Rural Fiction

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.

Early one morning in 1929, Mary Seneca Steele spontaneously packs a suitcase, gathers up her son and daughter, and drives away in her abusive and dissolute husband’s brand-new Auburn Phaeton automobile, leaving her privileged life in Charleston behind. It is the beginning of a journey of enlightenment that leads Mary “Sen” to the mountains and mysteries of Appalachia, where she will learn unexpected family secrets, create a new life for herself and her children, and finally experience love and happiness before tragedy will once again test her.

Conner Gilroy was my brother’s best friend. Popular. Smart. Gorgeous. With his cocky grin and perfect family, he was the fantasy of almost every girl I knew, including mine. And for some reason, he wanted me. Me, Henley O’Connell; the ugly bookworm with bright orange hair. Poor white trash with a quick temper and a chip on her shoulder. He confused me and made me angry. He treated me like I was something more than what I was. Like maybe what I wanted wasn’t just a silly fantasy.

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House.

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.

Random, Colorado, is just another stop on the road for solitary gunslinger Gabriel Valance. Known for his drinking, gambling, and womanizing, he prefers to remain a stranger to anyone who crosses his path. But when an upstart gunslinger catches Gabe off guard and shoots him down, he regrets his empty, lonely life with his dying breath....

In the weeks since he moved to Ghost, Oregon, Maz Amani’s life has gotten so much better. Charming small town? Check. Queen Anne beauty of a house? Check. Project organizing the fascinating papers of Ghost’s founding family? Check. Adorable handyman who might morph into more than a friend? Check. Rafts of friendly townies? Check. And did he mention the house? Sure, there’s the occasional professional annoyance—ghostwriters can’t always be picky about the gigs they take in the name of keeping their cat in kibble. But on the whole, things are awesome.

Christmas Town is a modern story of a socially awkward and disadvantaged tween boy who is ordinary in most every way, except for one major difference. This particular boy decides to take one simple action to help somebody; and his good deed ends up changing the entire town in the most epic ways. Christmas Town is a story that can happen in any town. It is a story of what happens when the best of humanity comes out of at least one person who is willing to try. It is a story that will pull at your heartstrings, make you laugh, and make you cry.

'A wonderfully satisfying read: love, passion, drama, violence, menace and peril, and characters you fall in love with' – Santa Montefiore An Island full of secrets . . . Summer, 1929. Mhairi MacKinnon is in need of a husband. As the eldest girl among nine children, her father has made it...

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.

Maggie is 36, recently divorced and embarrassingly unemployed. With a bank account nearing zero, she does the only thing she can think of: make a business proposition to her gorgeous and successful estranged mother. To Maggie’s utter surprise, her mother agrees. Any funds she can create off the sale of the dilapidated family inn on the island of Magnolia would be hers to invest.

Adrift in the wake of her father's death, a failed marriage, and multiple miscarriages, Libby McKenzie feels truly alone. Though her new life as a wedding photographer provides a semblance of purpose, it's also a distraction from her profound pain. When asked to photograph a wedding at the historic Woodmont estate, Libby meets the owner, Elaine Grant. Hoping to open Woodmont to the public, Elaine has employed young widower Colton Reese to help restore the grounds and asks Libby to photograph the process.

For outsiders, Painted Canyon, Montana might simply be a picturesque western town, but for rancher and horse trainer Cord Hollister, it's meant salvation. That's why he recognizes in newcomer Shallie Fletcher another lost soul looking for a fresh start. But can he convince her that Painted Canyon is the perfect place to put down roots-and that love awaits if she'll just take a chance?

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.

After getting divorced, Francisca Dawson is attempting to find out who she is and how she wants her life to look. One thing she knows is that there isn’t room for a man in that equation. But then she meets Dayton Calloway. A man who is charming, funny, and unbelievably gorgeous. Unable to deny their connection, she gets lost in the moment and gives in to his dirty mouth and skilled hands.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.

What happens when you accidentally throw a blueberry pie in your brother's best friend's face? You marry him a week later for health insurance, of course.

Soon after banker Willard Carmichael and his young bride arrive in Pickax, a string of petty burglaries follow. Then Willard meets his demise—an apparent victim of a mugging—and the banker's home restoration project goes to the widow's cousin. Though the clues are as elusive as a cat burglar, the suspicious Qwill and his feline companions, Koko and Yum Yum, are determined to catch a thief—and a killer.

Hartford Cove was supposed to be a safe haven. Instead, Rowe discovered a family legacy steeped in magic and wolf shifters. The hallucinations she grew up with weren’t tricks of her broken mind. Her toaster is fully functional–thank you very much–and the real world is more wonderful and horrifying than she ever imagined. Too bad, in Rowe’s life, all good things come to an end. A single act of violence sends Tris and her fleeing, afraid for their lives. But one door closing allows another door to open, and while in hiding, long-held feelings ignite, giving Rowe a second chance at happiness.

Darby Dunwell is not a Bond Girl, though she's been blessed with the body of one. An east coast, ivy-league, trust fund kid, she flees a life of expectation, elocution, and executive board rooms to follow her one true love: Coffee. The deeply eccentric seaside tourist hamlet of Townsend Harbor throws its doors wide open for her sex-positive, bikini-themed coffee shop named Brewbies.