At first, the Ingalls lived in a sod house in Minnesota. Then Pa built a clean new house beside Plum Creek, buying the materials for it on credit, intending to pay for them with the fall wheat harvest. But just before the harvest, a strange glittering cloud suddenly blocked out the sun. Plunk! Something dropped on Laura's head, and fell to the ground. It was the biggest grasshopper she had ever seen. Millions of them descended over the country-side...

"Wheatfield, Minnesota: a metropolis of six hundred souls and change, for which the word "moribund" might have been invented. Nothing ever happened there and nothing ever would--until the mayor of sorts (campaign slogan: "I'll Do What I Can") and his precocious teenage buddy come up with a scheme to put Wheatfield on the map. Should something dramatic occur--say, that the apparition of the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared at the local Catholic Church--the...

Virgil Flowers was brought into the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension by a promise from Lucas Davenport: "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He's been doing the hard stuff for three years, but he's never seen anything like this. In the small rural town of Bluestem, an old man is bound in his basement, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. This is the third murder in just as many weeks, and it's becoming clear that Flowers has stepped into a killer's...

1932, Minnesota. The Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O'Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent's wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call...

On a hot, muggy evening, the last thing Hannah Swensen wants to do is squeeze into pantyhose for the Grand Opening of the refurbished Albion Hotel. But with her famous Red Velvet cupcakes being served in the hotel's new Red Velvet Lounge, she can't back out. The party starts off with a bang with the unexpected arrival of Doctor Bev on the arm of a wealthy investor - and comes to a screeching halt when a partygoer takes a dive off the rooftop garden....

"No one cooks up a delectable, suspense-filled mystery quite like Hannah Swensen, Joanne Flukes dessert-baking, red-haired heroine whose gingersnaps are as tart as her comebacks, and whose penchant for solving crimesone delicious clue at a timehas made her a bestselling favorite. And it all began on these pages, with a bakery, a murder, and some suddenly scandalous chocolate-chip crunchies. Featuring a bonus short story and brand new, mouthwatering...

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results...

It's summer time in Lake Eden, Minnesota, which means picnics aplenty for bakery proprietress and amateur sleuth Hannah. Then Uncle Gus is murdered following a big family reunion, and the only clues to be found at the crime scene are two slices of Hannah's infamous carrot cake.

The southern Minnesota farmer was expecting to deliver his load of soybeans to the local grain elevator and leave. Instead, a young man hit him on the head with a steel bar, dropped him into the grain bin, waited for him to die, and then called the sheriff to report the 'accident'. The suspicious sheriff called in Virgil Flowers to investigate.

Whenever you hear the sky rumble, that usually means a storm. In Virgil Flowers' case, make that two. 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 parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are...