andrew Clements

Ted Hammond loves a good mystery, and in the spring of his fifth-grade year, he's working on a big one. How can his school in the little town of Plattsford stay open next year if there are going to be only five students? Out here on the Great Plains in western Nebraska, everyone understands that if you lose the school, you lose the town. But the mystery that has Ted's full attention at the moment is about that... (more)

O Pioneers!

by Willa Cather

"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." . . . "The land belongs to the future . . . that's the way it seems to me. . . . I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it -- for a little while." -- Willa Cather, O Pioneers! Willa Cather... (more)

Savvy

by Ingrid Law

A vibrant new voice . . . a modern classic. For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a magical secret. They each possess a “savvy”—a special supernatural power that strikes when they turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, her older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity . . . and now it’s the eve of Mibs’s big day. As if waiting weren’t hard enough, the family gets scary news two days... (more)

The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

A secretive magicianÂ’s death becomes the catalyst for his partnerÂ’s journey of self-discovery in this Â“enchantingÂ” book (San Francisco Chronicle) Â“that is something of a magic trick in itself-a 1990s love story with the grace and charm of a nineteenth-century novelÂ” (Newsweek).

A Lantern in Her Hand

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

After marrying Will Deal and moving to Nebraska, Abbie endures the difficulties of frontier life and raises her children to pursue the ambitions that were once her own.

My Antonia (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by Willa Cather

My Ántonia, by Willa Cather , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars... (more)

My A?ntonia

by Willa Cather

My Antonia is a classic tale of pioneer life in the American Midwest. The novel details daily life in the newly settled plains of Nebraska through the eyes of Jim Burden, who recounts memories of a childhood shared with a girl named Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of a family who have emigrated from Bohemia. As adults, Jim leaves the prairie for college and a career in the east, while Antonia devotes herself to her... (more)

The Children's Blizzard (P.S.)

by David Laskin

Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America’s heartland would never be the same. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into... (more)

Old Jules (Bison Book S.)

by Mari Sandoz

First published in 1935, Old Jules is unquestionably Mari Sandoz's masterpiece. This portrait of her pioneer father grew out of 'the silent hours of listening behind the stove or the wood box, when it was assumed, of course, that I was asleep in bed. So it was that I heard the accounts of the hunts, . . .of the fights with the cattlemen and the sheep-men, of the tragic scarcity of women, when a man had to 'marry... (more)

Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

After the loss of their mother, the Jones children--Larken, Gaelan, and Bonnie--have grown into adulthood under the shadow of unresolved grief and become encased in town myth. Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Aneira Hope Jones, the woman swallowed up by a tornado, never to return to earth, and of the painful legacy bestowed on her children, always longing for the gift of their mother's... (more)

The Floor of the Sky (Flyover Fiction)

by Pamela Carter Joern

In the Nebraska Sandhills, nothing is more sacred than the bond of family and land—and nothing is more capable of causing deep wounds. In Pamela Carter Joern's riveting novel The Floor of the Sky , Toby Jenkins, an aging widow, is on the verge of losing her family's ranch when her granddaughter Lila—a city girl, sixteen and pregnant—shows up for the summer. While facing painful decisions about her future, Lila... (more)

Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives Series)

Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives Series)

by Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska—an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention. Memories of his grandmother’s cooking are juxtaposed with reflections about the old-fashioned outhouse on his property. When casting his eye on social progress, Kooser reminds us that the closing of local... (more)

Worth

by A. LaFaye

Before the accident Nathaniel's life seemed pretty good. His help around the farm made his father proud. But now, with a busted leg, Nathaniel can't do farmwork anymore, so his father adopts another son through the Orphan Train. Feeling replaced and useless, Nathaniel attends school for the first time. Meanwhile, sturdy and strong John is able to do the work that earns Pa's attention. But the truth is, John Worth... (more)

The Man Who Ate the 747

by Ben Sherwood

This is a story of the greatest love, ever. An outlandish claim, outrageous perhaps, but trust me-- And so begin the enchanting, unforgettable tale of J. J. Smith, Keeper of the Records for The Book of Records, an ordinary man searching for the extraordinary. J.J. has clocked the world's longest continuous kiss, 30 hours and 45 minutes. He has verified the lengthiest single unbroken apple peel, 172 feet and 4... (more)

The Echo Maker: A Novel

by Richard Powers

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman–who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister–is really an identical impostor. Shattered by her... (more)

Night of the Twisters

by Ivy Ruckman

When a tornado watch is issued one Tuesday evening in June, twelve-year-old Dan Hatch and his best friend, Arthur, don’t think much of it. After all, tornado warnings are a way of life during the summer in Grand Island, Nebraska. But soon enough, the wind begins to howl, and the lights and telephone stop working. Then the emergency siren starts to wail. Dan, his baby brother, and Arthur have only seconds to get to... (more)

A White Bird Flying (Bison Book S.)

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Abbie Deal, the matriarch of a pioneer Nebraska family, has died at the beginning of A White Bird Flying , leaving her china and heavy furniture to others and to her granddaughter Laura the secret of her dream of finer things. Grandma Deal's literary aspirations had been thwarted by the hard circumstances of her life, but Laura vows that nothing, no one, will deter her from a successful writing career. Childhood... (more)

Prairie Songs

by Pam Conrad

A native of the Nebraska prairie watches as her neighbor, a doctor's wife from New York, succumbs to madness.

The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate

The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate

by Michael Williamson

The best-selling author of Route 66 and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer celebrate America's first transcontinental highway in all its neon glory. It began in 1913 with a glorious new highway—stretching across 3,389 miles and 13 states—that connected the bright lights of Broadway with the foggy shores of San Francisco. It was a magnificent and meandering road that enticed millions of newly... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: nebraska

by Willa Cather

by Andrew Clements

by Willa Cather

by Ingrid Law

by Ann Patchett

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

by Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

by David Laskin

by Mari Sandoz

by Stephanie Kallos

by Pamela Carter Joern

by Ted Kooser

by A. LaFaye

by Ben Sherwood

by Richard Powers

by Ivy Ruckman

by Bess Streeter Aldrich

by Pam Conrad

by Michael Williamson