"Everyone has a secret they'll do anything to hide... Twenty-five years ago, the body of sixteen-year-old Eve Knox was found in the caves near her home in small-town Grotto, Iowa -- discovered by her best friend, Maggie, and her sister, Nola. There were a handful of suspects, including her boyfriend, Nick, but without sufficient evidence the case ultimately went cold. For decades Maggie was haunted by Eve's death and that horrible night. Now a detective...

Jack is practically invisible at home, but when his parents send him to Hazelwood, Iowa, to spend a summer with his odd aunt and uncle, he suddenly makes friends, is beaten up by the town bully, and is plotted against by the richest man in town.

A seventeen-year-old star student and gifted athlete hides the painful truths about her private life, including a failing family farm, her mother's growing apocalyptic fears, the institutionalization of her special-needs sister, and her romance with the son of Hmong immigrants.

"In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a social circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to figure out what they want, and who they are"-- Provided by publisher.

In 1950s Iowa, a murder-suicide forces a lawyer to put aside his rock-and-roll grief Sam McCain loves Buddy Holly because he's the only rock-and-roll star who still seems like a dweeb, and Sam knows how that feels. With the unrequited love of his life at his side, Sam drives more than three hours through the snow to watch his idol play the Surf Ballroom. That night, Buddy Holly dies in the most famous plane crash in music history, but Sam has no time...

Sarah Quinlan's husband, Jack, has been haunted for decades by the untimely death of his mother when he was just a teenager, her body found in the cellar of their family farm, the circumstances a mystery. The case rocked the small farm town of Penny Gate, Iowa, where Jack was raised, and for years Jack avoided returning home. But when his beloved aunt Julia is in an accident, hospitalized in a coma, Jack and Sarah are forced to confront the past that...

Survival has been the Sledge way since Reuben Sledge's father first moved to Des Moines. Yet the family seems cursed, and one by one, the Sledges are slipping away. Reuben's oldest brother is hanged for the murder of his wife. Then another brother is committed to an asylum for spying on the woman he loves. But, it's the rape and disgrace of his beloved sister Nellie that drives Reuben into a deep despair. Into the depths of this depression wanders...

In 1953, the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the...

Marie-Ange Hawkins was torn away from her beloved French chateau after her parents died and spent the rest of her childhood on a lonely Iowa farm. She married the chateau's new owner, Comte Bernard de Beauchamp, and begins raising a family, but her life takes an ominous turn.