Rural Town Fiction

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.

Running to Summerpoint to avoid my failed love life may have seemed drastic, but I'd just inherited a house from a distant relative. The timing was perfect, almost like magic. But the cottage is in need of repairs, the place is in the middle of a forest, and I'm not used to small towns. Then I meet my new contractors. Sexy doesn't begin to describe them. The flirting flows easily, and while they're a well-established couple, it seems they may have room for more. Even better, these guys are quickly getting to be a lot more than just friends.

FBI Agent Dillon Savich is on a challenging case involving the kidnapping of two teenage boys when trouble boils up in his personal life. His younger sister Lily has crashed her Explorer into a redwood in California's Hemlock Bay. Is it another suicide attempt, the second since the loss of her young daughter some seven months before? Savich and Sherlock discover that four of Lily's paintings, left to her by their very famous grandmother, artist Sarah Elliot, now worth millions, are at the heart of an intricate conspiracy.

As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex.

Junie Raines is ready for a second chance at life on a sunny island off the coast of Southern California. She’s managing the gift shop at the Majestic Hotel, a Victorian-era beach resort, and her sister Maileah is trying her patience with her sibling rivalry. It’s been two years since Junie’s husband died. She longs for a second chance to have a family while she’s still young, but dating has its challenges with Maileah around. Junie is looking for a beach cottage, and her sister is determined to move in with her.

Getting her brother away from their abusive household and leading a peaceful existence is all Violet wants. Growing up powerless in a town mostly inhabited by supernaturals made her life a living hell. Now, she's ready to leave it all behind and start fresh.

Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they each live through a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences mirror each other and become interwoven. In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf struggles to write a novel whose protagonist is Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura ignores her chores and small son to sit in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In 1990s New York, Clarissa goes to buy flowers for a party, mirroring the start of the fictional Mrs Dalloway’s day.

Nothing was ever simple between a Madison and a Harte. The feud that had divided their families still simmered. Now, only months after their siblings' wedding, Lilian Harte and Gabe Madison are at each other's throats.

Krystle didn’t have a normal childhood and longed for warm family Christmases with presents under the tree. Now she makes sure everyone else has the perfect Christmas she never had. With her festive business booming, she decides to celebrate by renting a secluded house in the Lakes, with a plan to make this the ultimate yuletide getaway. But fate immediately throws a spanner in the works in the form of a broken-down car, a flooded river and Max; a man who despises Christmas. Krystle becomes determined to show Max the joys of the holiday. Can she melt Max’s Grinch-like heart?

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.

Raising a family was always Adam Mills’ dream, although solo parenting and moving back to tiny Garnet Run certainly were not. After a messy breakup, Adam is doing his best to give his young daughter the life she deserves - including accepting help from their new reclusive neighbor to fulfill her Christmas wish. Though the little house may not have “the most lights ever”, the Mills home begins to brighten as handsome Wes Mobray spends more time there and slowly sheds his protective layers. But when the eye-catching house ends up in the news, Wes has to make a choice.

Camden Hunter doesn't belong here. I've spent my entire life in the small town of Sutten Mountain, where everyone knows everyone, and you can spot trouble from a mile away. Camden is trouble. He's an arrogant, self-absorbed billionaire from the city with too much money and not enough manners. And he just opened a fancy art gallery next door to my bakery. When he comes to me desperately needing a favor, I can't help but propose a deal: I'll cater his grand opening, and in return, he has to spend a day with me as a local—to experience the beauty and talent this town has to offer.

Tucked away in the foothills, surrounded by pine forests, loaded with kids who still play outside, Millwood is the small town everyone knows. For Heather Bradley, it's a place that keeps her family safe; her biggest worries are the daily grind of her job and the kids coming home late. She doesn't know that unfathomable forces are set to converge on her town and thrust their neat lives into darkness, but when her oldest son Stuart opens a one-sided door in the woods and a black cloud pours out, the Bradleys and their whole town find themselves locked in a desperate struggle for survival.

It should be the most wonderful time of the year for Samantha and Josh as they prepare for the arrival of their first baby. But life at Hedgehog Hollow rarely goes to plan and the pair are faced with adversaries, old and new, and unexpected challenges to overcome. Fizz's job at the heart of the rescue centre is a dream come true but her personal life is more like a nightmare. With her love life a disaster and her past about to dramatically catch up with her, she needs the love and support of her Hedgehog Hollow family more than ever.

Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances? I went home, of course.

With her adopted son missing and the rest of her family increasingly estranged, Sandra Kaye Darden is drawn to the little pink house where her Uncle Poppy once provided security. What begins for Sandra as a simple painting project, meant to prepare the house for sale, becomes a secret venture that eventually changes everything. Cass Blue is having trouble keeping food on the table since she ditched foster care. When Sandra Kaye shows up with lunch one day, Cass has no way of knowing that the meeting will lead to the creation of a place of refuge that could reunite a divided community.

Nicholas Sparks, best selling author of A Bend in the Road and A Walk to Remember, returns with this touching tale of two vulnerable people who find love in the eye of a storm.

Cowboy Sawyer Garrett has no intention of settling down. But when he becomes a single dad to tiny baby June, stepping up to the responsibility is nonnegotiable. And so is finding a woman to be a mother to his infant daughter. So he decides to do it the way the pioneers did: by putting out an ad for a mail-order bride.

In this latest installment, prize-winning reporter Jim Qwilleran—along with his lovable Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum—solves a mystery that arises when a local banker dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a flashy young widow, an unfinished house-restoration project, and a trail of clues as elusive as a cat burglar in the night.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.