Rural Small Town Fiction

It’s been three years. It’s time to let go of the past. When a man covered in tattoos walks into the bar where I work, with a guitar case slung over his back and a determined swagger, I think I’m finally ready to move on...until I see his guitar. I’d recognize it anywhere. It was the last gift Nate ever received from his father.

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....

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.

Bailey Cooper has always given more of himself to the two ranches he works on than his personal life, but one thing he knows for sure: Lettie is the girl he's going to marry. When she leaves without a goodbye the day after her eighteenth birthday, he's convinced he'll never see her again. That is, until she's falling off a ladder and into his arms.

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.

It takes one dance at a party for Erianne Mitchell to fall heart-first for dashing entrepreneur Ty Mosby. They have business and friends in common—and a searing attraction that seems far too good to last. But when a devastating mistake tears them apart, Erianne flees to Wyoming with a secret, one she hopes Ty never discovers. She did nothing wrong, and she’ll never ask Ty to forgive her. She'll support herself…and the baby growing inside her. How can she be with a man who doesn’t trust her?

Selina sees beauty everywhere, including in the fields of cabbages. She has a natural curiosity about farming and oversteps the woman's traditional role by having the audacity to ask the men questions. She soon marries Pervus DeJong, a farmer. Selina eagerly offers suggestions for operational improvements, but Pervus ignores her, preferring to use the unprofitable farming methods employed by his father.

After losing her job in New York, Amber Green isn’t looking forward to visiting her godmother in the sleepy village of Cranbridge. With its empty lanes and rundown shops, it’s hardly a place to mend her lonely heart. But when Amber discovers that Cranbridge Stores, owned by her godmother, Cathy, and son, Josh, is under threat of financial ruin, she realises that her skills as a window dresser might just be able to help save the struggling shop.

As Darby Dixon sits in a tiny Texas church bathroom on her wedding day holding a positive pregnancy test, she realizes marrying her fiancé would be the worst decision of her life. She's never been very good at standing up for herself, but she'll sure as hell stand up for her baby. With very little cash and a ton of courage, she flees town to take a new name and start a new life.

In a sleepy rural town in South Carolina, Dylan and Maggie Styles are a young couple in love, preparing eagerly for the birth of their first son. But events take a tragic turn in the delivery room, and their child is delivered stillborn. When Maggie hemorrhages and slips into a coma, Dylan slips into what can only be described as a walking coma, holding vigil at his beloved wife’s bedside.

Asle is an aging painter and widower who lives alone on the west coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbor, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life. Written in melodious and hypnotic "slow prose," A New Name is the final installment of Jon Fosse's Septology.

Encabanée met en scène, Anouk qui a quitté son appartement confortable de Montréal pour un refuge forestier délabré au Kamouraska. Encabanée loin de tout dans le plus rude des hivers, elle livre son récit sous la forme d’un carnet de bord semé d’illustrations. Cherchant à apprivoiser son mode de vie frugal et à chasser sa peur, elle couche sur papier la métamorphose qui s’opère en elle.

Katie Benard reluctantly returns home to Grady Lake two decades after her older sister Malorie disappeared without a trace, a story that has captivated the nation since the day she was reported missing in 2003. After leaving home years ago, Katie is overjoyed to reunite with her childhood best friend and cousin while working at her family's lakeside resort at the end of tourist season in northern Michigan. Just when life begins to feel normal again, a teenage girl goes missing from the resort. She has vanished without a trace, just like Malorie.

Elderly widow Sabine knows this will be her last Christmas in her beloved home, Mitras Castle. Determined to make it just like the ones she remembers from her childhood, she employs Dido Jones of Heavenly Houseparties to help with the big day. Dido is enchanted by the castle as soon as she steps through the imposing front door. And as Christmas day approaches, her feeling of connection to the old house runs deeper than she first thought.

Hildy Good is a townie. A lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston's North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone. And she's good at lots of things, too. A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab. Now she's in recovery—more or less.

My high school sweetheart, the boy who shattered my heart, is back in our small town, and there will be no avoiding him for the next two weeks. Only there is nothing boyish about Miguel Fernandez. The NFL's best rookie defensive end is even more wickedly handsome than he was four years ago—tall, with abs for days, all that unruly hair, and eyes so dark they swallow you whole. And that's exactly what he's doing every time our paths cross.

Lucy Parsons wants absolutely nothing to do with the Westmoore family or the maple syrup they produce. When Sierra Westmoore blows back into town after her father's death and tries to rent a room at Lucy's family's bed-and-breakfast, The Maple Inn, Lucy kicks her out on the spot. It doesn't matter that Sierra hasn't set foot in Maple Run in fifteen years—the Westmoores are not allowed. But small towns don't leave a lot of room to hide, and Sierra and her brother, Drake, have set their sights on improving the town's opinion of them now that their father is gone.

Rientrato devastato dal Vietnam, Ernt Allbright decide di trasferirsi con la famiglia nella selvaggia Alaska, l'ultima frontiera americana, e iniziare una nuova vita con la moglie Cora e la figlia adolescente Leni. L'inizio è promettente, ma con l'avanzare del lungo inverno artico lo stato mentale di Ernt peggiora. Leni e Cora si trovano sole, in un luogo feroce ai confini del mondo, dove nessuno può salvarle.

If there’s one gift Erika Sheraton does not want for Christmas, it’s a vacation. Ordered to take time off, the workaholic surgeon reluctantly trades in her scrubs for a ski suit and heads to Wild River, Alaska. Her friend Cassie owns a tour company that offers adventures to fit every visitor. But nothing compares to the adrenaline rush Erika feels on being reunited with Cassie’s brother, Reed Reynolds.

Back in the summer of 1988, a young Richard Chizmar was catapulted into the center of a living nightmare as the serial killer Joshua Gallagher—dubbed by the media as “The Boogeyman”—stalked his tranquil Maryland town. A lot has changed in the intervening years. These days, Chizmar enjoys a certain level of celebrity and notoriety himself, being the only person that an incarcerated Josh Gallagher will speak to on or off the record.