On going to the library to find another book, I picked this book up at the suggestion of the library web page. This book was a sleeper. I mean I would have never thought it would be good. It was easy to read. It caught you in the first chapter. This is a story of a small town with grownups who were devious. I young boys life was altered severely because of their sins. Nancy Pickard is an author I would read again. I read mysteries often, but I did not figure it out until the plot was laid out. I More...

Gerilim türündeki kitapların pekde tarzım olduğu söylenemez.Ama bu kitabı elimden bırakamadım.
Öncelikle konusunu,kurgusunu,kapağını, anlatımını, olayın akışını sevdim.
Yer yer eskiye bir dönüş olması ilk başlarda biraz kafamı karıştırdı ama ilerleyen bölümlerde
hem bu duruma alıştım hemde konuyu özümsedim.

Konuya değinecek olursam; Rex, Mitch ve Abby Small Plains kasabasında kendi hallerinde üç
yakın arkadaştırlar.Bir gün, kasabada bir cinayete kurban gidildiği düşünülen ve tanınmayacak halde bulun More...

Eh, it was okay. I guess I could never forgive the book for it's first 30 pages. Ugh, awful. Teenage sexual angst is weird to begin with but when it's poorly written it's just downright uncomfortable. I felt like my mom wrote it, not quite remembering those teen feelings.

Then, Blammo! Page 30! Things get exciting!

So, I read and read and read but...the excitement drops off. Sigh. I put the book down for a week. Pick it up again, things get exciting! Then...well, repeat. With 5 pages left, I was More...

The Virgin of Small Plains, by Nancy Pickard. A. Produced by BBC Audio Books America and purchased from Audio Editions. This is for discussion.
Abbie, who is 16, is very much in love with Mitch, who is 18 and getting ready to graduate from highschool in Small Plains, Kansas, a small town in the middle of nowhere. Abbie sneaks Mitch into her room where they are getting ready to make love for the first time, both of them still virgins. But Mitch doesn’t have a condom. So Abbey sends him down to her More...

This is the second Nancy Pickard book I've read and it certainly won't be the last. Her books are page-turners and not because of the breathtaking action, but because she involves you in the character's lives. I felt so much for what some of them had been through, the pain of loss that it so real that it is heartbreaking. It brought me to tears several times.
The mystery is there from page one, but the story around it slowly develops and there are some great red herrings and some evidence seen fr More...

You know it's a good book when, after reading the library's copy, you go out and buy your own. THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLIAINS is that kind of book.

In 1987 Small Plains, Kansas, in the midst of a blizzard, eighteen-year-old Rex Shellenberger searches the pastures of his family farm for newborn calves and finds the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl. That night, Shellenberger's dad--the sheriff--brings the corpse to sixteen-year-old Abby Reynold's father's in-home doctor's office. Hiding in a stora More...

I've actually read this book twice - in January of 2008 and then again in May of this year 2012 because it was a book club pick. When I read it the first time I simply wrote that it was a nice little mystery that was a quick read and kept my attention trying to figure it out.
Four years later I had to reread it because I couldn't remember anything about it. As I read it this time, things came back to me and were familiar but I didn't remember the outcome. As I read it this time, many of the thoug More...

I don't often read mystery novels; it was the premise of Pickard's novel that drew me to it. A young woman's naked body is discovered in the snow deep in a farmer's field one winter night. Her identity unknown, she is buried in the Kansas town's cemetery and becomes known as the “Virgin of Small Plains.” Over the years, her grave is transformed into a pilgrimage site for those who are suffering and dying. Some even claim that visits to her grave cures them. Ten years later, Abby, the protagonist More...

This book is a mystery but not a detective piece. It is a small town full of deceit. Nancy Pickard does some interesting stuff with flashbacks. She has a knack for knowing exactly when to travel back to 1987 to reveal a smidgen of what really happened that we don't hear from our characters in present day.

The one thing that aggravated me was the character Abby's pet birds. I'm not an animal person, true, but usually I can read about characters who own dogs and cats and pigs and any kind of pet r More...

Brief Description: During a blizzard in a small Kansas town in January 1987, the body of a naked young woman is discovered. No one knows her identity, and she is buried in a simple grave. Over the years, she becomes known as the “Virgin of Small Plains,” and legend has it that visiting her grave can heal the sick. Long-time Small Plains resident Abby has never really questioned the story of the Virgin; she was more affected by the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend Mitch Newquist on the s More...

Bir insanın bu derece hastalıklı bir planı anında kurabilmesi, zavallı Mitch'in haksız yere kasabadan tecrit edilmesi, Abby'nin yıkılması ve aradan 17 yıl geçmesi ile nihayet sırların açıklanması... Olay kasabada ölü bulunan ve "nedense" kimsenin tanımadığı genç bir kızın ölümüyle başlıyor. Rex ve ailesi kızı buluyorlar ardından şerif (Rex'in babası) onu doktora (Abby'nin babası) götürüyor ve orada doktor vahşi bir şekilde yüzünü deforme ediyor-bir beysbol sopasıyla. Bunu da şans o ya o sırada d More...

On a cold, snowy night in January 1987, a series of events unfold that will forever change the lives of a whole town. A young girl is found dead in a pasture, with no one able to identify her. And her death remains unsolved for 17 years. Her death however brings a mystery upon the town and people from miles around drive to visit her grave, believing she can bring miracles to them from beyond the grave.

But the people who were teenagers at the time of her death are now adults and a series of even More...

What a page turner! This book reads just like an episode of CBS' Cold Case, which I happen to love! In 1987 the body of a young woman is found naked and half buried in the snow on a farm. No one in town knows her and everyone pitches in and buys her a tombstone and the whole town gives her a proper funeral. In 2004, her grave has become legend and people from all across the country are traveling to see the woman's grave, now known as The Virgin. The Virgin is said to cure people from life-threat More...

All in all I enjoyed this book. The characters were pretty two-dimensional, but I wanted a good mystery, and a quick one, and usually the character development is limited in stories like these. I was ok with that. I choose books depending on my mood, and if I want an epic historical novel or a fast paced mystery will depend on how I am feeling.

I felt the pacing was perfect. The mystery of an unidentified girl found dead in a snow storm 17 years prior to the books opening set the fast pace almost More...

This suspense novel focuses on a night that changed many lives in a town forever, and what happened seventeen years later to bring out the truth of the events of that night.
In a small farming town in Kansas, 18-year-old Rex Shellenberger helps his father, town sheriff, and older brother, Patrick, look for newborn calves as a blizzard hits. He discovers the body of a naked teenage girl. Meanwhile Mitch Newquist sneaks down the stairs from the bedroom of his girlfriend, Abby Reynolds, to get a con More...

This is one of those fucking books in that new-ish fucking style what attempts to, I don't fucking know, take a goddamn murder mystery and make it EXCITING and FAST-PACED by totally screwing with the narrative linechanging p-o-v rapidly and skipping back-and-forth in time. And pretending to give you clues about whodunit that turn out to be not clues at all, haha, and weren't you a fool for thinking the psychopathic son did it?
That's got nothing to do with being a foolish, naive reader, goddammi More...

Yorumun aslı blog sitesindedir: http://kordugumhayaller.blogspot.com/...


Kitap akıcı ve konusu öyle ilgi çekici ki sürekli bir "ne oluyor, bunun sırrı ne?" sorusuyla kitabın sonunu getirmeye çalışıyor insan. Bu bağlamda okurken gerçekten keyif alarak okuduğum bir kitap oldu Bakire.

Kitap bizi sizin de ön okumadan bildiğiniz gibi karlı bir kış günü baş bayan karakterimiz Abby'nin eski sevgilisinin annesi ve hayatını zindan eden uyuz Nadine'i görmesi ve bir anlık yaptığı kaza ile karşılıyor. Bu kaz More...

Only had a short time to read this before a f2f mystery discussion group so skimmed a lot of the second half. Went into it with low expectations as I hadn't thought much of the previous Pickard book I'd read- Secret Ingredient Murder. That one was a cozyish mystery based on a character originated by Virginia Rich. We had read it because of the Rhode Island setting and I felt Pickard had really missed the mark on describing Rhode Island. It was all surface name-dropping and no real feeling for t More...

As part of my A Mystery for Every State project, I picked up THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS by Nancy Pickard. I must be the last mystery reader who hadn't already read this terrific book -- even my daughter, who normally reads only mysteries with knitting or vampires, raved about it -- and there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. It definitely satisfied my standards for a great regional mystery -- besides fascinating characters and a plot full of surprises, there is a real feel for More...

Over seventeen years ago a girl’s naked and frozen body was found in the fields of a small Kansas town. Since then, townspeople have faithfully tended her grave and speak of miracles happening due to her intervention. The mystery remains what really happened that winter night when young Rex Shellenberg found her body with his father. His best friend Mitch Newquiest left the very next day leaving his girlfriend, Abby Reynolds, behind.

Almost two decades later Mitch has returned to the small town More...

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1987 kışında, Kansas’ta bulunan Small Plains kasabasında, dondurucu bir kar fırtınası yaşanıyordu; Rex Shellenberger, babası ve ağabeyi Patrick ile çiftliklerinin arazisinde, kar ile kaplanmış buzağıları arıyordu. Ama bulduğu tamamen çıplak, son derece güzel ve donarak ölmüş bir kadın oldu. Ceset kimse tarafından teşhis edilemedi ve isimsiz bir mezar taşı ile kasaba mezarlığına gömüldü.

Ama olay aslında bu kadar basit değildi ve sırrı More...

Google Books recommended this to me because I just finished Gillian Flynn's novel, and they both are about characters revisiting a cold-case murder that happened in Kansas in the 80s. The books had similar themes, but in my opinion, Pickard's book demonstrates exactly what makes Flynn such a superior writer.

Virgin of Small Plains was a great murder mystery, it kept me thinking and intrigued until the end. But the writing was kind of boring and the characters were completely flat. I'm spoiled by More...

The book is about an event that happened in a small town seventeen years ago and then modern day. The chapters go back and forth between times, but start with dates so you understand what time you are reading about. The story revolves around the discovery of a dead body in a field and how the three main families in the story are effected by this discovery. After the evening of discover Mitch disappears from town and doesn't return until seventeen years later the other part of the book. Being reu More...

I chose this because it takes place on the plains of Kansas; in fact, in one of the few Tall Grass Prairie plains areas still extant, and loved the descriptions of that special kind of country wilderness. And that dramatic open grasslands weather which, if you didn't know better, would sound like literary convention; but let me assure you can be and has been truly depicted in its mercurial violence. The story itself was somewhat annoying in our characters' collective inability to speak out and s More...

This book surprised me with its twists. It opens with a teenage boy, Mitch, hiding in his girlfriend's dad's medical closet as he witnesses grown men beat a murder victim's face with a bat so that she will never be identified. The next day, Mitch disappears, rushed out of town by his father who fears what will happen to him if anyone discovers he witnessed this crime...
Then the twists start coming, and they start coming fast. 17 years later, it seems that everyone but Mitch knows the girl's iden More...

I read Nancy Pickard's mystery series featuring Jenny Cain years ago, and really liked the writing and the characters. I picked this book up because I like her writing so much, and was happy to discover that it has matured and deepened.

This is the story of something that happened in the past, in a small town, and how it affected some of the people in it. Although the second part of the title is "A Novel of Suspanse," I think that's misleading. You could call it a mystery, in the same way that y More...

I enjoyed this book. Do I think it was a literary masterpiece? No. But, do I think it was something to be consigned to the ash heap? No. I thought that the story was well told, I liked how it switched back and forth from 1986/1987 to 2004. I liked the way it wrapped up and I liked that there was an element of suspense to it. I did figure out some of the ending well before the book finished, and I felt like through a fair amount of the book, I was just waiting for them to get to the ending and to More...

Book #18 for 2010. Having grown up in the rural KC area and been 16 in early 1987, I felt like I was being transported back in time while reading this book! The timeline transitions really were handled beautifully, as were the shifts in perspective. It really gave me a lot to wonder about, thinking back on how I perceived my world in 1987 and what I might discover if I decided to explore them in today's world.

For the most part, this is a cold case mystery, but Pickard has imbued it with a hint More...

Virgin of Small Plains is filled with an ensemble small town cast that can both keep secrets and have long memories. Seventeen years earlier, the body of a young woman is found out in the snow. Unidentified, the town raises money for a funeral and gravestone. People say that in her gratitude, the virgin performs miracles who come to her grave. Childhood friends Abby Reynolds, Rex Schellenberger and Mitch Newquist are reunited when Mitch returns to town a few months after his mother's death. His More...

I loved Nancy Pickard's Marie Lightfoot series (and was disappointed there weren't more than three! Publishing is a screwy business!), so I was anxious to read THE VIRGIN OF THE SMALL PLAINS. I knew it had garnered lots of awards and nominations in the mystery world; and, with her latest, THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING, being a B&N book club pick, I figured I'd better get to reading VIRGIN before I read SCENT. I normally don't like multiple viewpoints, which is how this book is told, but it More...