Rural Fiction

A single visit to a West Virginia prison can't resolve the tragic pasts of convicted child-killer Will Hatfield and his former sweetheart Karin. While she struggles with haunting regrets, Will vows to wait for her, no matter how long it takes.

On a midnight train, four hours away from her wedding, Beth McMurray discovers the devastating truth about the powerful senator she's about to marry. Convinced nothing could make this stormy night worse, the train wrecks, and she tumbles straight into the arms of an outlaw. Andrew McLaughlin doesn't believe in loving except between the pages of his writings. He loved deeply once and thinks he'll never survive another loss. To save a friend, he climbs aboard a train heading toward Dallas.

New York Times best-selling author Jodi Thomas captures listeners’ hearts with her sweet tales set in Harmony, Texas. In Just Down the Road, a rowdy night at the bar lands Tinch Turner in the ER under the care of Dr. Addison Spencer, igniting a passion Tinch hasn’t felt since the loss of his wife. Meanwhile, Reagan Truman, grieving her beloved uncle, finds solace in her new Harmony family—and a new baby.

Sisters Abby and Dusti Delaney have spent their entire lives on Rainbow Lane, but they dream of something bigger. So when a poker tournament comes to town, Dusti is determined to win enough money to leave. Enlisting expert Kieron O’Brian to teach her the game, sparks begin to fly as they play their hands. But Kieron refuses to stand in the way of her dream, even if it means losing her forever.… After a year of traveling, Ronny Logan is settling into a home on Rainbow Lane, but that’s all the settling she’ll be doing. Ronny refuses to fall for anyone, regardless of the chemistry she has with her neighbor Austin Hawk.

New York Times best-selling author Catherine Anderson whisks listeners away to Oregon for a suspense-filled romance. Faking her own death to escape her murderous husband, Rainie takes refuge in the rural community of Crystal Falls, where she finds work as a bookkeeper on a horse ranch run by Parker Harrigan. But as their initial attraction blossoms, Rainie fears she can’t continue to elude the man who has sworn to kill her - and that her mere presence could jeopardize everything the Harrigan family holds dear.

Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the Internet: They are an enigmatic clan of swarthy, black-haired mountain people whose historical roots are lost in myth and controversy. Some say that when the first white settlers came to the Appalachians centuries ago, they found the Tufa already there. Others hint that Tufa blood brings special gifts....

In An Irish Country Courtship, after less than a year, young Barry Laverty, M.B., is settling in to the village, with only a few months to go before he becomes a full partner in the practice. He's looking forward to becoming a fixture in the community, until an unexpected romantic reversal gives him second thoughts. Will he truly be happy tending to routine coughs and colds for the rest of his career? After all, even when a more challenging case comes along, like a rare tropical disease, all he can do is pass it on to a qualified specialist or big-city hospital.

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he'd only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. "There is a balm in Gilead," his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, "to make the wounded whole." While Gamache doesn't talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache's help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three Pines. "There’s power enough in Heaven," he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, "to cure a sin-sick soul." And then he gets up. And joins her.

Zeke has no intention of getting married - until he buys a ranch next door to Natalie Patterson, a sexy divorcee with two kids, a zany extended family, and a philandering ex-husband involved in shady business dealings. When Natalie's 12-year-old son vandalizes Zeke's property and Natalie is unable to pay for the damages, Zeke offers to let the boy work off the debt. As Zeke struggles to instill a sense of responsibility and self-worth in the troubled youngster, he finds his life being turned upside down by Natalie and her sultry singing voice.

Eva - known to all as Lovey - grew up safe and secure in Oxford, Mississippi, surrounded by a rich literary history and her mother's stunning flower gardens. But a shed fire, and the injuries that it caused, seemed to change everything...especially when her older sister, Bitsy, blamed Lovey for the irreparable damage. Bitsy became the cheerleader. The homecoming queen. All the while, Lovey served as the family scapegoat, always bearing the brunt when Bitsy threw blame her way. At 18, Lovey fled to Arizona. In time, she became a successful advertising executive....

When Sheriff Flint Cahill's lover Maggie disappears, he knows his ex-wife is behind it. But with a winter storm coming, can he find her before it is too late?

A small Midwestern town is having an identity crisis: should they have a new techno-savvy name or a name honoring the freedmen who founded the town? Or is the current name just fine? They call in a professional naming consultant, famous for naming Apex bandages, guaranteed to match any skin color. But even he is losing his faith in monikers.

One man finds himself torn between two cultures in this sweeping tale of frontier life in post–Civil War era Texas. In the years following the American War Between the States, the once vacated military presence in west Texas is on the rise to protect the waves of settlers moving into the region. Living peaceably with the Mescalero Apache, half-breed former military scout Holton Lang promotes the tentative harmony between the US cavalry and the Native American population.

> New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Jodi Thomas pens contemporary romances that tug at listeners’ heartstrings. When Allie Daniels unexpectedly inherits property on Twisted Creek from a mysterious uncle, she and her "nana" open the place as a café for local residents. There, Allie is treated to a revolving cast of intriguing characters, including the handsome Luke Morgan.

In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on 44 acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago.

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has perilously little cash and few options. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia, in Sofia’s perfect house with her perfect children and her perfectly ordered yuppie life, does not appeal. Frankly, Sofia doesn’t exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there, either. But Sofia has yet another baby on the way, a mother desperate to see her daughters get along, and a client who needs help revitalizing his shabby old bookshop. So Carmen moves in and takes the job.

Country-girl Cressida Knight fills her days with her farm, a mischievous pet bull called Reggie and her volunteer emergency services work. The busier she keeps, the less she thinks about the cowboy who left her behind. She's convinced the small-town Woodlea grapevine that she's moved on, but now it's time to move on for real. Champion bull rider Denham Rigby shares Cressy's deep love for the land, and all he's ever wanted was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Cressy through life. But three years ago a dark family secret left him no choice but to run.

When Jennifer Smiley’s grandmother, Ginny, leaves her an old farmhouse on Edgewater Road in seemingly quiet Ross County, Ohio, Jennifer can’t pass up the opportunity for a new beginning. Almost immediately, she meets a group of men who generously help her move in. When she realizes that they work for Lincoln Bennett, her next-door neighbor, she’s intrigued. Lincoln is gorgeous and has dark lapis-blue eyes she could get lost in...but he doesn’t seem all that friendly. She’s torn between getting to know him and sticking with the solitude she knows so well.

His attractive neighbor is tugging at his heart-strings. A wealthy widow is pursuing him with hot casseroles. And his red-haired Cousin Meg has moved into the rectory, uninvited.