Rural Small Town Fiction

Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.

Fifteen year old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more.

Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle - and turns Otter Lake completely upside down. Maggie, the Reserve’s chief, is swept off her feet, but Virgil, her teenage son, is less than enchanted. Suspicious of the stranger’s intentions, he teams up with his uncle, Wayne - a master of aboriginal martial arts - to drive the stranger from the Reserve. And it turns out that the raccoons are willing to lend a hand.

Hannah Russell’s carefully crafted plans for her life have been upended without warning. When her best friend died suddenly, Hannah became guardian to a five-year-old named Noah. With no experience at motherhood, she’s terrified she’s not up to the challenge. She and Noah need time to get to know each other, so she decides to rent a country house with stunning views on a lake in rural Colorado.

Last Christmas Marcie Sullivan said a final goodbye to her husband, Bobby. This Christmas she’s come to Virgin River to find the man who saved his life and gave her three more years to love him. Fellow marine Ian Buchanan dragged Bobby’s shattered body onto a medical transport in Fallujah four years ago, then disappeared as soon as their unit arrived stateside. Since then, Marcie’s letters to Ian have gone unanswered.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

Welcome to Magnolia. Victoria is no longer mayor, a sentiment that she is still trying to get used to saying. After the inauguration of the new mayor, she's pretty sure that she has reached bottom - until her parents inform her that they are selling their house in Magnolia, and she has a week to find a new place to live.

Everyone knows that Addie Fullbright can’t keep a secret. Yet, twelve years ago, as her best friend lay dying, she entrusted Addie with the biggest secret of all. One so shattering that Addie felt she had to leave her hometown of Starlight, Alabama, to keep from revealing a devastating truth to someone she cares for deeply. Now she’s living a lonely life, keeping everyone at a distance. But when her beloved aunt gets a shocking diagnosis and asks her to come back to Starlight to help run the family bakery, Addie knows it’s finally time to go home again.

Joe Winston has a routine with women: He exists; they swoon; roll credits. With his smoldering looks, macho style, and irrepressible charm, Joe can have any woman - except the one he really wants. Secretly, Luna Clark may lust after Joe, but she's made it clear that she's too smart to fall for him. He can just keep holding his breath, thank you very much. But now, Luna's inherited two kids who need more than she alone can give in a small town that seems hell-bent on driving them away. She needs someone to help out...someone who can't be intimidated...someone just like Joe.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by its toe. It's seared into Atlee Pine's memory: the kidnapper's chilling rhyme as he chose between six-year-old Atlee and her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was taken. Atlee was spared. She never saw Mercy again. Three decades after that terrifying night, Atlee Pine works for the FBI. She's the lone agent assigned to the Shattered Rock, Arizona resident agency, which is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon. So when one of the Grand Canyon's mules is found stabbed to death at the bottom of the canyon - and its rider missing - Pine is called in to investigate.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six awful days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged.

As the new co-owner of Tundish Montana's stationery shop, Delta Douglas knows how to organize a killer crafting event. Creativity and cardstock are all she needs to move one step closer to her ultimate dream: developing her own line of crafting products. But on the night of the workshop, at the swanky hotel venue, glitter isn't the only thing found sprawled on the floor. A hotel guest is discovered dead in the bar, and amid the confusion, Delta's best friend is suspected of the crime.

For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled... As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea’s last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases – a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care – and even her close family have their secrets to hide.

From USA Today bestselling author Dakota Davies comes an all new small town suspense romance about a broken military hero and the soft-hearted girl he’ll burn the world down to save.

Sullivan Bradshaw is in way over his head. A car crash killed his brother, Matthias, and critically injured his sister-in-law. It's Sullivan's turn to care for the couple's six children and the ancestral farm, but the die-hard bachelor and art professor is hardly family-man material. What he needs is the perfect nanny/miracle worker/saint. What he gets is pretty Rumer Truehart, a free spirit who will change everything he ever thought he wanted....

Lorraine Kindred's most cherished memories are of the Surf Ballroom, the place where youth lost themselves to the brassy sounds and magnetic energy of the big band swing, where boys spent their last nights before shipping off to war-and where Lorraine herself was swept away by a star-crossed romance. Returning to the ballroom for the first time in decades, Lorraine enters a dazzling world she thought long vanished.

At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, the convicted killers on E Block await their turn to walk the Green Mile and keep a date with the electric chair. Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working as a guard on the Mile, but he's never met anyone like John Coffey.

I didn’t know I was pregnant. Ayden walked away from me a decade ago and never looked back. The only thing he left me was our sweet, amazing daughter. And a mile-long list of small town secrets. When his father—the town’s mayor—threatens me, Ayden’s childhood best friend steps in. And I have no choice but to fight the battles he ran away from.

Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty Carpenter is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit in the rural town of Breathed, Ohio, is one of poverty and violence—both from outside the family and, devastatingly, from within. But despite the hardships she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father’s brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all to which she bears witness, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.

Tripp McKenzie: millionaire, charmer, bold and brash lover. Jonah Hanks: owns a multi-million dollar company, knows what he wants and how to get it. Zack Brown: successful fiction writer, a true romantic, and loves dancing in the dark. They all have one thing in common.