Bent Northrop Memorial Library

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense readership for his Cork O'Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable--and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by luck and chance. This is the story of one such child. As a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was sent by rail from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast...

Two different factions fight to prevent the building of a superstore in their Minnesota river town: the environmentalists, who predict ecological disaster, and the local merchants, who fear the impact it will have on their businesses. When the protestors have little effect on the plans, someone decides to take matters into their own hands, setting off two bombs. Now, Virgil Flowers must find the person responsible.

Cork O'Connor has lost both his wife and his job as sheriff and falls into a profound emotional isolation. As a wild blizzard buries his lakeside town, a despised though influential resident is found dead, and a young Ojibwe Indian boy seems to have left home in a hurry. Cork has never taken Indian legends to heart, but when an old sage warns him that a cruel spirit with a heart of ice is near, all that changes.

"Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a storm. In Virgil Flowers' case, make that two. The exceptional new thriller from the writer whose books are 'pure reading pleasure' (Booklist). The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large, and very rare, Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they've been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those...

Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is sent to the small town of Bluestem to investigate the murder of a local doctor and his wife, and when a third victim is killed, Flowers knows someone is carrying out a personal vendetta that may be impossible to stop.

The story of Patty and Walter Berglund, a young, Midwestern couple, who start their promising life together with good intentions, wanting to be good partners, good parents, good neighbors, and good citizens. As time passes, however, the family they create loses its way, and the choices they make carry them into a future so at odds with the past that the differences seem irreconcilable. The idyllic lives of these civic-minded environmentalists come...

""In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to a close. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. ""Issues"" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether a local reporter should die. And the vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is doing a favor for a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be...

Enger tells the story of eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy who has reason to believe in miracles. Along with his sister and father, Reuben finds himself on a cross-country search for his outlaw older brother who has been controversially charged with murder. Their journey is touched by serendipity and the kindness of strangers, and its remarkable conclusion shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies,...

At 1:15 a.m, a Minnesota political fixer answers his doorbell. The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a moving car, lying on a plastic sheet, his body wet with blood. When the car stops, a voice says, "Hey, I think he's breathing," and another voice says, "Yeah? Give me the bat." And that's the last thing he ever knows. Lucas Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then--very troublingly--to...