Rural Life

Karen Sommerfield has been hiding from the big questions of her life - the emotional distance in her marriage, her inability to have children, and her bout with cancer. Getting lost in her high-powered career provides the sense of purpose she yearns for. Until the day she's downsized out of her job and the doctor tells her the cancer may be back. It's a double blow that would send anyone reeling.

An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field.

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley.

When local real estate shark Edgar Coleman is murdered and "good riddance" is the response from every Pecan Spring resident, China Bayles quickly learns that Coleman was no stranger to adultery and blackmail. China's fiancé, the interim police chief, is immersed in the investigation, and the suspect list grows steadily longer. China puts her honeymoon plans aside and starts hunting for the killer. As her investigation gets underway, she digs up dirt and secrets on people she knows.

When 18-year-old Tam Lambert learns that her family’s upscale home is in foreclosure, the life she's known is forever changed. Tam and her family must move into a tiny house in a changing Dallas neighborhood called Blue Sky Hill.... New resident Shasta Reid-Williams knows nothing of real estate schemes when she and her husband purchase a home in Blue Sky Hill. To her, it’s the perfect place to raise her children. Better yet is getting to know Tam, who lives right across the street.

Two years ago, Ellie Grant would have fallen apart at any reminder of her ex-husband, Tucker. But now she doesn't bat an eye when "their song" comes on the radio. She's unfazed by the thought of Tucker's perky new girlfriend. Ellie is totally over him. And things are better for Tucker as well. The single life agrees with him. And they've both done a good job of being civil to each other, for their sons' sake. But the kids aren't buying it. Zach and Kody are convinced that, deep down, their parents are still meant to be together.

It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.

Once, not too long ago, there was just a single Irish country doctor tending to the lively little village of Ballybucklebo: Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. Now his thriving practice is growing by leaps and bounds. Not only has O'Reilly taken a new trainee under his wing, Doctor Connor Nelson, he's also added a spirited Labrador puppy to his ever-expanding household at Number One Main Street. Meanwhile, his trusted partner, young Doctor Barry Laverty, finds himself wondering if he's truly ready to settle down and start a family with his lovely fiancée, Sue.

Long before Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly became a fixture in the colourful Irish village of Ballybucklebo, he was a young M.B. with plans to marry midwife Dierdre Mawhinney. Those plans were complicated by the outbreak of World War II and the call of duty. Assigned to the HMS Warspite, a formidable 30,000-ton battleship, Surgeon Lieutenant O'Reilly soon found himself face-to-face with the hardships of war, tending to the dreadnought's crew of 1,200 as well as to the many casualties brought aboard.

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important but natural and even supernatural forces, too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....

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.

Danniella is running from her past, so when she arrives at the beautiful seaside resort of Whitsborough Bay, the last thing on her mind is making friends. Alison is fun, caring and doesn't take herself too seriously. But beneath the front, she is a lost soul. Karen's romance has taken a back seat to her fitness business. But she doesn’t want to give up on love quite yet. When the women meet at their local bootcamp, a deep friendship blossoms. And soon they realise that the secret to happiness is where they least expected to find it....

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.

Dover 1940 As firebombs fall on Dover, Edie Castle's life is thrown into turmoil when the garage where she lives and works is damaged and her beloved boss is arrested. With no job and nowhere else to go, Edie returns to Castle's Café and her formidable mother, Nellie. Living with her mother is never easy, but tensions reach boiling point when an old friend of Nellie's arrives looking for a place to stay. Meanwhile, desperate to clear her boss's name, Edie turns to his nephew for help.

In the latest novel from Susan Gregg Gilmore, sometimes you have to return to the place where you began to arrive at the place where you belong.

Nothing short of a miracle can restore Eliza Hayward’s Christmas cheer. The job she pinned her dreams on has gone up in smoke—literally—and now she’s stuck in an unfamiliar, if breathtaking, small town. Precariously close to being destitute, Eliza needs a hero, but she’s not expecting one who almost runs her down with his car! Rescuing Eliza is pure instinct for tech genius Aidan Caine. At first, putting the renovation of his lakeside guest lodge in Eliza’s hands assuages his guilt—until he sees how quickly he could fall for her.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she has been writing for six years. At 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative 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.