In Omaha, Nebraska, twelve-year-old Oliver Watson has everyone convinced that he's extremely stupid and lazy, but he's actually a very wealthy, evil genius, and when he decides to run for seventh-grade class president, nothing will stand in his way.

Ted Hammond loves a good mystery, and in the spring of his fifth-grade year, he's working on a big one. How can his school in the little town of Plattsford stay open next year if there are going to be only five students? Out here on the Great Plains in western Nebraska, everyone understands that if you lose the school, you lose the town. But the mystery that has Ted's full attention at the moment is about that face, the face he sees in the upper window...

Ellie and Stevie learn about a family legacy when their grandmother tells them stories of her brother's historical quest for dinosaur bones on their Nebraska farm.

Young Elsie must find a way to adapt to her new home on the Nebraska prairie after she and her father leave their comfortable city life in Boston.

"Nebraska: not just a place on a map. It has a heart and it has a voice. It has a Then. It has a Now. Several centuries ago, a young Sioux woman called Lark rebels against her people's traditions and crosses the plains to save her adopted sister from a bad marriage proposal and return the girl to the Pawnee village from which she was abducted in childhood. At the end of her journey Lark finds herself the center of a mysterious Pawnee ritual that undermines...