Rural Town Fiction

Roman Amato is perfect on paper; sexy and broody and arrogant. He’s a divorced single father, so he’s completely off-limits. I’m not looking for anything other than a hot date to take to my sister’s wedding. I have something he needs, and he has something I need. The fake dating gods have shined down on both of us. We write up a contract so everything is aboveboard. Signed, sealed and soon-to-be delivered. Rule number three is written in all caps: NO CATCHING FEELINGS.

In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve, and against the wishes of his disapproving father, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Fingal and his fellow aspiring doctors face the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby—and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan.

Dani unexpectedly inherits an enormous old house in a quaint college town and pursues her true passion - cooking! She opens Chef-to-Go, preparing delicious, ready-made meals for hungry students as well as providing personal chef services. To help support her new business, she opens her home to a few students, renting them rooms and becoming almost like a big sister figure in their lives. But just as Dani is relishing her sweet new life, the friend of one of her boarders is murdered, and Dani becomes one of the primary suspects!

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: He can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over and the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she has been writing for six years. At 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life.

There are a few things Jeremy Marsh was sure he'd never do: he'd never leave New York City; never give his heart away again after barely surviving one failed marriage; and, most of all, never become a parent. Now, Jeremy is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. Just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling, mysterious message re-opens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.

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.

Two classic stories of finding love where you least expect it! Marriage Wanted: As far as Nash Davenport's concerned, marriage isn't shelter from the storm - it is the storm. He's a divorce attorney, himself divorced, who believes no married couple can live up to their wedding vows. My Hero: Would-be romance writer Bailey York has already failed twice at love. She thinks men are wonderful to read and write about, but that's it. Which is probably why she has such difficulty creating a hero for her novel. What she needs is a real-life example.

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.

After breaking free from the gilded cage of my abusive marriage, I have nothing to my name but a letter from a long-lost relative. Come home, Willow. Your family is waiting for you. I sacrificed everything to flee for the tiny town of Briar Valley and its promise of a better life for my young daughter. Hope often takes the unlikeliest of forms, but I didn't expect to find it nestled among the rugged, snow-capped mountains. Nor did I intend to surrender my heart to three tortured mountain men hiding from their own grief in the thick forest of pine trees.

The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!'

Adopted at 13, Dell Jordan was loved, mentored, and encouraged to pursue her passion for music. Now, at 20, after a year abroad with a traveling symphony, a scholarship to Julliard is within reach. But underneath Dell's smoothly polished surface lurk mysteries from the past. Why did her mother abandon her? Who was her father? Are there faces somewhere that look like hers - blood relatives she's never met? Determined to find answers, Dell sets off on a secret journey into Oklahoma's Kiamichi Mountains, drawn by the only remaining link to her origins.

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.

In An Irish Country Courtship, after less than a year, young Barry Laverty, M.B., is settling in to the village, with only a few months to go before he becomes a full partner in the practice. He's looking forward to becoming a fixture in the community, until an unexpected romantic reversal gives him second thoughts. Will he truly be happy tending to routine coughs and colds for the rest of his career? After all, even when a more challenging case comes along, like a rare tropical disease, all he can do is pass it on to a qualified specialist or big-city hospital.

In the days of the frontier West, it was not unusual for desperadoes and fugitives from justice to seemingly disappear from the face of the earth. Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time, is the story of one such man who returned to reestablish himself in a law-abiding society. In Texas, young bank robber Wade Holden, once the toughest, fastest trigger man in the notorious Simm Bell gang, makes a promise to his dying mentor that he will go straight. But with the Rangers on his tail, he struggles to find sanctuary.

Charlene Ann Baumbich—award-winning journalist and best-selling author of the Dearest Dorothy novels—launches a series of heartwarming stories linked by the swirling flakes of one special snowglobe. In this charming tale of second chances, renewed faith, and forgiveness, a captivating heirloom triggers inexplicable changes.

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.

When Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community..

Nora and her husband, Simon, have run the beautiful oak-beamed book shop in their small British village for 30 years. But times are tough, and the shop is under threat of closure - this Christmas season will really decide their fate. When an elderly man visits the store and buys the one book they've never been able to sell, saying it's the perfect gift for his sick grandson, it gives Nora an idea. She and Simon will send out books to those feeling down this Christmas.