Rural Life

Charlene Ann Baumbich—award-winning journalist and best-selling author of the Dearest Dorothy novels—launches a series of heartwarming stories linked by the swirling flakes of one special snowglobe. In this charming tale of second chances, renewed faith, and forgiveness, a captivating heirloom triggers inexplicable changes.

Long before Hank Crawford arrived in the waters of Ketchikan, his partners and compatriots were already in love with its shores. Following the final, crushing moments of World War II, Japanese officer Kiyoshi Tsurifune, Sergeant Jones Henry, and Resistance fighter Swede Scorden struggle to regain normalcy and any contact with the shimmering, fish-filled sea. Lost honor, fallen friends, their cultural identities gone in the wake of a nuclear blast - these fishermen-turned-soldiers have a long way to go till they regain the waters in which they feel most at home.

Long before Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly made most listeners’ acquaintance in Patrick Taylor's best-selling novel An Irish Country Doctor, he appeared in a series of humorous columns originally published in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. These warm and wryly amusing vignettes provide an early glimpse at the redoubtable Dr. O’Reilly as he tends to the colourful and eccentric residents of Ballybucklebo, a cozy Ulster village nestled in the bygone years of the early '60s.

As Darby Dixon sits in a tiny Texas church bathroom on her wedding day holding a positive pregnancy test, she realizes marrying her fiancé would be the worst decision of her life. She's never been very good at standing up for herself, but she'll sure as hell stand up for her baby. With very little cash and a ton of courage, she flees town to take a new name and start a new life.

Once a gifted ballet dancer, Julia Costell buckled under the demands of a professional dance career, and has landed with a thud in an unglamorous job as a guidance counselor at a performing arts high school. Living back home with her parents and feeling lost, she is afraid she’ll never soar again...until the day young Dell Jordan is sent to her office, carrying an essay. In Dell’s writing, Julia sees luminous sparks of hope. But as she fights to forge a brighter future for one disadvantaged student, she's drawn into startling undercurrents of conflict and denial within the academy.

There are a few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he'd never do: he'd never leave New York City; never give his heart away again after barely surviving one failed marriage; and, most of all, never become a parent. Now, Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. Just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling, mysterious message re-opens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.

Early one morning in 1929, Mary Seneca Steele spontaneously packs a suitcase, gathers up her son and daughter, and drives away in her abusive and dissolute husband’s brand-new Auburn Phaeton automobile, leaving her privileged life in Charleston behind. It is the beginning of a journey of enlightenment that leads Mary “Sen” to the mountains and mysteries of Appalachia, where she will learn unexpected family secrets, create a new life for herself and her children, and finally experience love and happiness before tragedy will once again test her.

A tragic accident leaves the tight-knit book club in the small seaside town of Fairweather reeling. Then stranger Tom McLysaght arrives in the community, and the members of the club find their lives changing in ways they never could have imagined. None of them realise that Tom is hiding a secret. On the surface, his move to Fairweather was to escape his highflying life in London and to put some much-needed distance between him and his ex-fiancée - but deep down Tom knows that there are some things he cannot run from.

A daring WWII pilot who grew up among the clouds, Juliet Caron’s life was one of courage, adventure - and a love torn apart by war. Every nook of her Cornish cottage is alive with memories just waiting to be discovered. Katherine Henderson has escaped to Cornwall for Christmas, but she soon finds there is more to her holiday cottage than meets the eye. And on the eve of Juliet’s 100th birthday, Katherine is enlisted to make an old lady’s final Christmas wish come true....

Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson Cooper is eager to revive a cherished family tradition. A recent remodeling of the manor’s kitchen unearthed a cornucopia that once served as the centerpiece of the Bergstrom family’s holiday table. Into it, each Bergstrom would place an object that symbolized something he or she was especially thankful for that year. On this quilter’s holiday, Sylvia has invited her friends to continue the tradition by sewing quilt blocks that represent their thankfulness and gratitude.

New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini has charmed countless readers with her heartwarming Elm Creek Quilts novels. Like the other delightful entries in the series, Circle of Quilters offers an engaging story, endearing characters, and fascinating bits of quilting lore.

Suzy Medley is having a bad day...when a shabby terrier turns up at her door. Just like Suzy, Scout has been abandoned, although only Suzy has been left with a financial mess and a business in tatters thanks to her ex. Suzy takes Scout in, and her chaotic world changes in unexpected ways: strangers have never been more welcoming, and her teenage kids can’t wait to come home to visit. Then a chance encounter on a windy Hebridean beach makes things more complicated, because Suzy isn’t the only one who needs a friend.

1975. In the town of Rexburg, Idaho, aspiring artist Aran Rigby, his younger sister, Tamsin, and their two brothers are locked in orbit around their emotionally abusive father. Gad is the kind of man who soothes the failures of his own life by controlling the lives of others. But Aran and Tamsin are united in rebellion against their father. They understand each other. They have dreams beyond their small town.

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?

Ian Moore is a stand-up comedian in the UK and a husband, father of three boys, farmhand and chutney-maker in France. He is a mod in both walks of life and most of his time is spent travelling grumpily between the two. Comedian, mod and professional grump Ian Moore has had enough. Tired of being unable to park anywhere near his cramped house in a noisy town he doesn’t like, he hatches a plan to move his wife and young son to a remote corner of the Loire Valley in search of serenity and space.

Journey to Five Island Cove for a roaring good time with friends old and new, their sons and daughters, and all their new husbands as they navigate the heartaches and celebrations of life and love. When someone returns to the Cove no one ever expected to see again, old wounds open just as they'd started to heal. This group of women will be tested again, both on land and at sea, just as they once were as teens.

It is All Souls Day, and the spirit of Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table and remembers. In flowing, relentless prose, Conway recalls his life in rural Ireland: as a boy and man, father, husband, citizen. His ruminations move from childhood memories of his father's deftness with machines to his own work as a civil engineer, from transformations in the local economy to the tidal wave of global financial collapse. Conway's thoughts go still further, outward to the vast systems of time and history that hold us all.

Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives—sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent—Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS.

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father - from whom she hadn't heard in decades - Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half sisters she never knew existed. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.