If you are a registered user of the Nebraska Talking Book and Braille Service (TBBS) and would like to order any of the books from the following list, please a) click the checkbox next to the books you would like to request, b) fill out the mailing information at the end, c) then click the send order button.

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. Short stories about ordinary folks in Kansas who find mystery, magic, and transcendence in mundane life. Written by O. Henry award-winning author, who is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas. Contains strong language. 2005. Narrated by Janet Remmenga. (6 hours, 50 minutes)

A devotional novel about Jerry Johnson, a thirty-six-year-old ranch hand from Broken Bow, Nebraska, who moves to a small county seat in Kentucky where he lives for three years and then dies. Six individuals tell in their own words how Jerry's short time with them changed their lives. Narrated by Jack Barron and Wendy Hirsch.

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. An aging widow struggles to keep the family ranch in the heart of the Nebraska Sandhills. Her unwed granddaughter travels from Minneapolis to spend the summer with her in order to wait out the last months of her unplanned pregnancy. The grandmother revisits her own youth when she and her lover David were teenage runaways, and the tragic consequences. Other family secrets emerge, which test the strength of family bonds. Alex Award. Contains strong language. Narrated by Shannon White.

Thirteen short stories combine compassion with humor to describe mostly blue collar Midwestern men who find meaning while struggling against their own self-destruction. An inmate becomes an expert on infant care when his girlfriend tells him she is expecting. Even after he learns she was lying, he cannot abandon his relationship with his imaginary unborn child. A struggling farmer with one arm is saved from despair by living amidst sunshine, breezes, birds, and deer. Some descriptions of sex and some strong language. Narrated by Brent Spencer.

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. A thirty-five-year-old janitor descends to the cellar of a Catholic church in Omaha while intoxicated and digs up a murdered girl's bones. Wrapping the bones inside a tarp, he flees across country with the bundle beside him and encounters a series of individuals living on the margins, including a hobo, an elderly woman, and an individual who has lost his legs. Each encounter adds meaning to the girl's death, as details about the murder and the girl's identity emerge. Contains strong language. Narrated by Margaret Polk (British Accent).

A small stream in northeast Nebraska is where a rancher named John scattered the ashes of his grown son. Still in grief, the rancher chose that stream to launch a homemade kayak, christened Gloria, on a solitare 1500-mile journey of healing from the Loup River to the mouth of the Mississippi. Narrated by Carolin Roehr. (10 hours, 50 minutes)

The small community of Divinity, Iowa, is thrown into conflict over Honey Parrish's affair with Jasper Johnson, the town's only black man. The ensuing chaos opens up other old wounds, including Honey's loss of a a dead lover, a psychotic brother, and even an unsolved murder. The town sheriff forces Honey to confront whether her dead lover, her ex-husband, or her brother could be the killer. Contains some strong language and some descriptions of sex. Narrated by Carolin Roehr. (18 hours, 54 minutes)

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. Twelve short stories feature Midwestern characters driven by regret. A thirty-one-year-old widow forges medical credentials to work in a dermatology clinic that performs laser surgery. A young female patient seeks her help in removing neo-Nazi tattoos covering her body. In another story, a young man drags his girlfriend to Myrtle Beach, where his mother has arranged a family intervention that would hopefully stop her husband's drinking. Rather than a life-changing event, the intervention, the mother's third attempt, more closely resembles a Super Bowl party. Some strong language. Narrated by Margaret Polk (British Accent). (8 hours, 40 minutes)

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. A collection of sharp-witted and tenderhearted short stories about flawed but striving individuals who try to move beyond missed opportunities, missteps, and miscommunication. Some descriptions of sex and some strong language. Narrated by Deanna Henke (6 hours, 49 minutes)

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. When Haven Grebel dies following a tractor accident on his Nebraska farm, his Mennonite family gathers for the funeral service. Widow Elsa, estranged son Johnathan, and the rest of the family must navigate love, loyalty, and long-buried secrets. Some strong language. 2013. Narrated by Connie Healey. (7 hours, 15 minutes)

Gerda Vogel and her family faithfully attend to the daily chores of the 1918 rural life around Stuart, Nebraska. Traveling by train to attend an aunt’s funeral, Gerda experiences anti-German immigrant sentiments beginning to sweep the Midwest in the midst of World War I. The prejudice encroaches closer to home when the local café replaces sauerkraut with “liberty cabbage” and German books are removed from libraries. Meanwhile, longtime local doctor Ed Gannoway begins his relationship with new parish priest Father Jungels on a sour note. As the war rages on and illness sweeps the countryside, the people of Stuart must learn to set aside their differences and come together in the name of survival. One Book One Nebraska selection, 2016. Narrated by Alice Timm. (11 hours, 38 minutes)

A fictionalized account of growing up in the coalfields of northern New Mexico during the last years of World War II. Told primarily from an Hispanic perspective, the author includes folklore and stories of Afro-Americans, Italian, Slavic, and Greek immigrants who worked together in support of the war effort. Poor living conditions did not interfere with picking chokecherries, tracking deer, collecting scrap iron, and experiencing the joy of life. Narrated by Dennis Lorance. (11 hours, 15 minutes)

Part of the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction Series. Set in the Nebraska panhandle, this novel follows three generations of the Preston family, 1930 through 1979, as they exhibit quiet integrity in the face of hardship, hard work, and poverty. Following his estranged daughter's death, a stoic grandfather brings his grandson home. Family members struggle and endure, as does the nation, through the Great Depression,WorldWar II, the killing of Charles Starkweather, and the resignation of Richard Nixon, and find the strength to renew their hope with every sunrise. Contains strong language. Narrated by Tami Works.

In ninth century England, before the age of chivalry, King Alfred the Great successfully defeated the Danish Viking King Guthrum and kept Wessex free from Viking rule. Lord Richard oversees the training of Alfred's army; and Richard's children swear fealty to their King and support for his efforts to build a nation from a land ravaged by war and conquest. Narrated by Margaret Polk (British Accent).

In the gas-light era of 1894, Bud Gardner, a young ball player from Alder Grove, seeks refuge from drought and poverty by trying his luck in Nebraska's glittering capital city. Establishing a precarious existence within his uncle's saloon, Bud encounters shady characters in the Haymarket District. But even worse, he uncovers dark connections that lead from a deadly Nebraska train wreck to Chicago's railroad strikes and Omaha's slaughterhouse riots. Contains strong language. Narrated by Dick Shasteen.

Tom Schultz was opposed to Hazel, the mail-order housekeeper his father arranged, when she first arrived at their Nebraska farm in the 1930s. But he fell in love with her, and they marry. When she gives birth to a child their first year together, they employ Hazel's best friend, Irene, as housekeeper. Hazel aspires to live a comfortable life, similar to the banker's wife, shopping, playing gin rummy, chain smoking, and horseback riding. Depression reaches Nebraska, and the bank forecloses on the farm. Tom finds work with the railroad in Sidney, though money is tight. Narrated by Grace Kluck. (7 hours, 5 minutes)

Chicago, IL. William Crawford has failed at many things in life. Down on his luck one Christmas Eve, he decides to see if he would fare any better at being a thief. After getting caught in the act of robbing a home, William ends up learning a lesson in redemption. Originally published in the December 1896 issue of The Home Monthly under the pseudonym Elizabeth L. Seymour. 2021. Narrated by Connie Healey. (35 minutes)

World War II prisoner of war Helmut Sommerfield is interned at a small POW camp in western Nebraska. He soon earns the good will of surrounding farmers as he puts his mechanical skills to work repairing farm equipment. Their admiration for him deepens after Helmut is severely burned while rescuing two farmers trapped in a burning barn. One of the farmers, a recluse, dies, giving rise to a plot to swap Helmut's identity for the deceased farmer. His chance for a new life is threatened by an escaping POW who knows Helmut's true identity. Adult. Narrated by Carolin Roehr. (10 hours, 57 minutes)

These five stories span almost the entire length of Willa Cather's career and juxtapose her two worlds: the Nebraska prairie and the world of art. Narrated by Peggy Johnson. (5 hours, 46 minutes)

All unhappy families are alike, to invert Tolstoy, but each happy family is happy in its own way. Although they live in a rambling white house in a midwestern town called Meadows, the Cutters are too irreducibly real to stand in for the average all-American family created by pollsters, popular magazines, and television sitcoms.They compete for the reader's attention, pursuing happiness in human ways that have not changed since 1926, when The Cutters was first published. But it is Nell Cutter who best illustrates Bess Streeter Aldrich's strength in drawing memorable characters. Whether she is decorating the house on a budget for wealthy guests or testing child-raising theories or trying to make the daily loaf a little more yeasty, Nell Cutter is not afraid to experiment. She may go out on a limb, but it is seldom a dead one. 1989. Narrated by Jerry Zimmerman. (4 hours, 57 minutes)

Bess Streeter Aldrich is known for her portrayals of wise and witty women whose identities are strengthened, not smothered, in the bosom of the family. Molly Mason, fifty-two, is the devoted wife of the bank president, mother of four fun-loving Masons, and a reliable standby for the library board, missionary society, and the women's clubs. She has a hand in everything that happens in her midwestern town. In fact, Mother Mason never has any time to do just as she likes. Then one day she makes a headlong dash for liberty—and look out! Bess Streeter Aldrich published stories about the Masons in American magazine during World War I. Homesick American soldiers asked for more, and in 1925 the same family became the subject of Mother Mason. 1987. Narrated by Sherry Cole Weber. (5 hours, 4 minutes)