Books Set in or About Kansas

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [The Wizard of Oz series #1]

By: L. Frank Baum
Narrated by: Phil Chenert
Length: 4 hours 2 minutes

Dorothy and her canine pal Toto live a quiet life on a Kansas farm with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. But one day, the little girl and her dog find themselves spirited away from the fields of Kansas, to the magical land of Oz! Dorothy and Toto meet many friends on the yellow-brick road to Emerald City, where she hopes to find a way home to Kansas -... Read more

In Cold Blood

By: Truman Capote
Narrated by: Scott Brick
Length: 14 hours 25 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)—and haunted its author long after he finished writing it.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a... Read more

Little House on the Prairie

By: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Narrated by: Cherry Jones
Length: 5 hours 45 minutes

The third book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's treasured Little House series.The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for the big skies of the Kansas Territory. They travel for many days in their covered wagon until they find the best spot to build their house.... Read more

The Good Lord Bird (National Book Award Winner)

A Novel

By: James McBride
Narrated by: Michael Boatman
Length: 14 hours 34 minutes

Now a Showtime limited series starring Ethan Hawke and Daveed Diggs

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who... Read more

Mr. Bridge

By: Evan S. Connell
Narrated by: George Guidall
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

The classic novel about a repressed upper-middle-class husband in the American Midwest, by a New York Times bestselling and Man Booker Prize–winning author.Walter Bridge is an ambitious Kansas City lawyer who redoubles his efforts and time at the office whenever he senses that his family needs something—even when what they need is more of him... Read more

The Virgin of Small Plains

By: Nancy Pickard
Narrated by: Kymberly Dakin
Length: 11 hours 9 minutes

On the night of the decade's worst blizzard, a local farm boy discovers the naked body of a beautiful young woman in the snow. Seventeen years later, the Virgin of Small Plains has become a local myth. Strange miracles have visited those who faithfully tend to her grave and Small Plains becomes a haven for those hoping the Virgin will cure them.... Read more

Gabriel's Story

By: David Anthony Durham
Narrated by: Thomas Penny
Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

In his acclaimed debut novel, Durham adds a new dimension to the frontier narrative. Gabriel, the teenaged son of an emancipated slave, travels west with his mother, who is lured by the promise of unclaimed land. Despising life as a farmer, Gabriel runs away with a dangerous band of cowboys. But hindered by youth and inexperience, he must escape... Read more

Moon Over Manifest

By: Clare Vanderpool
Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Cassandra Campbell & Kirby Heyborne
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

2011 NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER

The movement of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I closed my eyes to the dusty countryside and imagined the sign I’d seen only in Gideon’s stories: Manifest—A Town with a rich past and a bright future.
 
Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the... Read more

Not Without Laughter

By: Langston Hughes
Narrated by: Jaime Lincoln Smith
Length: 7 hours 53 minutes

Not Without Laughter is drawn in part from the author's own recollections of youth and early manhood. This stirring coming-of-age tale unfolds in 1930s rural Kansas. A poignant portrait of African-American family life in the early twentieth century, it follows the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a man. We meet Sandy's... Read more

Dark Places

A Novel

By: Gillian Flynn
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Cassandra Campbell, Mark Deakins & Robertson Dean
Length: 13 hours 44 minutes

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.


Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her... Read more

Doc

A Novel

By: Mary Doria Russell
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 16 hours 37 minutes

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp.... Read more

The Scent of Rain and Lightning

A Novel

By: Nancy Pickard
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

One beautiful summer afternoon, Jody Linder, a young English teacher, is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents’ house—or what she calls her parents’ house, even though they have been gone almost all of Jody’s life. The three bring shocking news: the man convicted of murdering Jody’s father is being... Read more

No Saints in Kansas

By: Amy Brashear
Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
Length: 8 hours 8 minutes

A gripping reimagining of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and the brutal murders that inspired it November is usually quiet in Holcomb, Kansas, but in 1959, the town is shattered by the quadruple murder of the Clutter family. Suspicion falls on Nancy Clutter's boyfriend, Bobby Rupp, the last one to see them alive. New Yorker Carly Fleming, new to... Read more

Tropic of Kansas

By: Christopher Brown
Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg & Bahni Turpin
Length: 12 hours 13 minutes

Acclaimed short-story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off—from the other side—in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry’s Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick’s classic Man in the High Castle, and China... Read more