Lamar Public Library

The story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat, starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the book return slot at the Spencer, Iowa, Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director, Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff,...

Mildred Armstrong Kalish's "Little Heathens" is a compelling memoir of her hardscrabble life on an Iowa farm during the 1930s. With no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.

When Arden Arrowood was four years old, her two-year-old twin sisters were stolen from the front yard of their hometown of Keokuk, Iowa, on the Mississippi River while Arden watched. Twenty years later, she returns home to confront the darkest part of her past. As the mystery unravels, the novel explores the reliability of memory, the stories we tell ourselves, and the power of love.

"Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist--even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory. All she wants...

An Iowa farmer leaves his land to his three daughters, causing strife in the family, and a strange change in all their personalities.

"Det. Maggie Kennedy-O'Keefe of the Grotto, Iowa, PD is assigned to a cold case, the murder of her 16-year-old best friend, Eve Knox, after two kids find a new piece of evidence, Eve's boot, in the cave where Maggie found Eve's body 25 years earlier."-- Grotto, Iowa. Twenty-five years ago, the body of sixteen-year-old Eve Knox was found in the caves near her home. The body was discovered by her best friend, Maggie, and her sister, Nola. There were...

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

In the midst of a 1981 meteor shower in Iowa, a homicidal maniac escapes from prison and returns to the farm where his nineteen-year-old son, Ry, must summon three childhood toys--Mr. Furrington, Jesus Christ, and Scowler--to protect himself, his eleven-year-old sister, Sarah, and their mother.

"Juniper Baker had just graduated from high school and was deep in the throes of a summer romance when Cal and Beth Murphy, a childless couple who lived on a neighboring farm, were brutally murdered. When her younger brother became the prime suspect, June's world collapsed and everything she loved that summer fell away. She left, promising never to return to tiny Jericho, Iowa. Until now. Officially, she's back in town to help an ill friend manage...

Reverend John Ames is dying in 1956 in Gilead, Iowa, and he in recording his family's story. Glory Boughton has returned to care for her dying father and soon her brother, Jack, the prodigal son, comes home, too.