Rural Small Town Fiction

Caught between two worlds, Caleb Stoltz is bound by a deathbed promise to raise his orphaned niece and nephew in Middle Grove, where life revolves around family, farm, faith - and long-held suspicions about outsiders. When disaster strikes, Caleb is thrust into an urban environment of high-tech medicine. Dr. Reese Powell is poised to join the medical dynasty of her wealthy, successful parents. When a shocking accident brings Caleb Stoltz into her life, Reese is forced to deal with a situation that challenges everything she thinks she knows.

Cathy Terry is tired of running. Full of fear and hope, she backpacked across the country to Blessings, Georgia, not knowing if or when her abusive ex-husband would catch up to her. In Blessings she glimpses a safe haven and the closest feeling to home she's had in a long time - even more so when she meets Duke Talbot. The sweet, strong, and handsome rancher provides a shoulder to lean on. The stakes get higher as the community embraces her and her relationship with Duke deepens - but can Cathy claim a new home and family before her past claims her?

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.

My father is back from the dead. He won't leave town without me, and no one can figure out why. Is it because of what I am? Does he want to use me as part of his religious cult? My mates are furious, and I can't help but feel like I have brought this trouble on them. The supernatural community is upset by the light I've brought on them with the rightful murder of my mother and Jed. My classmates have been swayed by the cruel rumors that my bully has put out. Worst of all? The boys keep saying I can shift, but I've had no luck. And what is this about a possible mating heat?

When Lark Ashwood's beloved grandmother dies, she and her sisters are bequeathed an unfinished quilt. Finishing it could be the reason Lark's been looking for to stop running from the past. Hannah can't believe she's back in Bear Creek, the tiny town she sacrificed everything to escape from. But the driven musician's plan is to renovate her grandmother's house and leave as fast as humanly possible. Stay-at-home mom Avery has built her perfect life, but at a cost. This summer, the Ashwood women must lean on each other like never before if they are to stitch their family back together.

My life was perfectly fine before I jumped into the ocean fully clothed. Great job, perfect apartment, good enough boyfriend. So why did I turn up soaking wet at the beach bar of a very rough around the edges, very hot single dad and insist he hire me?

Wade Ashby doesn't let anyone in. With the death of his father and his failed marriage, plus the weight of the family business on his shoulders, Wade has plenty to deal with. He thrives on being the one constant and steady thing in his family's life and on their ranch, Silver Pines. Ivy Spencer knows two things for certain: Animals make better friends than people, and she can only count on herself. After a turbulent childhood and a string of bad luck since, Ivy is excited to start fresh at Silver Pines Ranch and live out her dream of training a racehorse en route to the Kentucky Derby.

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.

Rhett Rivers is a charming billionaire playboy, and I'm Scarlett Wright, a woman who doesn't back down from a fight. Our worlds clash, and the sparks between us are burning hot. Until one reckless weekend together changes everything. Suddenly I'm facing an unexpected pregnancy, and the man who swept me off my feet isn't so sure about fatherhood. When a rare disorder threatens our baby, something in Rhett shifts. He's not just a playboy anymore, he's the man who will stop at nothing to save us.

Martha Wallace came to Dublin from her home in America to find her birth mother. But instead she has lost her heart to the impossibly charming JP Deverill. Bridie Doyle, now mistress of Castle Deverill, is determined to make the castle she used to work in her home. But her flamboyant husband, Cesare, has other ideas. Kitty Deverill has come to terms with her life with her husband, Robert. But then Jack O'Leary, the love of her life, returns to Ballinakelly....

Stepping off the Greyhound bus, I look at the town glinting in the distance beyond a crystal-clear mountain lake. The lines I’ve memorized from the ad are on repeat in my mind: accommodation and employment provided to women willing to relocate to a historic town with a shortage of women. When Virginia first sees the ad, her breath catches. Female? Check. Small-town seclusion needed? Check. Currently without a home or a job? Check and check. She dabs an extra layer of concealer over the bruise on her cheek, bundles up her belongings, and her secrets, and escapes her life in Savannah.

When Lyric Jackson stopped for gas in Redemption, Tennessee, she wasn't sure what to think of the small town nestled in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. Then she got one look at Holton Clarke, saw that charming smile, and fell instantly. One night with the man in uniform sparked an ember of hope, but things didn't quite end how she'd expected. All Holton Clarke ever wanted to do was protect the people he cared about. He thought he'd be able to do that better as a deputy for his hometown, but one call turned his whole world and everything he thought he knew upside down.

In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself.

When Maggie Banks arrives to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to the small-town clientele. But with the town on the map as a top literary destination and the tourist society bent on keeping businesses historic, Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat. And in Maggie's world, bookish rules are made to be broken.

Twenty-one-year-old Jenilee Lane's dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide. She doesn't imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she's made her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor, Eudora Gibson, from the cellar in which she's been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado's wake.

The first time I saw Grayson Phillips, I fell. Tripped, to be specific. His seven-year-old self saved me from scraped knees and sentenced me to a fate of pining after my brother’s best friend for years. People change. Childish crushes fade. I’m an adult now, a doctor with more important things to worry about. I gave up on the boy next door ever loving me a long time ago. Or so I thought…until he returns to our hometown on leave from the Air Force. For the first time, not everything between us feels one-sided. That doesn’t make it matter. He’ll take off soon—literally.

Sully Raines sets out to find his birth mother, and ends up in Blessings, Georgia. A new surprise awaits him here, but of the best kind - his childhood sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen since she moved away when they were teens, is living in Blessings now. He's not sure she's as happy to see him as he is to see her, but it's been a lot of years, and a lot of water under the bridge... Sully's heartfelt search for answers about his past might just turn out to be the key to his future.

Young nurse Gemma is struggling with the traumas she has witnessed through her job. Needing to escape from it all, she agrees to help renovate a rundown farmhouse in Doullens, France, a town near the Somme. There, in a boarded-up cupboard is a tin that reveals the secret letters and heartache of Alice Le Breton, a young volunteer nurse who worked in a casualty clearing station near the front line. Set in the present day and during the horrifying years of the war, both women discover deep down the strength and courage to carry on in even the most difficult of times.

Todd, the youngest of four children, has a developmental disability that keeps him at home on the farm with his mother and father. One special holiday season, Todd hears an ad on the radio from a shelter looking for temporary homes for their dogs during the holiday week. When Todd's parents at last give in to his pleas for this charitable cause, the family is faced with an entire shelter full of dogs needing homes.

Paisley Ratchford is trying to keep it together, but in eight weeks, the Toronto apartment building she lives in will be demolished. A last-ditch effort to reclaim her abandoned childhood home on Amherst Island plunges Paisley into memories of growing up in the tight-knit community, and into the obsessive compulsive disorder that has only ever offered a semblance of control. Her compulsion to count in sets of eight had little effect on thwarting bullies, her father’s bad luck, and her mother’s mental illness—all of which return to haunt her.