A collection of short stories, poems, plays, and essays, written about Nebraska by Nebraskans. Though the works center around Nebraska, the themes are universal in their scope, covering love, life, faith, pain, healing, murder, destruction, and rebirth. A variety of styles means there is something for everyone.

Stories of the heartland by the National Book Award finalist and author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. “Nebraska captures a rowdy, changing America. Written with wit and brawny lyricism, in voices ranging from hip to tender, the stories gathered here are as diverse and expansive as the country they celebrate…References to America’s heartland abound throughout the book and serve as a central metaphor for what’s close to American hearts, what connects us: dreams, myths and possibilities as vast as the Great Plains. Wise and smart-alecky, creaking with legend and crackling with modernisms, these tales are about American obsessions past and present.” –The Washington Post Book World “Just as Raymond Carver came to be identified with a Pacific Northwest populated by blue-collar workers, and just as Richard Ford has crafted a Montana full of drifters, so Ron Hansen has carved out his own geographical niche. His Nebraska is a distinctive mix of 19th century settlers and 1980s breadwinners, of sudden storms and life-long yearnings, of lost souls stranded in the middle of nowhere.” –USA Today “Beautifully crafted stories… Wickedness, evil, malice is called by name; and for Hansen’s people the snake in the garden never fails to appear.” —The New York Times “Breathtaking virtuosity…These short narratives are utterly clean and smooth; they click together like a collection of river-washed stones that are each remarkably different yet polished by the same hand.”—Publishers Weekly

A collection of short stories that range from sad to silly, but all of them share one thing - whimsy. Pulled from the inner reaches of an unusual mind, the stories about the wind, about bees, about foxes, about fish, and most of all about people who dream, will leave you wanting more.

Short stories that attempt to capture the general mood of life in America in the early 21st century. They range from the realistic to the odd, including post-apocalyptic stories of what might be, stories that are whimsical and quirky, and, of course, just plain out of this world stories.

Phoebe wants to relax after her recent adventure, get to know her family, and learn how to be a witch. She practices at disciplining her powers, but her training is interrupted when a shadow falls over the small group - literally. Now she must move fast to save the universe from an evil entertainer, a black unknown, and myriad other strange and unusual creatures. And she must close her holes before more things come through.

The fascinating story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen’s most surprising album, Nebraska, revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen’s career “Brilliant . . . For fans of American music, Deliver Me from Nowhere makes a great ghost story.”—The Boston Globe AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen’s hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen’s most important record—the lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself. Nebraska is rough and unfinished, recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective of the mood of the country, but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist’s life, the beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after the album’s release. Warren Zanes spoke to many people involved with making Nebraska, including Bruce Springsteen himself. He also interviewed more than a dozen celebrated artists and musical insiders, from Rosanne Cash to Steven Van Zandt, about their reactions to the album. Zanes interweaves these conversations with inquiries into the myriad cultural touchpoints, including Terrence Malick’s Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O’Conner, that influenced Springsteen as he was writing the album’s haunting songs. The result is a textured and revelatory account of not only a crucial moment in the career of an icon but also a record that upended all expectations and predicted a home-recording revolution.

The women of Resolved return to tell us their stories. The familiar names - Lorelei. Amity. Grenata. Corinne. We hear from all of them, the details of their lives. But the other women in the fortress are also given a voice for the first time in their lives. They will not be silenced any longer. A companion book to Resolved, this book continues to explore the lives of the women who dared to risk everything for freedom - freedom from dull routines, freedom from abuse, freedom from being property of men. For the first time, someone listens. Someone cares. And they are ready to talk. Stories range from the heartbreaking to the heartwarming, but one thing ties all these women together - dreams that have been stifled and can finally be spoken.