Rural Fiction

After ten years of loyal service, Daisy Butterworth has been made redundant. Like any clever woman, she knows the cure to redundancy is a little too much wine and her best friend. Only the next morning, Daisy has more than a hangover...she has a whole new house—in France! Seeing this as an opportunity instead of a disaster, she’s excited about finally moving to France, just as she and her husband always dreamed of. However, Daisy is in for another surprise. Despite planning to move there for over 20 years, her husband never actually intended to go.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.

Middlemarch is a novel by the English author Mary Anne Evans, who wrote as George Eliot. It first appeared in eight installments in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midland town, from 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events.

Wyatt Rivers is the perfect no-strings hookup—a cowboy Casanova who rocks a Stetson, looks smokin' hot in his Wranglers, and never rests his head on the same pillow twice. He's exactly what I'm looking for. If only Wyatt wasn't also my best friend…I'm back in my hometown of Harstville, Texas for a few months while I wait for my dream job to start thousands of miles away. While I'm here, I hope to end an epic dry spell in the bedroom, preferably with a local cowboy. If the rumors are true, they really do ride harder and stay on longer.

The job at Sunday Orchard was supposed to be temporary. A chance to gain some work experience, to have some fun. I had not expected to be welcomed into a family of gorgeous and weirdly efficient lumberjack-types, or to find purpose in the tiny Vermont town whose claim to fame seemed to be apple-based products and copious amounts of charm. And I most definitely hadn’t expected to fall for Knox Sunday, my grumpy, burly, fifteen-years-older, reluctant roommate, with his infuriating lectures, his hot-as-fire body, his superior attitude - I’ve never been one to put down roots.

Best-selling author Martin Walker’s previous two novels starring Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges became hits with fans and critics around the globe. In this thrilling third mystery, Bruno has his hands full with trouble in the truffle trade in St. Denis’ marketplace. And when a friend is murdered, things really start heating up.

Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper.

Eight years ago, Declan Gilroy pushed his way into my life and made himself at home. Made me believe he was different. Made me love him. Then he destroyed me. Left me. Broke my heart. I'll never forgive him for it. Never. I've spent the last eight years watching him move on. Living his life like what he did to me meant nothing. Like I meant nothing. He might not love me anymore, but he still wants me. That much I'm sure of. I can see it in the way he looks at me. Feel it in the way he kisses me. I've waited eight long years to get even, and it's finally here. The chance to make him hurt.

Spring should bring renewal, but Maura McKnight-Parker cannot escape the past. Still reeling from the loss of one daughter, the former free spirit is thrown for a loop by the return of her older daughter, Sage, and the reappearance of her first love, Sage’s father. Jackson Lange never knew his daughter—never even knew that he’d left the love of his life pregnant when he fled their small town—but he has never forgotten Maura.

Mattie Fisher's three daughters know that she's been keeping a secret from them. With each item pulled from the beloved family hope chest, they've discovered a new clue about their mother's past. But there's a reason Mattie has been keeping her history hidden, and she's not sure she's ready to reopen old wounds. Will dredging up the past change the way her children view her? Or her marriage to their father? And can she handle the pain of revisiting the memories that preceded the last few happy decades?

Five long years ago, Laura Dalton stood on the bleak Nantucket shore waiting for her beloved husband Rye to return—until the day she learned his ship was lost at sea. Now, Laura's lonely heart has found solace in Dan, Rye's closest friend. Dan has been a beacon of light in her time of darkness, becoming a father to the child that Rye never knew and giving her a reason to live again. But who could foretell that a wind-roughened sailor with sun-bleached hair would come back into their lives? That Laura's heart could betray her soul? That Rye would come home again . . .

Candy shop owner Charlotte Caine knows temptation. To reboot her life, shed weight and gain perspective, she’s passing up sweet enticements left and right. But willpower doesn’t come so easily when hell-raiser Spencer Gregory comes back to Hope’s Crossing, bringing with him memories of broken promises and teen angst. A retired pro baseball player on the mend from injury—and a damaging scandal—he’s interested in his own brand of reinvention.

Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be: chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive.

After years apart, Mick and Megan O’Brien are finally ready to make it official...again. Most of their grown children couldn’t be happier about their rekindled love and impending marriage this holiday season. Only Connor is a holdout. Driven to become a divorce attorney after what he views as his mother’s abandonment of their family, Connor’s not about to give his blessing to this reunion romance. The last thing Megan wants to do is hurt her family again. After all, is she really sure she and Mick can make it this time around?

The first time I met the grumpy lumberjack next door, I almost burnt down his cabin. The second time, I was throwing tampons at a moose (don't ask). The third time, I was naked. Henri Gagnon is not just my neighbor and landlord but a pain in my optimistic, plus-sized ass. He's got a protective streak under his grumpy exterior, and he's convinced I won't make it through the Maine winter.

Paisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but in eight weeks, the Toronto apartment building she lives in will be demolished. A last-ditch effort to reclaim her abandoned childhood home on Amherst Island plunges Paisley into memories of growing up in the tight-knit community, and into the obsessive compulsive disorder that has only ever offered a semblance of control. Her compulsion to count in sets of eight had little effect on thwarting bullies, her father’s bad luck, and her mother’s mental illness—all of which return to haunt her.

After everything she worked for is destroyed, Pediatrician Natasha Gray is determined to build a new life. Divorced, bankrupt, and suddenly a single mom, she’s ready to start over in Silver Springs - on her own. She certainly doesn’t need help from Mack Amos, the man who’s already broken her heart twice. Although Mack has had feelings for Tash since they first met, too many things have stood in the way. He’s always given her the support she needs, though, and he’ll do the same now. Even if the desire he wrestles with threatens to undermine his intentions....

Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they each live through a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences mirror each other and become interwoven. In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf struggles to write a novel whose protagonist is Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura ignores her chores and small son to sit in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In 1990s New York, Clarissa goes to buy flowers for a party, mirroring the start of the fictional Mrs Dalloway’s day.

A woman vanishes in the fog up on "the Hill", an area locally known for its tranquillity and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man, and even a dog disappear, no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town.

When Sheriff Cody Banks’s wife died, he blamed Abby Brennan for the illness he's sure killed Deborah and, in his grief, made sure she knew it. Looking back now, he knows that his behavior was likely the reason Abby left town years ago. So when he sees her—and the child she’s raising—at her great-uncle's funeral, Cody attempts to apologize, ashamed to see the fear he puts in her beautiful eyes and determined to show her he's no longer that same angry man.