Rural Life

Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life, including boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies, he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door.

Amanda is a new mother, and she is breaking. After a fight with her partner, she puts the baby in the car and drives from Queens to her hometown in rural Ohio, where she shows up unannounced on the doorstep of her estranged childhood best friend. Amanda thought that she had left Carrie firmly in the past. After their friendship ended, their lives diverged radically: Carrie had a baby the summer after high school, became a successful tattoo artist, and never escaped Ohio’s conservative grid of close-cut grass.

A high-security luxury housing estate in the Thames Valley is the setting for a disturbing outbreak of violence in this compelling novella from the acclaimed author of ‘Cocaine Nights’ and ‘Super-Cannes’. Pangbourne Village housing estate is exclusive, expensive and protected from the outside world by the very latest in security systems. It should be the perfect place to bring up a child.

Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter, Skye, have always been each other's everything. The pair lives on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need? One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and they are pushed farther to the margins.

The Little House on the Prairie was a childhood TV classic for a generation of kids, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels have never gone out of style. Her stories of her family’s life in the 1870s offer countless gems of wisdom, and many facets of their lifestyle and the skills they relied on have become some of the hottest trends of today, from sourdough bread and modern pioneering to DIY prairie dresses and needlepoint. Little House Life Hacks playfully compiles the most crucial takeaways from that world, practical enough to work for pioneering stock and updated for today’s evolving world.

Jenna Abbott’s life went up in flames even before the fire started in Tenmile, Oregon. She was still coping with her husband's affair—and the revelation that he got a much younger woman pregnant—when the fire finally died down, and Ryan was among the missing. Chelsea Goddard still can’t explain how her estranged husband got back to Tenmile from out of the country the day of the fire, and she also can’t shake the nagging feeling that the secrets they’ve kept between them for the last twenty years might just be the tinder that made it all burn.

Morning rush hour on the Golden Gate Bridge. Amid the river of metal and glass, a shocking event occurs, leaving those who witnessed it desperately looking for answers, most notably one man and his son, Jake, who captured the event and uploaded it to the Internet for all the world to experience. As the media swarms over the story, Jake will face the ramifications of his actions, as he learns the perils of our modern disconnect between the real world and the world we create online.

Devastated by the sudden death of her mother—a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel, who overflowed with pearls of Ozarks wisdom but never spoke of her own family—Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to pack up and head north to the Michigan resort town where she believes she’ll find answers to the lifelong questions she’s had about not only her mother’s past but also her own place in the world.

Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century rural Iceland, Karitas Ólafsdóttir, one of six siblings, yearns for a new life. An artist, Karitas has a powerful calling and is determined to never let go of her true being, one unsuited for the conventional. But she is powerless against the fateful turns of real life and all its expectations of women. Pulled back time and again by design and by chance to the Icelandic countryside - as dutiful daughter, loving mother, and fisherman’s wife - she struggles to thrive, to be what she was meant to be.

After Kiran loses her mother, she escapes to the Welsh countryside—to allow herself to grieve away from turbulent city life in London, to leave her toxic family behind, and to find solace in the purity of the natural world. I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. This is a reflective book about finding friendship in the most unexpected places—and what nature and a small community in the Welsh Valleys can teach us about life.

What will be will be. Belinda Marshall’s idyllic teenage life in Brittany, France, fell apart when her parents dramatically separated and her mother took her back to England. Fast forward 35 years when Belinda’s world is once again turned upside down. It’s the week before Christmas and her employer 'surprises’ Belinda by asking for her help to rejuvenate their latest investment, a run-down campsite in Brittany.

Sadie Wingate has been keeping secrets... from her family and from her brand-new husband. Once the truth is revealed, her whole world melts like a truffle in the sunshine. Can Sadie finally settle for a sweet life on Amelia Island… or will stability send her searching for the next adventure? Raina nears her delivery date and signs the papers ending her marriage, but there’s one thing missing in her life. Despite being the fixer in her family, the only solution to her heart’s dilemma seems all wrong for this newly divorced mother of infant twins. But how can she say no?

One summer evening, Lib Hanson is confronted by her painful past when Matt Marlow, the forty-year-old son she abandoned as an infant, shows up on her porch. Fiercely independent, Lib has never revealed her son's existence—or her previous marriage—to her husband, Jack. Married nearly three decades but living in separate houses (to the confusion but acceptance of their neighbors), they enjoy an ease and comfort together in small-town Anthem, Wisconsin. But Jack is a stickler for honesty, and Lib's long-dormant secret threatens to unravel their lives.

Clara Seymour is trying to find her feet in London, living away from home for the first time. Brought up by her domineering mother, treasuring time any time with her adoring father, Clara's world is brought to a standstill when her dad abruptly dies. Then, a mystery comes to light in a letter from him. I am sure you are aware that before I met your mother I had a previous marriage. But what we never discussed is that we had a daughter. So begins a journey of discovery that takes Clara to remote Norway and a landscape as brutal as it is bewitching.

Twenty-seven years ago, Alana Copperfield was the beauty queen of Nantucket High and girlfriend of Jeremy Farley, the handsome and successful football quarterback. Back then, Jeremy's football scholarship to Notre Dame pushed him to break things off with the aimless Alana. Their breakup created a chain of events that ultimately led to a terrible car accident, one that left Jeremy unable to walk for nearly two years. Needless to say, his dreams were dashed forever.

In small towns between the North Carolina Piedmont and the coast, the best scenery is often in the sky. On flat sweeps of red clay and scrub pine, the days move monotonously, safely, but above, in the blink of an eye, dangerous clouds can boil out of all four corners of the sky. The flat slow land starts to shiver and anything can happen. In such a storm, on Annie Peregrine’s seventh birthday, her father gave her the airplane and minutes later drove out of her life.

In the peaceful Wiltshire valley of Essington St Mary, architect Corin Drayton stumbles upon a ghastly new building development that is set to destroy the tranquil atmosphere and Edwardian features of this quiet neighbourhood. He is horrified. For only recently has he inherited - and spent his life savings on renovating - a home for himself and his newly pregnant wife Lucia in Larch Tree Lane. From the cottages and farms to the local shop, pub and old manor house, residents' lives are set to intertwine, relationships bloom, and both romance and heartache lie ahead.

The scent of flowers and change is in the air for the Wingate sisters. With her husband gone for weeks at a stretch, Rose's unwavering enthusiasm is tested, forcing her to remove her famous rose-colored glasses and face a family crisis. While Susannah plans an anniversary surprise for Rex, Chloe finds the courage to try one more career path, with help coming from the one constant in her life, her precious furbaby, Lady Bug.

In this delightful memoir, Jared Gulian describes the first four years of their new life in the country, its disasters, small triumphs, surprises, and pleasures. But most of all, he describes the warmth of the local community that welcomed them, saved them from certain peril, taught them how to cook, how to care for animals, and how to understand and love the land.

Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people.