Rural Town

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.

A sexy cinnamon-roll lumberjack offers me a ride into town, a stay at his cozy cabin, and eventually his bed. All things I can't refuse. After several flirty glances and heated mistletoe kisses, we create rules: no strings attached and no falling in love. Agreeing to the impossible might be my biggest mistake yet. I visited the small town for one reason only: to prove a point to my father. Now I've got a fake boyfriend.

William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.

There are 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. But just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message re-opens old wounds.

Lucy Bowman would never have guessed that her best friend, Duffy McCready (of McCready’s Bait Shop & Funeral Home) has been in love with her since they were kids. Fear of rejection and his own romantic complications prevented Duffy from confessing his true feelings in high school, so he stood by and watched her wed Wayne Garten right after high school. Wayne had always been a cheapskate, so it comes as no surprise when he suffers a fatal accident while fixing his own truck.

Karen Sommerfield has been hiding from the big questions of her life - the emotional distance in her marriage, her inability to have children, and her bout with cancer. Getting lost in her high-powered career provides the sense of purpose she yearns for. Until the day she's downsized out of her job and the doctor tells her the cancer may be back. It's a double blow that would send anyone reeling.

A body is found on a quiet lane in Exmoor, victim of a hit and run. He has no ID, no wallet, no phone, and - after being dragged along the road - no recognisable face. Meanwhile, fresh from his last case, DCI Craig Gillard is unexpectedly called away to Devon on family business. Gillard is soon embroiled when the car in question is traced to his aunt. As he delves deeper, a dark mystery reveals itself, haunted by family secrets, with repercussions Gillard could never have imagined. The past has never been deadlier.

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.

After losing her sister in a devastating car accident, chef Quinn Weller is finally getting her life back on track. She appears to have it all: a loving family, a dream job in one of LA's hottest eateries, and a gorgeous boyfriend dying to slip an engagement ring on her finger. So why does she feel so empty, like she's looking for a missing piece she can't find?

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.

In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations.

Natalie Kaleta will do anything for the artists at her gallery, including risk life, limb, and the effect of humidity on her naturally curly hair. Braving a downpour to check on reclusive Ronan Mitchell, Natalie gets stranded by a mudslide at his mountain home, where the brooding glass artist reveals his playful side, sending her inconvenient crush from under-the-radar to over-the-top. After a secret tore apart his family and made him question his sense of self, Ronan fled his hometown for Happily Inc, but the sunny small town can’t fix his damaged heart.

When her business partner is accused of serious financial crimes, superstar influencer Cat Cranwell—an engineered marvel of beauty, energy, and fun—falls from her penthouse perch. Des­perate to get away from the online trolls and paparazzi docu­menting her disgrace, Cat accepts her uncle’s offer to work with him in Kannery National Park, Montana. About as far as possible from life as she’s known it.

Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut. The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victims’ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gambler’s money.

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.

Bienvenue à Pagford, petite bourgade anglaise paisible et charmante : ses maisons cossues, son ancienne abbaye, sa place de marché pittoresque... et son lourd fardeau de secrets. Car derrière cette façade idyllique, Pagford est en proie aux tourmentes les plus violentes, et les conflits font rage sur tous les fronts, à la faveur de la mort soudaine de son plus éminent notable.

The small, rundown village of Great Diddling is full of stories—author Berit Gardner can feel it. The way the villagers avoid outsiders, the furtive stares and whispers in the presence of newcomers… Berit can sense the edge of a story waiting to be unraveled, and she's just the person to do it. In fact, with a book deadline looming over her and no manuscript (not even the idea for a manuscript, truth be told), Berit doesn't just want this story. She needs it. Then, while attending a village tea party, Berit becomes part of the action herself.

When her last two plays are dismal failures and her relationship with her temperamental mentor falls apart, writer Bree O’Brien abandons Chicago and the regional theater where she hoped to make a name for herself to return home. Opening Flowers on Main promises to bring her a new challenge and a new kind of fulfillment. But not all is peaceful and serene in Chesapeake Shores, with her estranged mother on the scene and her ex-lover on the warpath.

Kept apart by their love for one man, two sisters embark on their own paths toward survival, love, and understanding, until they finally meet again in the worst of circumstances. And the reality might break them all. My Heart Went Walking is a beautiful novel that sweeps from the small Irish town of Donegal to the “big smoke” of Dublin City; a book that celebrates the pull of family and the chance of redemption. It is a novel for everyone who feels connected to the Irish approach to life and also for everyone who loves an overriding message of hope and restoration.

Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.