Rural Fiction

After 15 years of her husband never having time for her, Lindy Coats moves with her teenaged daughter to their summer cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan outside the town of Blueberry Beach. With a lonely single dad on one side of her, a crochety old business owner on the other, and a young mother with terrible secrets and a son fighting leukemia across the road, it doesn’t take Lindy long to discover that learning to enjoy life is less about what she chooses to do for herself and more about what she chooses to do for others.

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store...From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures. His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

Standing in the trauma room of an emergency department is like standing at ground zero of a nuclear reaction, only it's not radiation that is released - but stories. Stories that are told and retold, sometimes just until the end of the shift, but sometimes for decades.

When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn’t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters.

On the surface Sloane has the perfect life - an adoring husband, a precocious daughter, and enough financial security to be a stay-at-home mom. Still, she can't help but feel as though something - or someone - is missing.

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.

Jessica Ann Mackenzie—“Jam” to everyone in Honey Creek—has fulfilled her dream of owning the best restaurant for miles around. Serving candlelit dinners to every couple in town on Valentine’s Day is a reminder of another dream, one she’s just about given up on. Until that very night, when Sergeant Tucson Smith clambers out of the muddy river and onto her land, bringing the promise of something they’ve both been searching for.

Kelli Montgomery spent the previous twenty years in a loveless and abusive marriage. Last Christmas, after her brother, Andy, arrived home after decades away, she finally found the strength to leave her husband—but as anyone who’s ever been through such trauma knows, what happens next—the healing process, the rebirth which is the hardest, and most grueling part of healing. Years ago, Kelli and her ex took over her parents’ prosperous real estate business. Now that Mike has officially left the island, the work has fallen on Kelli’s shoulders.

Cherry, Maggie and Rose are mother, daughter and granddaughter, each with their own hopes, dreams and even sorrows. They have always been close, so when, in a moment of impulse, Cherry buys a gorgeous but run-down pub in the village she grew up in, it soon becomes a family affair. All three women uproot themselves and move to Rushbrook, deep in the heart of Somerset, to take over The Swan and restore it to its former glory. Cherry is at the helm, Maggie is in charge of the kitchen, and Rose tends the picturesque garden that leads down to the river.

A little before seven in the morning, Stacey wakes to the police pounding on her door. They search her home and seize her computer and her phone, telling her they’re looking for “illegal digital material”. Left to unravel what’s happened, Stacey must find a way to take back the privacy and freedom she feels she has lost. Luckily, she has her friends. Smart and tough and almost terrifyingly open, Stacey and her circle are uncommonly free of biases and boundaries, but this incident reveals how they are still susceptible to society’s traps.

In the little village of Barton-in-the-Dale, long-hidden secrets are bubbling to the surface. Ashley Underwood and Emmet O'Malley are set to tie the knot, when a revelation from the handsome Irishman's past returns to haunt him. The town's resident nosey-parker discovers some juicy gossip about the primary school's dishy new staff-member and head teacher Elisabeth Stirling has a very special secret of her own.

It's 1938 and women seeking a quick, no-questions split from their husbands head to the "divorce capital of the world," Reno, Nevada. There's one catch: they have to wait six weeks to become "residents." Many of these wealthy, soon-to-be divorcees flock to the Flying Leap, a dude ranch that caters to their every need. Ward spent one year at Yale before his family lost everything; now he's earning an honest living as a ranch hand. Admired for his good looks, Ward thinks he's got the Flying Leap's clients all figured out. But two guests are about to upend everything he thinks he knows.

Tucked away amongst the winding, cobbled streets of Pengelly, the old stone cottage on Memory Lane is full of secrets. Brimming with trinkets and treasures, there are thousands of stories hidden within its walls. Fifty-four-year-old Grace Clarke arrives in Pengelly determined to uncover the secrets of her past. Standing outside the little cottage, she feels sure that the answers she craves lie inside. The truth about her mysterious long-lost mother and the even more mysterious gifts she was born with....

Grace Klaren has finally made her dream of living in the Big Apple and working in the fashion industry a reality. But when she’s unexpectedly fired and can’t afford the next month’s rent, Grace does something she never thought she’d do: she moves back home. Back in Silver Creek, Iowa, Grace is determined to hate it. She’s saving her pennies and plotting her return to New York when she almost runs over a man who’s not paying attention at a crosswalk. It turns out to be Tucker, her high school sweetheart whose heart she broke when she left 10 years ago.

Eleanor Sharpley has been living a lie. Needing to escape her London life quickly, Eleanor throws her things into the back of her car, and heads to her erstwhile best friend Charlie’s family farm. But Charlie isn’t there. Instead she finds Charlie’s grieving brother, Daniel, her eight-month-old daughter, Hope (a daughter Eleanor had known nothing about) and a crumbling and unloved Damson Farm.

Hamming it up with equal parts history and histrionics, Phillip leads an archaeological dig of the farm's original dump site - until one student stops the show by uncovering some human bones. When a full skeleton is later excavated, Kath can't help but wonder if it's somehow connected to Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, and whom she met at this very site. After Phillip is found dead, it's up to Kath to thread the clues together before someone else becomes history.

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House.

Ten-year-old Pearl Spence is a daydreamer, playing make-believe to escape life in Oklahoma's Dust Bowl in 1935. The Spences have their share of misfortune, but as the sheriff's family, they've got more than most in this dry, desolate place. They're who the town turns to when there's a crisis or a need. Pearl is proud of her loving, strong family, though she often wearies of tracking down her mentally impaired older sister or wrestling with her grandmother's unshakable belief in a God. Then a mysterious man bent on revenge tramps into her town of Red River.

"Julien Signol, mon grand-père paternel, ne sut jamais lire ni écrire, et moi, son petit-fils, je suis devenu écrivain."

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.