Download or read book Main Street written by Sinclair Lewis and published by First Avenue Editions TM. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. First published in 1920, this unabridged edition of the Sinclair Lewis novel is an American classic, considered by many to be his most noteworthy and lasting work. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.

Download or read book Wintering written by Peter Geye and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true epic: a love story that spans sixty years, generations’ worth of feuds, and secrets withheld and revealed. One day, elderly, demented Harry Eide steps out of his sickbed and disappears into the brutal, unforgiving Minnesota wilderness that surrounds his hometown of Gunflint. It's not the first time Harry has vanished. Thirty-odd years earlier, in 1963, he'd fled his marriage with his eighteen-year-old-son Gustav in tow. He'd promised Gustav a rambunctious adventure, two men taking on the woods in winter. With Harry gone for the second (and last) time, unable to survive the woods he'd once braved, his son Gus, now grown, sets out to relate the story of their first disappearance--bears and ice floes and all--to Berit Lovig, an old woman who shares a special, if turbulent, bond with Harry. Wintering is a thrilling adventure story wrapped in the deep, dark history of a rural town.

Download or read book The Lager Queen of Minnesota written by J. Ryan Stradal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Bestseller! “The perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day.” —Washington Post “[A] charmer of a tale. . . Warm, witty and--like any good craft beer--complex, the saga delivers a subtly feminist and wholly life-affirming message.” —People Magazine A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself. With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots. It's Blotz." Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential savior close to home. . . if it's not too late. Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up--will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family? Here we meet a cast of lovable, funny, quintessentially American characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted.

Download or read book The Minnesota Stories of Sinclair Lewis written by Sinclair Lewis and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 2005 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, applied subversive satire and razor wit in his portrayals of American life. Born and raised in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he was one of the earliest writers to attack the myth of the noble, happy, American small town. Main Street, which he described as his "first novel to rouse the embattled peasantry," was praised and reviled--and immensely popular. This initial success was followed by such accomplished books as Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth, classics that today hold a prominent place in the American canon. Among the best of Lewis's works were short stories that he wrote for the popular magazines of the day. The Minnesota Stories of Sinclair Lewis collects the finest of these stories, acerbic tales set in Minnesota that reflect his favorite themes: local boosterism, the plight of strong women, native fascism, the grip of materialism. Lewis inserts himself as a character in two tales: he travels to Main Street's Gopher Prairie, where he talks to Dr. Will Kennicott, and to Babbitt's Zenith, where George Babbitt gives him a piece of his mind. Two of these stories have never been published, and six have not been reprinted since they first appeared.

Download or read book In the Lake of the Woods written by Tim O'Brien and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A politician’s past war crimes are revealed in this psychologically haunting novel by the National Book Award–winning author of The Things They Carried. Vietnam veteran John Wade is running for senate when long-hidden secrets about his involvement in wartime atrocities come to light. But the loss of his political fortunes is only the beginning of John’s downfall. A retreat with his wife, Kathy, to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota only exacerbates the tensions rising between them. Then, within days of their arrival, Kathy mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness. When a police search fails to locate her, suspicion falls on the disgraced politician with a violent past. But when John himself disappears, the questions mount—with no answers in sight. In this contemplative thriller, acclaimed author Tim O’Brien examines America’s legacy of violence and warfare and its lasting impact both at home and abroad.

Download or read book Minnesota Memoirs written by Duff Brenna and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mesmerizing: In 17 riveting stories set in the author's native Minnesota, Duff Brenna's edgy tales journey from the mid-19th century to our current 21st century. While capturing the history centered in and around the cities of Medicine Lake, Golden Valley, Anoka, Minneapolis and Mankato, Minnesota Memoirs unfurl a series of unique narratives revealing a transfiguring perception of what it means to be alive in a world that never explains its quiet indifference to all things human. Called "a spectacular talent at crafting complex, believable characters" (Wall Street Journal), "a honed intelligence, unfaltering, unflinching, piercing" (New York Times) and "a master at capturing the helplessness of humans ... with tough written all over them" (Los Angeles Times), Brenna's insights into human nature show us who we are as a species and what we are capable of-our capacities for love and hate, intense desire, sanity, insanity, magnanimity, generosity of spirit and, above all, compassion.

Download or read book Mad River written by John Sandford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They were average kids looking for something to do. Today they started killing people. A modern-day Bonnie and Clyde are on the run through rural Minnesota—victim by victim they’re having the time of their lives. But when Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers joins the hunt for the thrill-hungry kids, things take a shocking detour.

Download or read book Worldly Things written by Michael Kleber-Diggs and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry “Sometimes,” Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, “everything reduces to circles and lines.” In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor. But Worldly Things refuses to “offer allegiance” to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. “Let’s create folklore side-by-side,” he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. “All of us want,” after all, “our share of light, and just enough rainfall.” Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics. Additional Recognition: A New York Times Book Review "New & Noteworthy Poetry" Selection A Library Journal "Poetry Title to Watch 2021" A Chicago Review of Books "Poetry Collection to Read in 2021" A Reader's Digest "14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now" Selection A Books Are Magic "Recommended Reading" Selection An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection

Download or read book Billy written by William F. Kirtland and published by . This book was released on 2000-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Book of One Hundred Truths written by Julie Schumacher and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I should probably mention something right now before this story goes any further: my name is Theodora Grumman, and I am a liar." It's hard for Thea to write four truths a day in the notebook her mother gave her for the summer. Especially when her grandparents' house on the Jersey Shore is even more packed with family than usual, and her cousin Jocelyn wont leave her alone. Jocelyn just might be the world's neatest and nosiest seven-year-old, and she wants to know what's in Thea's notebook. But Thea won't tell anyone about the secret she has promised to keep--or how she lost her best friend (Truth #12), whose name was Gwen. Now Thea has to babysit in the afternoons, and all Jocelyn wants to do is spy on people. Neither of them expect to see Aunt Ellen and Aunt Celia at the boardwalk in the middle of the day, or for their aunts to lie and insist they were at work. Could it be Thea's not the only one in the family keeping secrets this summer?

Download or read book Twin Cities Noir The Expanded Edition Akashic Noir written by Julie Schaper and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Local editors Schaper and Horwitz have assembled a noteworthy collection of noir-infused stories mixed with laughter…The Akashic noir short-story anthologies are avidly sought and make ideal samplers for regional mystery collecting." --Library Journal "The best pieces in the collection turn the clichés of the genre on their head . . . and despite the unseemly subject matter, the stories are often surprisingly funny." —City Pages (Minneapolis) Brand-new stories from John Jodzio, Tom Kaczynski, and Peter Schilling, Jr., in addition to the original volume's stories by David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart. "St. Paul was originally called Pig's Eye's Landing and was named after Pig's Eye Parrant--trapper, moonshiner, and proprietor of the most popular drinking establishment on the Mississippi. Traders, river rats, missionaries, soldiers, land speculators, fur trappers, and Indian agents congregated in his establishment and made their deals. When Minnesota became a territory in 1849, the town leaders, realizing that a place called Pig's Eye might not inspire civic confidence, changed the name to St. Paul, after the largest church in the city . . . Across the river, Minneapolis has its own sordid story. By the turn of the twentieth century it was considered one of the most crooked cities in the nation. Mayor Albert Alonzo Ames, with the assistance of the chief of police, his brother Fred, ran a city so corrupt that according to Lincoln Steffans its 'deliberateness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled.' As recently as the mid-'90s, Minneapolis was called 'Murderopolis' due to a rash of killings that occurred over a long hot summer . . . Every city has its share of crime, but what makes the Twin Cities unique may be that we have more than our share of good writers to chronicle it. They are homegrown and they know the territory--how the cities look from the inside, out . . ."

Download or read book The Land of Dreams written by Vidar Sundstøl and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel and named by Dagbladet as one of the top twenty-five Norwegian crime novels of all time, The Land of Dreams is the chilling first installment in Vidar Sundstøl’s critically acclaimed Minnesota Trilogy, set on the rugged north shore of Lake Superior and in the region’s small towns and deep forests. The grandson of Norwegian immigrants, Lance Hansen is a U.S. Forest Service officer and has a nearly all-consuming passion for local genealogy and history. But his quiet routines are shattered one morning when he comes upon a Norwegian tourist brutally murdered near a stone cross on the shore of Lake Superior. Another Norwegian man is nearby; covered in blood and staring out across the lake, he can only utter the word kjærlighet. Love. FBI agent Bob Lecuyer is assigned to the case, as is Norwegian detective Eirik Nyland, who is immediately flown in from Oslo. As the investigation progresses, Lance begins to make shocking discoveries—including one that involves the murder of an Ojibwe man on the very same site more than one hundred years ago. As Lance digs into two murders separated by a century, he finds the clues may in fact lead toward someone much closer to home than he could have imagined. The Land of Dreams is the opening chapter in a sweeping chronicle from one of Norway’s leading crime writers—a portrait of an extraordinary landscape, an exploration of hidden traumas and paths of silence that trouble history, and a haunting study in guilt and the bonds of blood.

Download or read book A Guide to Family History Resources at the Minnesota Historical Society written by Minnesota Historical Society and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide is an essential tool for all genealogists researching Minnesota family, local, and state history. Highlighting the many holdings of the society, this unique handbook features a lengthy, annotated listing of resources in subject areas such as: biographical, census, naturalization, cemetery, school, religious, business, court, government, legal, military, and veterans' records; official state-wide death records and index, 1908-96; photographs, personal papers, oral histories, ethnic resources, and local and county histories; family histories, newspapers, directories, passenger ship lists, and publications of genealogical organizations; maps, atlases, and other geographical resources.

Download or read book Ordinary Grace written by William Kent Krueger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Download or read book Desert Boys written by Chris McCormick and published by Picador. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award Finalist for the Binghamton University’s John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist for the Saroyan Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Chautauqua Prize "Hilarious, Devious, Original, and Unforgettable."—Karen Russell A vivid and assured work of fiction, from a major new voice, following the life of a young man growing up, leaving home, and coming back again, marked by the start beauty of California's Mojave Desert and the various fates of those who leave and those who stay behind. This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner's world - the family, friends and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new life in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts of town; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician who once served as his school's confederate mascot; Daley's mother, an immigrant from Armenia; and Daley himself, introspective and queer. Meanwhile, in another desert on the other side of the world, war threatens to fracture Daley's most meaningful - and most fraught - connection to home, his friendship with Robert Karinger. A luminous debut, Desert Boys by Chris McCormick traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when the two transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire to escape and the hunger to belong.

Download or read book Creating Minnesota written by Annette Atkins and published by Minnesota Historical Society. This book was released on 2009-11-16 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Spur Award, presented by the Western Writers of America (WWA), for the Best Western Nonfiction Historical Book. Renowned historian Annette Atkins presents a fresh understanding of how a complex and modern Minnesota came into being in Creating Minnesota. Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or politics during a period in our past. A three-act play about Minnesota's statehood vividly depicts the competing interests of Natives, traders, and politicians who lived in the same territory but moved in different worlds. Oranges are the focal point of a chapter about railroads and transportation: how did a St. Paul family manage to celebrate their 1898 Christmas with fruit that grew no closer than 1,500 miles from their home? A photo essay brings to life three communities of the 1920s, seen through the lenses of local and itinerant photographers. The much-sought state fish helps to explain the new Minnesota, where pan-fried walleye and walleye quesadillas coexist on the same north woods menu. In Creating Minnesota Atkins invites readers to experience the texture of people's lives through the decades, offering a fascinating and unparalleled approach to the history of our state.

Download or read book The Land written by Thomas Maltman and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story of violence at the heart of a pastoral landscape, from the author of Indie Next pick and All Iowa Reads selection Little Wolves Recovering from a terrible auto accident just before the turn of the millennium, college dropout and hobbyist computer-game programmer Lucien Swenson becomes the caretaker of a house in northern Minnesota. Shortly after moving in, Lucien sets out to find a woman with whom he had an affair, who vanished along with money stolen from the bank where they had worked together. His search will take him to Rose of Sharon, a white supremacist church deep in the wilderness, where a cabal of outcasts awaits the end of the world at a place they call The Land. Lucien is visited at the house by a mysterious guest, who may not be who she claims, as well as a vast flock of violent ravens out of an apocalyptic vision. At once a mystery and spiritual noir, The Land explores the dark side of belief, entrenched white supremacy in the Heartland, the uniquely American obsession with end times, and the sacrifices we make for those we love.