Rural Small Town Fiction

Hotshot attorney Reuben Graham has finally agreed to take a vacation, when his plane suddenly plunges into the Alaskan wilderness. Just his luck. But his frustrations have only begun as he finds himself stranded with the injured, and superhot, pilot, a man who’s endearingly sociable - and much too young for Reuben to be wanting him this badly.

Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline, and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors. Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl - but that’s just what happens with visitor Avery Greer and Littleport resident Sadie Loman. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable - until Sadie is found dead.

While Barney loves his life at Bumblebee Barn - a farm that has been in his family for generations - he's struggling to find someone to share it with. The early mornings quad biking through muddy fields and the long hours looking after the crops and animals are proving to be a deterrent to finding love. So when his sister, Fizz - desperate for Barney to find his soulmate - sees an advert for Love on the Farm, a new reality TV show to help farmers find love, he has nothing to lose by applying.

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.

A seemingly straightforward private case turns out to be much more complicated - and sinister - than Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast ever could have anticipated. Pendergast, together with his ward, Constance Greene, travels to the quaint seaside village of Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the theft of a priceless wine collection. But inside the wine cellar, they find something considerably more disturbing: a bricked-up niche that once held a crumbling skeleton.

Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself.

Lottery winner and ex-journalist Donal Fitzgerald joins forces with his girlfriend, DNR conservation officer Mercy Virdon, to solve the mysterious death of a beloved angler, Charlie, who was murdered in his tent in a state campground and who was known by all - and who may have known too much. Set in the engaging small town of Ossning on the Borchard River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula - an angler’s dream, filled with eccentric, believable, sympathetic, and unforgettable characters - Riverwatcher is a classic whodunit.

After 30 years, Wilson Lewis is forced to face a painful truth: the romance has gone out of his marriage. His wife, Jane, has fallen out of love with him, and it is entirely his fault. Despite the shining example of his in-laws, Noah and Allie Calhoun, and their 50-year love affair, Wilson himself is a man unable to express his true feelings. He has spent too little time at home and too much at the office, leaving the responsibility of raising their children to Jane. Now his daughter is about to marry, and his wife is thinking about leaving him.

Quatre femmes, quatre époques, quatre destins tragiques. Katia Gagnon nous surprend avec un roman sombre, aux tonalités fantastiques et au suspense haletant. Il y a d’abord Thérèse, dans les années 1990, qui soudain voit surgir de son passé un être qui viendra l’aider à se libérer enfin d’un fardeau qu’elle porte depuis des années. Il y a Michèle qui, à la faveur de la révolution sexuelle des années 1970, veut réinventer la vie, le couple, et oublier la mort que quelqu’un a déposée au plus profond de son être quand elle était toute petite.

The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama, but when human remains are discovered on an old farm, suspected to be those of Tommy Burke - a former lover of two different inhabitants - the village's dark past begins to unravel. As the frustrated sergeant PJ Collins struggles to solve a genuine case for the first time in his life, he unearths a community's worth of anger and resentments, secrets and regret.

Running a small-town police force in the mountains of New Mexico should be a smooth, carefree kind of job. Sadly, full-time Sheriff - and even fuller-time coffee guzzler - Sunshine Vicram, didn't get that memo. All Sunshine really wants is one easygoing day. You know, the kind that starts with coffee and a donut (or three) and ends with takeout pizza and a glass of chardonnay (or seven). Turns out, that’s about as easy as switching to decaf. (What kind of people do that? And who hurt them?)

Actor Kelsey Grammer, best known for his roles in the TV sitcoms Cheers and Frasier, delivers Bitter Brew, a compelling mystery featuring Detective Bill Walsh, an upstate cop in the quiet, rural town of Beatriceville, 200 miles north of New York City, who suspects foul play in the death of millionaire city transplant Jonathan Kimball, even though the evidence points to suicide, not murder.

Cathy Andrews wants it all: a husband, a baby, and a little house in her charming small town of Cadillac, Texas. With all that she’s gone through in her past, she’s earned her happily ever after and is more than ready to put down some long-term roots. The trouble is, she’s no longer sure the reliable man she agreed to marry is the right guy. Sure, he’s got great teeth and hair, but he’s also got dreams of being a politician—and Cathy doesn’t know if she’s ready to be just arm candy to a man who doesn’t stir her blood.

Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town.

When Gregory Tomasov moves into an abandoned farm on the edge of McGuane, Arizona, he discovers a terrible secret buried in the walls of the old building.

Readers of Patrick Taylor's books know Mrs. Kinky Kincaid as the unflappable housekeeper who looks after two frequently frazzled doctors in the colourful Irish village of Ballybucklebo. She is a trusted fixture in the lives of those around her, and it often seems as though Kinky has always been there.Nothing could be farther from the truth.

When her late grandfather’s dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him - and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear. With her grandmother Patience gone missing and Elvis’s future uncertain, Mercy faces the prospect of losing her most treasured allies, the only ones she believes truly love and understand her.

No longer tolerating her husband’s borderline abuse, Faith escapes to her parents’ California beach house to plan her next move. She never dreamed her new chapter would involve befriending Sarah, a fourteen-year-old on the run from her father and reeling from her mother’s sudden and suspicious death. While Sarah’s grandmother scrambles to get custody, Faith is charged with spiriting the girl away on a journey that will restore her hope: Sarah implores Faith to take her to Falkner’s Midnight Sun, the prized black mare that her father sold out from under her.

Dating Matthew O’Brien - a playboy and younger man - cost Laila Riley her career and her parents’ respect: a high price, even for love. So when Laila decides it was just a fling, she breaks it off, despite Matthew’s objections. But the O’Brien family has other ideas, and they conspire to get Laila to join them on a Dublin holiday. It’s a great time to get away from it all, but Laila has reservations about the trip. Matthew’s bound to be there, and she’s far from immune.

Lily Bishop wakes up one morning to find a good-bye note and divorce papers from her husband on the kitchen counter. Having just moved to Alabama for his job only weeks before, Lily is devastated. New to town and knowing no one, Lily finds herself in desperate need of a job and a new place to live. When Lily hears that a hair stylist is needed at small retirement community, she decides to apply.