Rural Fiction

The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people of all kinds, but the world that Jacob McNeely lives in is crueler than most. His father runs a methodically organized meth ring, with local authorities on the dime to turn a blind eye to his dealings. Having dropped out of high school and cut himself off from his peers, Jacob has been working for this father for years, all on the promise that his payday will come eventually.

After 15 years of her husband never having time for her, Lindy Coats moves with her teenaged daughter to their summer cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan outside the town of Blueberry Beach. With a lonely single dad on one side of her, a crochety old business owner on the other, and a young mother with terrible secrets and a son fighting leukemia across the road, it doesn’t take Lindy long to discover that learning to enjoy life is less about what she chooses to do for herself and more about what she chooses to do for others.

Living with an eccentric little brother can be tough. Falling through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to assembled onlookers? That solidifies your status as an outcast. What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town—buildings and people—floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer’s field. Soon everyone discovers that a massive hydroelectric dam is being constructed and their homes will eventually be swallowed by rising water.

It all began with a correspondence between two quite different women: 28-year-old Sara from Haninge, Sweden, and 65-year-old Amy from the small town of Broken Wheel, Iowa. After years of exchanging books, letters and thoughts on the meaning of literature and life, Sara, mousy, disheveled, who has never been anywhere in her life--has really lived only for her work in a beloved bookshop, which has just closed its doors for the last time--bravely decides to accept her unknown friend's invitation to visit. But when she arrives, she finds her house empty, the funeral guests just heading home. . .

Candy shop owner Charlotte Caine knows temptation. To reboot her life, shed weight and gain perspective, she’s passing up sweet enticements left and right. But willpower doesn’t come so easily when hell-raiser Spencer Gregory comes back to Hope’s Crossing, bringing with him memories of broken promises and teen angst. A retired pro baseball player on the mend from injury—and a damaging scandal—he’s interested in his own brand of reinvention.

When Clay-Boy’s father fails to return home on Christmas Eve, Clay-Boy takes to the snowy Virginia hills in search of him, leaving his worried family to keep watch at the homestead. Along the way, he meets an irate deer, a threatening county sheriff, a congregation of African American churchgoers, and two elderly women who happen to be bootleggers. The story of Clay-Boy’s search for his father is told with warmth and intensity.

Jeremy Marsh is the ultimate young New Yorker. He's also an expert on debunking the supernatural. When he receives a letter from Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights appearing in a cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate. Here, in this tightly knit community, Lexie Darnell runs the town's library. Disappointed by past relationships, she is sure of one thing: her future is in Boone Creek, close to all the people she loves.

Come visit Alpine Ridge, a small town deep in the Cascade mountains of Washington state, where four love stories and so much more unfolds, now with exclusive bonus material.

Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.

For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is worlds away from the harsh realities of the day. Loyal to her lumberjack father, she knows only of the familiarity of her small community, the magic of the natural world, and the creative intuition that prompts her to march to the beat of her own drum. But when an accident takes her father's life, leaving her an orphan, Leah finds herself cast into a family of strangers whose welcoming façade hides a terrible secret.

April Raines is facing the end of her long-term marriage after her husband begins another family. Eager for a fresh start, she returns home with her grown daughters to Crown Island, just off the coast of Southern California. When Ryan Kingston acquires the historical Majestic Hotel, he is determined to bring the vintage Victorian beach resort back to life. But it could come at a steep cost to him and his carefully guarded privacy. Especially when April Raines, head of the new Crown Island Historical Society, captures his attention. Will they both get a second chance at life?

Bristol detective DS George Cross, champion of the outsider, the voiceless and the dispossessed. DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. An outsider himself, having been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, DS Cross is especially drawn to cases concerning the voiceless and the dispossessed. Now, Cross is untangling the truth about a young woman who died three days ago.

Au premier jour suivant son quarantième anniversaire, Dolorès a une vie plus tumultueuse que jamais. Alors qu’elle jongle avec ses responsabilités et ses différents legs familiaux, un face à face avec le passé de sa mère entraîne des révélations et des complications aussi douloureuses qu’insoupçonnées.

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important but natural and even supernatural forces, too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

Kalifornien, 1875: Verstoßen von ihrem wohlhabenden Stiefvater, reist Kathryn Walsh in die raue Bergarbeiterstadt Calvada nahe der Sierra Nevada. Dort tritt sie das Erbe eines Onkels an, den sie nie persönlich kennengelernt hat - ein heruntergekommenes Zeitungsbüro, umgeben von Saloons und Bordellen, sowie eine vermeintlich wertlose Mine. Nicht gerade die besten Voraussetzungen für einen Neustart ... Doch Kathryn ist klug, selbstbewusst und mutig. Sie erweckt die Zeitung "The Voice" zu neuem Leben und nimmt hinsichtlich der Zustände vor Ort kein Blatt vor den Mund.

In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted, but resilient lives of its residents. Spanning a period from the mid-'60s to the late '90s, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled, and depraved - but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump at the listener with inexorable force.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis". But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.

Adisa Johnson is living her dream of practicing law with a prestigious firm in downtown Atlanta. Then a split-second mistake changes the course of her career. Left with no other options, Adisa returns to her hometown, where, a few days earlier, a white police officer shot an unarmed black teen who is now lying comatose in the hospital. Adisa is itching to jump into the fight as a special prosecutor but feels pulled to do what she considers unthinkable as a young black woman — defend the officer.

Enjoy four sweet and heartwarming stories about home, heart, and reuniting with the ones you love: Their True Home by Amy Clipston, A Reunion of Hearts by Beth Wiseman, A Chance to Remember by Kathleen Fuller, and Mended Hearts by Kelly Irvin.

The Lowcountry of South Carolina is where By Invitation Only begins, at a barbecue engagement party thrown by Diane English Stiftel, her brother Floyd, and her parents to celebrate her son’s engagement. On this gorgeous, magical night, the bride’s father, Alejandro Cambria, a wealthy power broker whose unbelievably successful career in private equity made him one of Chicago’s celebrated elite, discovers the limits and possibilities of cell phone range.