Rural Town Fiction

One incredible weekend in Maine, and Beckett Porter is officially a distracted man. He’s not unfamiliar with hot and heavy flings. He knows how it goes. But Evie wove some sort of magic over him during their tumble in the sheets. He can’t stop thinking about her laugh, her hand pressed flat against his chest, her smiling mouth. So when she suddenly appears on his farm as part of a social media contest, he is confused. He had no idea that the sweet and sexy woman he met at a bar is actually a global phenomenon: social media influencer Evelyn St. James.

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.

On a midnight train, four hours away from her wedding, Beth McMurray discovers the devastating truth about the powerful senator she's about to marry. Convinced nothing could make this stormy night worse, the train wrecks, and she tumbles straight into the arms of an outlaw. Andrew McLaughlin doesn't believe in loving except between the pages of his writings. He loved deeply once and thinks he'll never survive another loss. To save a friend, he climbs aboard a train heading toward Dallas.

Someone is stalking Audrey Young. And she has no idea why. Complicating matters is her landlord and new neighbor, Josiah Haven. She doesn’t usually go for the big, surly lumberjack type. But there’s something about that broody man. He intimidates her a little, but she kind of likes it. She could totally handle the mess that is her life, except the strange feeling of being watched is just the beginning. Next thing Audrey knows, she’s a target, and she doesn’t know who’s behind it or why. For Josiah Haven, none of that makes her his problem.

Julie Barenson's young husband left her two unexpected gifts before he died - a Great Dane puppy named Singer and the promise that he would always be watching over her. Now four years have passed. Still living in the small town of Swansboro, North Carolina, 29-year-old Julie is emotionally ready to make a commitment to someone again. But who? Instead, Julie is soon fighting for her life in a nightmare spawned by a chilling deception and jealousy so poisonous that it has become a murderous desire.

In this number one New York Times best-selling novel of first love and second chances, former high school sweethearts confront the painful truths of their past to build a promising future - together. In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in their small town in North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart.

Marisa Rosso can’t understand why everyone else is getting on with their lives as she still struggles to get over the death of her beloved grandfather, back home in Italy. Everyone loses grandparents, right? Why is she taking it so badly? Retreating further and further from normal life, she moves to the end of the earth - the remote tidal island of Mount Polbearne, at the foot of Cornwall, hoping for peace and solitude, while carrying on her job as a registrar, dealing with births, weddings, and deaths, even as she feels life is passing her by.

When a big New York theater production comes to Zinnia, Mississippi, murder takes center stage - and Sarah, it turns out, is the star suspect.

The quiet 1960s midwestern life of the Land family is upended when son Davy kills two marauders who have come to harm the family. The morning of his sentencing, Davy (a hero to some, a cold-blooded murderer to others) escapes from his cell, and the Lands set out in search of him. Their journey is touched by serendipity and the kindness of strangers, and they cover territory even more extraordinary than the Badlands, where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer.

When Sarah Lewis inherits a run-down B&B from her late grandmother in coastal Blue Moon Bay, the logical thing to do is sell it and focus on her life in LA. But when she learns that interested buyers will only tear it down in its current state, she feels a sense of obligation to her grandmother to get it back to the landmark tourist destination it once was...even if that means hiring the best contractor for the job, who happens to be her old high school crush.

Failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate - the Savoyard Plantation - and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted. But there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice.

Welcome back to Beechwood Harbor, the small town where witches, vampires, shifters, and werewolves all work, play—and mostly—get along! This boxed set includes Books 10–12 in the Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries by Danielle Garrett.

Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River - a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth - and embarks on a Southern Gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms. They are pursued by local drug kingpin, John Curtis, and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour.

High on the cliffs of the west coast of Ireland, overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean, is Stone House. Once falling into disrepair, it is now a beautiful hotel specialising in winter holidays. With a big, warm kitchen, log fires and understated, elegant bedrooms, it provides a welcome few can resist, whatever their reasons for coming...Henry and Nicola are burdened with a terrible secret, and are hoping the break at Stone House will help them find a way to face the future.

On New Year’s Day, Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. The body is found close to the home of a lonely outcast and local suspicion falls firmly on him. But when Inspector Jimmy Perez insists on broadening the search for suspects, a veil of distrust and fear is thrown over the entire community.

Stephen King's first full-length solo novel since Dreamcatcher, the long-awaited From a Buick 8 is "nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment," says Publishers Weekly. A strange car acts as a conduit between our world and some other...and the boogeyman of this creepy story is our collective fascination with deadly things.

The rambling house called Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. Left to Gilly Ramsey by the cousin whose occasional visits brightened her childhood, the cottage, set deep in a wild wood, has come just in time to save her from a bleak future. With its reputation for magic and its resident black cat, Thornyhold offers Gilly more than just a new home. It offers her a chance to start over.

In the romantic tradition of The Notebook and Nights in Rodanthe, number-one New York Times best-selling author Nicholas Sparks returns with a story about a chance encounter that becomes a touchstone for two vastly different individuals - transcending decades, continents, and the bittersweet workings of fate.

The time: the waning years of the 1990s at the dawn of the millennium. The place: an isolated rural town called Auburn, which could be anywhere at all - a town where everyone knows everyone else - where dark secrets run through its veins like blood. Everyone knows that 16-year old Mikey Childress is "different." A target for bullies since he was a small boy, everything Mikey does attracts abuse: the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he looks. Everyone knows he's not like the other boys in Auburn - the boys who play hockey, who fight, the boys who pursue girls.

When Kate Bowman temporarily moves to her grandmother’s Missouri farm with her husband and baby son, she learns that the lessons that most enrich our lives often come unexpectedly. The family has given Kate the job of convincing Grandma Rose, who's become increasingly stubborn and forgetful, to move off her beloved land and into a nursing home. But Kate knows such a change would break her grandmother’s heart.