NCW Libraries

Essie is an octogenarian obituary writer for her family's small town newspaper, so when a young girl named Lenore is reported to be missing and perhaps whisked away by an itinerant aerial photographer -- she stumbles onto the story of her life. It could be a hoax -- or even the delusion invented from the desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn woman. Whatever it is, the story of Lenore ignites a controversy that attracts reporters, curiosity-seekers...

During World War II, thousands of Axis prisoners of war were held throughout Nebraska in base camps that included Fort Robinson, Camp Scottsbluff and Camp Atlanta. Many Nebraskans did not view the POWs as "evil Nazis." To them, they were ordinary men and very human. And while their stay was not entirely free from conflict, many former captives returned to the Cornhusker State to begin new lives after the cessation of hostilities. Drawing on first-person...

"Twelve million years ago, rhinos, elephants, and giraffes roamed North America. They would gather at nearby watering holes-eating, drinking, and trying not to become someone else's lunch. But one day, in what we now know as Nebraska, everything changed. The explosion of a supervolcano a thousand miles away sent a blanket of ash that buried these animals for millennia. Until 1953, when a seventeen-year-old farm worker made an unbelievable discovery....

"On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree becoming the first Native American doctor in U.S. history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Indian woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 850 square miles of rolling countryside...

"On May 30, 2020, in Omaha, Nebraska, amid the protests that rocked our nation after George Floyd's death at the hands of police, thirty-eight-year-old white bar owner and Marine veteran Jake Gardner fatally shot James Scurlock, a twenty-two-year-old Black protestor and young father. What followed were two investigations of Scurlock's death, one conducted by the white district attorney Don Kleine, who concluded that Gardner had legally acted in self-defense...

Experience the evolution of the Minor League Baseball experience through 50 seasons of baseball in Omaha. Narrated by Rob Riggle.

For well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, and wondering the big whys. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college...

In 2021, in the small rural town of Genoa Nebraska, a harrowing search commenced to locate the graves of Native American children who were taken from their tribes and sent to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, one of America's largest and longest-running boarding schools for indigenous children. The Genoa school was part of a vast network of institutions for Native American children set up in the 19th and 20th centuries across the USA. Their...

Who would want to kill Chad Mills? Kate finds that he made a few enemies as president of the railroad workers union. Meanwhile his widow is behaving oddly. And why was his neighbor Josh Stevens at the Mills house on the night of the accident? While her loud and meddling family conspires to help Kate past her divorce, State Patrol Officer Trey closes in on Josh Stevens as the suspect. Kate doesn't believe it. She may not have the experience, but she's...