Rural Town

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and to seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. Thomas Hardy’s timeless masterpiece is brought to life in this new recording by Anne-Marie Duff (Shameless, His Dark Materials).

Joe Winston has a routine with women: He exists; they swoon; roll credits. With his smoldering looks, macho style, and irrepressible charm, Joe can have any woman - except the one he really wants. Secretly, Luna Clark may lust after Joe, but she's made it clear that she's too smart to fall for him. He can just keep holding his breath, thank you very much. But now, Luna's inherited two kids who need more than she alone can give in a small town that seems hell-bent on driving them away. She needs someone to help out...someone who can't be intimidated...someone just like Joe.

Ellen is putting the finishing touches on her granddaughter June's wedding quilt - made from scraps of old dresses, both remembered and forgotten - when June breaks off her engagement and seeks sanctuary at her grandparents' ranch. June's fiance is set to go off to fight in Korea as soon as they're married, but the young bride doesn't think she can go through with it.

Sullivan Bradshaw is in way over his head. A car crash killed his brother, Matthias, and critically injured his sister-in-law. It's Sullivan's turn to care for the couple's six children and the ancestral farm, but the die-hard bachelor and art professor is hardly family-man material. What he needs is the perfect nanny/miracle worker/saint. What he gets is pretty Rumer Truehart, a free spirit who will change everything he ever thought he wanted....

When Connor Larkin boards a late-night bus in downtown LA, he's not sure where he's going or what he's looking for. Putting his acting career - and his fiancée - on hold, he's searching for something he can't define, a part of himself he lost on the road to success. Once he dreamed of being a singer in the classic style of Sinatra and Bennett. But his lean good looks soon landed him in movies as the sexy bad guy - and in the arms of a famous young heiress. Now, with his wedding day approaching, Connor finds himself stepping into the sleepy seaside town of Miramar Bay.

Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty Carpenter is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit in the rural town of Breathed, Ohio, is one of poverty and violence—both from outside the family and, devastatingly, from within. But despite the hardships she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father’s brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all to which she bears witness, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.

Barton Dawes' unremarkable but comfortable existence suddenly takes a turn for the worst. A new highway extension is being built right over the laundry plant where he works - and right over his home. Dawes isn't the sort of man who will take an insult of this magnitude lying down. His steadfast determination to fight the inevitable course of progress drives his wife and friends away while he tries to face down the uncaring bureaucracy that has destroyed his life.

You’ve heard of those kids who peak in high school? Meet my love life. Garrett Bradford was mine from the moment we saw each other in ninth grade. Even then, he was a six-foot-four mountain of muscles with bright blue eyes, a wide grin, and a way with his hands. He was the high school football star, and I was the dance team captain. We were the storybook cliché… until we weren’t. Now he’s the most famous offensive lineman in the league, and I’m a buttoned-up, ultra-professional lawyer.

I didn’t know I was pregnant. Ayden walked away from me a decade ago and never looked back. The only thing he left me was our sweet, amazing daughter. And a mile-long list of small town secrets. When his father—the town’s mayor—threatens me, Ayden’s childhood best friend steps in. And I have no choice but to fight the battles he ran away from.

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives.

Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman's struggle to find her place in the world. At the end of her rope, Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home to face her ailing father, with whom she has a difficult, distant relationship. There she meets handsome Apache trainman Loyd Peregrina, who tells her, "If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

A bold, heartfelt tale of life at Green Gables...before Anne: A marvelously entertaining and moving historical novel, set in rural Prince Edward Island in the 19th century, that imagines the young life of spinster Marilla Cuthbert and the choices that will open her life to the possibility of heartbreak - and unimaginable greatness. Plucky and ambitious, Marilla Cuthbert is 13 years old when her world is turned upside down. Her beloved mother dies in childbirth, and Marilla suddenly must bear the responsibilities of a farm wife.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by its toe. It's seared into Atlee Pine's memory: the kidnapper's chilling rhyme as he chose between six-year-old Atlee and her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was taken. Atlee was spared. She never saw Mercy again. Three decades after that terrifying night, Atlee Pine works for the FBI. She's the lone agent assigned to the Shattered Rock, Arizona resident agency, which is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon. So when one of the Grand Canyon's mules is found stabbed to death at the bottom of the canyon - and its rider missing - Pine is called in to investigate.

After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers’ Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world. Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate.

When Will returns to Medicine River, he thinks he is simply attending his mother’s funeral. He doesn’t count on Harlen Bigbear and his unique brand of community planning. Harlen tries to sell Will on the idea of returning to Medicine River to open shop as the town’s only Native photographer. Somehow, that’s exactly what happens. Through Will’s gentle and humorous narrative, we come to know Medicine River, a small Albertan town bordering a Blackfoot reserve. And we meet its people: the basketball team; Louise Heavyman and her daughter, South Wing, and many more.

The last place city girl Cecily Kennedy expected to end up was a cattle ranch. But she needs a job—and refuge from her abusive soon-to-be ex-husband. If only her new boss, Austin Wells, would make it clear whether he hates her or wants her. His gaze makes her feel things she hasn't in years. However, getting over her ex by getting under her grumpy boss isn't worth the potential fallout.

When experienced homicide detective Casey Duncan first moved to the secret town of Rockton, she expected a safe haven for people like her, people running from their past misdeeds and past lives. She knew living in Rockton meant living off the grid completely: no cell phones, no Internet, no mail, very little electricity, and no way of getting in or out without the town council's approval. What she didn't expect is that Rockton comes with its own set of secrets and dangers.

At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, the convicted killers on E Block await their turn to walk the Green Mile and keep a date with the electric chair. Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working as a guard on the Mile, but he's never met anyone like John Coffey.

The job at Sunday Orchard was supposed to be temporary. A chance to gain some work experience, to have some fun. I had not expected to be welcomed into a family of gorgeous and weirdly efficient lumberjack-types, or to find purpose in the tiny Vermont town whose claim to fame seemed to be apple-based products and copious amounts of charm. And I most definitely hadn’t expected to fall for Knox Sunday, my grumpy, burly, fifteen-years-older, reluctant roommate, with his infuriating lectures, his hot-as-fire body, his superior attitude - I’ve never been one to put down roots.