Rural Life

Teresa e Angelina sono sorelle diverse in tutto: tanto delicata, schiva e silenziosa è Teresa, la voce narrante di questa storia, quanto vitale, curiosa e impertinente è Angelina, la sorella più piccola. Siamo all'inizio degli anni Quaranta a Copertino, nelle Terre d'Arneo, un'immensa distesa di campi coltivati nel cuore della Puglia.

Up all night, Marlene drives the highways and back roads near her home in hopes that some landmark will spark an image of her daughter, one untainted by years of grief. Her husband Les steams out to sea in his effort to cope. He is a commercial fisherman on a boat staffed up with desperate loners and shape-shifting friends obliterating their bodies in two-week shifts of crushing labor. The couple keep their pain hidden from each other, and most of their lives separate.

Joe Starling, a man teetering on the edge of spectacular failures—as an artist, rancher, lover, and human being—is also a man of noble ambitions. His struggle to right himself is mesmerizing, hilarious, and profoundly moving.

On the cusp of summer, 1986, Rowan Brockman's mother asks if he can come home to Septimus in the Western Australian Wheatbelt to help with the harvest. Rowan's brother Albert, the natural heir to the farm, has died, and Rowan's dad's health is failing. Although he longs to, there is no way that Rowan can refuse his mother's request as she prepares the farm for sale.

When brutish miner Hugo Mitchum is found murdered on the frozen shore of a North Country lake, the local officials and town gossips of Beau Caelais are quick to blame Marietta Abernathy, outspoken environmental activist and angry, witchy recluse. But Marietta herself has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

William and Emma Sinclair have settled into life at Moorend Farm in North Yorkshire and live happily with their growing family, believing they have left the shame of their past behind. William is determined to prove his success to his embittered mother and charts a secure living for his sons to follow in his footsteps and reap the benefits of William and his wife's hard work. When Emma takes Jamie and Meg to visit her parents in Scotland, they receive a warm welcome from all their relations, except 'Grandmother Sinclair'.

Laura Wilson is back in Blueberry Beach, dealing with a mysterious illness that has depleted her energy and left her listless and unable to enjoy life. She's working part time in her grandfather's shop when a mysterious stranger rents the small apartment above theirs. He's strong, athletic, handsome, and full of life and energy. They couldn't be farther apart physically, but they bond as they each take on more responsibility as her grandfather's health declines. Will they decide providing precious memories to the hundreds of customers in the old shop is enough to build a future on?

Gage has been happy in Blueberry Beach, living above the store on the Main Street, working from home, and raising his two girls. Alone. The tightknit community supports each other and his daughters enjoy working in the ice cream shop and playing in the beach band. When Zariah and her teenage niece, Macie, move in across the street, opening a clothing boutique, Gage's attraction to her is immediate. Their relationship seems too good to be true. Or maybe it’s Macie that’s too good to be true.

Anitra Pollard has lived in Blueberry Beach all her life, an idyllic small, lakeside town where regular people go to escape real life. Unfortunately, Anitra’s real life couldn’t get much worse. Her husband left not long before her oldest son was diagnosed with leukemia. Worse, the head doctor on the team assigned to her son looks very much like the man she had a short, but very sweet, summer fling with…and the father of the child she carries. Her life couldn’t get any harder or messier, but she will let nothing get in the way of getting the very best care for her son.

நகரவாசியாக இன்று விளங்கும் பெண்மணி ஒருவர் கிராம வாழ்க்கையைப் பற்றி எழுதியுள்ள கதை இது. கிராமத்தின் ஒரு பகுதியான அக்ரஹாரத்தின் கதை.

Jenny Newberg, Queen of Bad Decisions, is about to make another one. In a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, down-on-her-luck single mother Jenny is on a first-name basis with the debt collector at the bank, who is moving toward foreclosure. She is constantly apologizing to her precocious young daughter, Billie Starr, who is filling a book with her mother’s sorries, and it seems to Jenny that no apology will ever be enough. Then a pair of strangers in black suits offers her a hefty check to seduce someone known as the Candidate. Finally, something will go her way.

The Taylor sisters spent every summer at their family’s lake house, but as they grew up, they also grew apart. Now, in honor of their late mother’s wishes, they reunite on Evening Island, each hoping to find the best part of themselves they’d left behind.

The Morgan sisters spent many blissful summers at their family’s lake house growing up, but as they grew older, their lives took very different paths. Hope adores her twin girls, but she doesn’t love being a stay-at-home mom. When her workaholic husband doesn’t support her career aspirations, she packs up the kids and goes to Sunset Cottage, thinking that some time apart will help her decide what she really wants. But when the life she dreamed of becomes a possibility, she is more torn than ever.

Shae-Lynn Penrose drives a cab in a town where no one needs a cab–but plenty of people need rides. A former police officer with a closet full of miniskirts, a recklessly sharp tongue, and a tendency to deal with men by either beating them up or taking them to bed, she has spent years carving out a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the tiny coal-mining town where she grew up.

The Carrington family owns the only pub in the small country town of Kangaroo Ridge. It’s been eight years since the five siblings became orphans and since twins Sebastian and Tamara stepped up to look after their younger brothers and sister with the help of their aunt, Maddie. Seb and Tam gave up their teenage years to make sure the family stayed together, but that’s been hard and they’ve grown apart. Seb is silent and stoic; Tam, on the other hand, wants to kick over the traces and catch up on the life she missed out on.

1961. Als die junge Lehrerin Helene von der Großstadt ins ländliche, erzkatholische Hessen versetzt wird, begegnet man ihr zunächst mit Ablehnung. Der althergebrachte drakonische Erziehungsstil, die Gleichgültigkeit der Kollegen: Für die engagierte Helene ist es ein Kampf gegen Windmühlen. In Tobias, dem anfangs wortkargen, später jedoch deutlich zugänglicheren Landarzt, findet sie schließlich doch einen Verbündeten. Niemand ahnt: Ihre Versetzung aufs Land war kein Zufall. Denn mitten durch den Landstrich zieht sich die Grenze zur "Ostzone".

A year ago, a devastating bushfire ripped Annie's world apart—killing her grandmother, traumatizing her young daughter and leaving her mother's home in the mountains half destroyed. Annie fled back to the city, but the mountain continues to haunt her. Now, drawn by a call for help from her uncle, she's going back to the place she loves most in the world, to try to heal herself, her marriage, her daughter and her mother.

Each month best friends Claudia, Sal, Ella and Laura meet for drinks, celebrating 45 years of friendship. Sal had spent a lifetime building her career, but she hadn't banked on the one thing over which she had no control. Claudia loved her urban existence. But, as many women will know, other people's needs always seem to come first. Ella is ready to try something different. But she hadn't bargained on quite such a radical change. And Laura succumbed to the oldest cliché in the book.

Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child to her mother's abandonment and now an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Yet when her grandmother calls and asks her to watch over the children of a recent widower in a small, isolated town in Colorado, she takes it as a chance to finally organize her life.

After one too many heartbreaks, Travis Blake hung up his cowboy hat and put Big Verde, Texas, behind him. But when he gets the call that his young nephew needs him, he knows he has to return home. His plan is to sell the family ranch and hightail it back to Austin, but there's a small problem: The one person who stands in his way is the one person he can't resist.