Rural Fiction

It’s been three years. It’s time to let go of the past. When a man covered in tattoos walks into the bar where I work, with a guitar case slung over his back and a determined swagger, I think I’m finally ready to move on...until I see his guitar. I’d recognize it anywhere. It was the last gift Nate ever received from his father.

Todd, the youngest of four children, has a developmental disability that keeps him at home on the farm with his mother and father. One special holiday season, Todd hears an ad on the radio from a shelter looking for temporary homes for their dogs during the holiday week. When Todd's parents at last give in to his pleas for this charitable cause, the family is faced with an entire shelter full of dogs needing homes.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Ciarán McCrohan moves to the small remote island of Inishean to take over the position of lighthouse keeper. But there is one catch: he needs a wife. On the edge of Europe, shielded from the potato blight and ensuing famine that rages in Ireland, two young people find refuge both in their small community and in each other. Almost two centuries later, Josh O’Brien’s happy life in Ireland is threatened, despite the efforts of his new family. But there is someone who will stand above the others to secure his future.

As long as Carmel stays in London, nothing can happen to shatter her perfect life. She has a wonderful marriage, a rewarding career and a great bunch of friends. As far as she's concerned, the sadness of her past can stay back in Ireland, where it belongs. For Carmel, Ireland only means misery, loneliness and fear and she never wants to return. The new, confident and happy Carmel only exists on the cosmopolitan streets of Britain's capital. If she ever was forced to return, she fears she would revert to the mousey downtrodden woman she once was.

In "A Taste of Murder," the third Bunburry book, a local beef farmer is found dead and Betty Thorndike, vegetarian and Bunburry's only Green Party member, is in the frame. Despite what everyone thinks, Betty is absolutely not Alfie McAlister's girlfriend. But Alfie knows what it's like to be wrongly accused, and enlists the help of his fellow amateur detectives, Liz and Marge, to find out who's responsible. There's just one problem about a farm-based investigation - Alfie's scared of cows.

Dr. Antonio Rinalto has lived abroad in Brazil for over a decade. A promising young surgeon, he has been serving as a medical missionary. But there are other reasons he left his Tuscan home... Among the vines of Viti del Fiume, family secrets linger. Ten years later, Antonio is called home to Italy, where he will learn the power of forgiveness and the importance of family bonds. Sophie Bellamy is searching for a way out of England. As a graduating viticulturist, interning at a vineyard in Tuscany seems like the perfect escape. But old ghosts have a way of tracking their prey.

The last person I expected to see at the funeral was Jake Blackwood—my best friend's older brother, my first love turned bearded mountain god. He brought backup. Two ex-SEALs who share his cabin in the woods. Noah is the calm in the storm. Eli's the storm itself. He blames me for the past. I blame him for that kiss in the woodshed. Then the threats started. Jake insists I stay with them. I should've said no. But I didn't. Being snowed in with a mountain man is a bad idea... Let alone three. And falling for all of them? Disastrous.

My trip to Nashville for my sister's bachelorette trip was going to be my weekend to let go. I was starting my last year of college and I finally felt like I had a plan for my life. I wanted one weekend of freedom. My plan was to drink some whiskey, sing karaoke, and ride that mechanical bull. But after meeting a sexy stranger, the bull took the backseat, and I went on a different kind of ride.

Pickax loves a big occasion. The Great Food "Explo" is about to begin, introducing new restaurants, country inns, and food specialty shops. Lurking in the background, though, is a killer determined to make this an event Pickax City will never forget. The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Jim Qwilleran is on the scene, with suspicions that the bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone.

While Barney loves his life at Bumblebee Barn - a farm that has been in his family for generations - he's struggling to find someone to share it with. The early mornings quad biking through muddy fields and the long hours looking after the crops and animals are proving to be a deterrent to finding love. So when his sister, Fizz - desperate for Barney to find his soulmate - sees an advert for Love on the Farm, a new reality TV show to help farmers find love, he has nothing to lose by applying.

Single mom Heather Donovan’s dreams of home and family are tantalizingly within reach when she settles in Chesapeake Shores. The welcoming arms of the boisterous, loving O’Brien clan embrace her and her son. But accepting their support seems to further alienate her son’s father, Connor O’Brien. His parents’ divorce and his career as a high-powered divorce attorney have left him jaded about marriage. Then everything changes. Will the possibility of a future without Heather make Connor look at love and his career differently?

Sierra Ravenswood is the new part-time employee of the Flower House, a flower shop in Aerieville, Tennessee. Things take a decidedly negative turn when a customer drops dead in the middle of her new bouquet-arranging workshop at the store. The town is on edge, and Sierra knows that murder is something that an upbeat attitude and a bouquet of sweet-smelling roses can't fix. She's determined to figure out whodunit, before anyone else in town meets an untimely reason for needing funeral flowers.

Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.

Rene Descartes, a recently released ex-con, is living in a ramshackle trailer only a short distance from Hidden Cove, a secluded paradise for the country’s rich and famous. A savage attack against Rene by the son of the fourth richest man in the country spurns a brutal act of revenge that will ignite this paradise into a fiery vision of hell on earth. As the flames threaten to engulf rich and poor alike, only Deacon Riis, a small-town reporter haunted by his own past, suspects it wasn’t Rene who set Hidden Cove ablaze but someone with a far more sinister agenda.

Stella Boor's biological father is a nameless, faceless sperm donor. At least, that's what her parents have led her to believe. Imagine her surprise when she learns he's none other than rock legend Billy Jameson and that Billy has died and left Stella a historic inn on a sprawling farm in the mountains of Virginia. A city girl at heart, Stella can't imagine living anywhere but New York. Her first inclination is to sell the property. But the terms of Billy's will stipulate she manages the inn for three years before putting it on the market.

Deacon Brannock is determined to make a name for himself and the saloon he's worked his whole life to afford. He was prepared for life in the Wild West, but he hadn't counted on Grace Legend.... Grace has always fought hard for what she believes in, and after her best friend is killed at the hands of her drunk and angry husband, that includes keeping alcohol out of her town.

Abby Curtis has made such a mess of her life that rock bottom is an ambitious climb. With nowhere else to go, she lands on her Aunt Reva's doorstep at Buckaroo Barn, home to a motley assortment of rescue animals. Reva, a telepathic animal communicator, gives Abby time to reinvent herself by leaving Abby in charge of the farm while she's away. Abby immerses herself in caring for the animals and running educational programs to teach kids to appreciate and relate to them. Just when Abby is finally starting to feel like herself again, a sexy new neighbor moves in next door.

In 1910, while hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness.

Gabriella Jacobson has one goal for her freshman year of college: get Matthew Cory to fall in love with her. Luckily for Gabby, her best friend Ben attends the same college on a music scholarship. He is the perfect resource—girls love him, and he's more experienced with relationships than she is, since she's never had a boyfriend. When Gabby panics before her first date with Matt, she begs Ben to show her how to kiss. But Ben has a secret, one he's been keeping from Gabby for years. He's in love with her.

After years of hard work and saving all my pennies while working as Balsam Ridge’s librarian, my dream of opening a combination book store and cafe is finally coming to fruition. Everything is on track until my old high school flame, Nashville’s trouble-making superstar Garrett Tuttle, comes back to town. His wild ways and out-of-control behavior caused his label to send him home while the chatter dies down. Garrett doesn’t know how to lay low, and his arrival turns my world upside down.