Based on the inspirational true story of a group of neighbourhood friends in a small town of 5,000 in rural Iowa. While growing up, the boys played basketball together in driveways and tournaments eventually going on to play basketball at different high schools. In an unusual event for a small town, both high schools simultaneously produce two state boys basketball championship teams. Despite the odds, the boys, their teammates and coaches are inspired...

"Robinson's slow prose is the star here, and narrator Adam Verner gives great depth of emotion to Jack's raw suffering and ethical dilemmas...Come for the love story; stay for a couple who learn to find the beauty in broken humanity, and what grace can look like for those who love each other." — Booklist

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.
Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

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"A sharp and bitingly funny novel about a professor whose calm-ish midwestern life gives way to a vortex of crises--and her attempts to salvage the pieces without going to pieces herself...In the space of a few torrid months on the Iowa prairie, PhillipaMaakestad--long-married theater professor and mother of an unstable daughter--grapples with a life turned upside down. After falling headlong into a passionate affair during a semester spent teaching...

When Olive makes up a story about a trip to Paris to impress her New York pen pal Molly, the lies quickly get out of hand, and threaten their long distance friendship.

Ever since local boy Lester Ward got drafted by the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, Tugs Button's scrawny cousin Ned can think of nothing but football. Sure, Lester's younger bully of a brother is determined to keep Ned and his gang from ever getting near a real pickup game. But Ned has a few things going for him: he can catch and sometimes even throw, much to his surprise. And he's got his eccentric grandpa Ike, who may have less get-up-and-go these...

Pen pals Molly and Olive consider themselves best friends even though they have never actually met because Molly lives in New York City and Olive lives on a farm in Iowa--but when Olive finds a diamond bracelet in the grass the two girls start to wonder if they can finally get the money for one of them to visit the other.

Miguel 'Sugar' Santos is a talented Dominican baseball player who longs to break into the American big league and earn the money needed to support his impoverished family. He is a talented pitcher who might just have what it takes to earn a prized spot on a Major League Baseball team. Before that happens he'll have to prove his worth in the minor leagues. Advancing in baseball's minor league system at the tender age of 19, Miguel is warmly welcomed...

"Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamousVillasca, Iowa murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train...

"Twenty years ago, several people were murdered in Des Moines, and the only evidence left behind was a snowman ornament hanging ominously on a tree in the victims' front lawns. With a suspect behind bars, the killings have come to an end -- or so everyone thought. But now crimes with a similar MO are happening in a small Iowa town, and a local detective believes the killer is back and ready to strike again. With little time left on the clock before...