Rural Fiction

Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline, and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors. Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl - but that’s just what happens with visitor Avery Greer and Littleport resident Sadie Loman. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable - until Sadie is found dead.

Fifteen year old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more.

Clare Wilson is starting over. She's had it with her marriage to a charming serial cheater. Even her own son thinks she's given his father too many chances. With the support of her sisters, Maggie and Sarah, she's ready to move on. Facing her fortieth birthday, Clare is finally feeling the rush of unadulterated freedom. But when a near-fatal car accident lands Clare in the hospital, her life takes another detour. While recovering, Clare realizes she has the power to choose her life's path. With enthusiasm and a little envy, her sisters watch her bloom.

On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. But an attempt on the elderly man’s life sends Armand, his wife, Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades.

Here are FOUR full length novels from New York Times Bestselling Author Kristen Proby, all featuring some of her swooniest single dads!

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

For most of her eighty years, Mary Jackson has been waiting. As she’s endured the steady invasion of tourists, influencers and real estate developers who have discovered the lakeside charm of Good Hart, Michigan, she’s also patiently anticipated the arrival of a stranger she’s believed since childhood would one day carry on her legacy—the Very Cherry General Store. Like generations of Jackson women before her, Cherry Mary, as she’s known locally, runs the community hub.

Six years ago, Beata Dabrowski arranged to meet her lover in Glasgow and was never seen again. There were no leads...until now. Imprisoned gang boss Davie Hardie wants to talk in exchange for his freedom. He knows exactly where Beata is buried, and he’s prepared to take the police to her grave. But when the mission to locate Beata’s body is hijacked, DS Max Craigie is drafted on to the case. Someone is selling secrets. Max will stop at nothing to expose police corruption and uncover Beata’s murderer.

Moving to eclectic New Hope, Pennsylvania, and running The Beautiful Things Shoppe is a dream come true for elegant and reserved fine arts dealer Prescott J. Henderson. He never agreed to share the space with Danny Roman, an easygoing extrovert who collects retro toys and colorful knickknacks. And yet here they are, trapped together in the quaint shop as they scramble to open in time for New Hope’s charming Winter Festival.

I’ve had a crush on Dylan St. Clair ever since he climbed into my bedroom window ten years ago. Wrong window, Romeo. I was eleven. He was seventeen. A bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks with a chip on his shoulder and fresh bruises from his latest fight, he went on to play the starring role in all my teenage fantasies. But I always knew he was off-limits. So, over the years, I gave up wishing and hoping we could ever be together. Until he kissed me on a cold beach one starry winter’s night.

Who goes to rehab eight times? Gage does. As a recovering addict fresh out of rehab, moving back in with his mom and starting over in his hometown isn't part of his life goals, but Gage needs all the support he can get. Lost and a little unsure of himself, Gage meets his new sponsor. A sponsor whose son is the perfect sober companion. But companionship isn't all these two find...

When growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls, aka Cataract City - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - one of Jake's closest confidants was his uncle Calvin, a sweet but eccentric misfit enamored of occult artifacts and outlandish conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turned 12, Calvin invited him to join the "Saturday Night Ghost Club" - a seemingly lighthearted project to investigate some of Cataract City's more macabre urban myths.

Twenty-one-year-old Jenilee Lane's dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide. She doesn't imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she's made her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor, Eudora Gibson, from the cellar in which she's been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado's wake.

Ten years later, I'm back on the island for my best friend's wedding as her maid of honor. Who's the first person I literally stumbled into? Riley Dixon. Even worse? He's the groom's best man and a self-made billionaire to boot. Being forced to spend an entire week together for wedding festivities quickly leads to more—hot hate sex, late nights of sneaking out, and unexpected revelations. The boy I knew a decade ago is gone, and the hate becomes… something else entirely. And I begin to wonder if Riley is hiding some secrets of his own.

Katie Benard reluctantly returns home to Grady Lake two decades after her older sister Malorie disappeared without a trace, a story that has captivated the nation since the day she was reported missing in 2003. After leaving home years ago, Katie is overjoyed to reunite with her childhood best friend and cousin while working at her family's lakeside resort at the end of tourist season in northern Michigan. Just when life begins to feel normal again, a teenage girl goes missing from the resort. She has vanished without a trace, just like Malorie.

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Twelve years earlier the storm of the century claimed the lives of Kieran’s brother and his friend. There was also a third casualty that day. A teenage girl, last spotted on the sand as the weather rolled in, then never seen again. Kieran has barely arrived back in town after a long absence when a body is washed up on the nearby beach.

Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police's investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big-game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything new.

His attractive neighbor is tugging at his heart-strings. A wealthy widow is pursuing him with hot casseroles. And his red-haired Cousin Meg has moved into the rectory, uninvited.

There are two things Joey Greer is great at: Raising horses and holding grudges. Eight years ago, her high school sweetheart abandoned her, skipped out on his family, and fled to Hollywood, of all places. She vowed never to forgive or forget. Now big-shot screenwriter Jackson Pierce is back in Blue Moon demanding another chance. No matter how good it feels when he sneaks past her defenses to land a kiss or a compliment, she is determined to pretend he doesn’t exist. Except maybe when he’s naked in her bed.

At eight, he gave me roses. At fifteen, he gave me butterflies, and at seventeen, he gave me sanctuary. I wasn't a damsel in distress. He wasn't Prince Charming waiting to whisk me off my feet. We didn't meet by chance. He's been part of my life for years, and for most of that time, I've been under his spell.