Rural Fiction

Emma Porter is 40, fat, frumpy, and a passionate amateur gardener. When her longtime lover dumps her for a younger woman, Emma escapes the cloying sympathy of family and friends by setting out on a summer-long driving tour of England's glorious gardens. A Dimity-contrived coincidence brings her to Penford Hall, a sprawling Gothic mansion in Cornwall, where she finds a duke in search of a missing lantern with extraordinary powers.

After losing her job and learning she might also lose her house because of a bad investment, Jess, a fiercely independent and hilariously wry BC grandma, resorts to growing pot in her basement to make ends meet. She then has to juggle her public life as a grandmother and member of the town’s senior women’s group - The Company of Crones - with her secret life as a pot grower.

In the tiny village of Sandy Cove in Ireland, Ella Caron is trying to recover. When she moved to a beautiful coastguard cottage on the sea, she wanted quiet and the space to grieve after her mother’s death. She never imagined that her mother’s best friend, Lucille, would insist on moving in to keep her company. With Lucille by her side, it soon becomes clear that Lucille has her own reasons for coming to Sandy Cove. But then Lucille’s son, Rory, comes to town and her dream is under threat: he wants her in Tipperary, where she can safely grow old in their family home.

It takes one dance at a party for Erianne Mitchell to fall heart-first for dashing entrepreneur Ty Mosby. They have business and friends in common—and a searing attraction that seems far too good to last. But when a devastating mistake tears them apart, Erianne flees to Wyoming with a secret, one she hopes Ty never discovers. She did nothing wrong, and she’ll never ask Ty to forgive her. She'll support herself…and the baby growing inside her. How can she be with a man who doesn’t trust her?

When Danni Carter moves to Cornwall from London, she hopes it will be the fresh start she so desperately needs. She’s nervous, but hopefully the change of scene will help her to finally forget her feelings for Lucas Newman, a man she can never be with, because he’s already engaged to Danni’s best friend, Esther. But when Lucas and Esther decide to follow Danni to Cornwall, and both announce they will be working with her at the new St Piran’s hospital, Danni is thrown into turmoil again.

From best-selling authors in the Amish genre come four sweet stories about picnics and romance. Baskets of Sunshine by Amy Clipston: Kevin Weaver has lived with his brother’s family since his parents passed away when he was young, but he craves a home and family to call his own. Candlelight Sweethearts by Kelly Irvin: Esther Marie Shrock loves her job at Valley Grocery Store where she’s worked for four years. Despite a stutter that has plagued her since childhood, she thrives filling orders from a steady stream of customers. Plus two more!

Part love story and part ghost story, this is an unforgettable New York Times best seller about a science journalist and a North Carolina librarian who dare to believe in the impossible. As a science journalist with a regular column in Scientific American, Jeremy Marsh specializes in debunking the supernatural - until he falls in love with the granddaughter of the town psychic. When Jeremy receives a letter from Boone Creek, North Carolina, about ghostly lights appearing in a cemetery, he can't resist driving down to investigate.

Do I have feelings for my sister's best friend? Of course not. That would be stupid, considering my sister once threatened to castrate me if I ever hurt Val. Hurting her is the last thing I want to do, which is all the more reason I can't have feelings for her. Val deserves the world, and I'm not the man who can give it to her. When Val announces she's leaving town (and the country), I'm suddenly confronted with some very capital-F Feelings—ones that refuse to stay stuffed down deep where I've hidden them for more years than I care to admit.

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn’t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters.

Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson Cooper is eager to revive a cherished family tradition. A recent remodeling of the manor’s kitchen unearthed a cornucopia that once served as the centerpiece of the Bergstrom family’s holiday table. Into it, each Bergstrom would place an object that symbolized something he or she was especially thankful for that year. On this quilter’s holiday, Sylvia has invited her friends to continue the tradition by sewing quilt blocks that represent their thankfulness and gratitude.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is blessed with a treasure trove of storytellers, poets, and historians, all seeking to capture a sense of Yooper Life from settler's days to the far-flung future. Since 2017, the U.P. Reader has offered a rich collection of their voices that embraces the U.P.'s natural beauty and way of life, along with a few surprises. The sixty-plus short works in this 8th annual volume take listeners on U.P. road and boat trips from the Keweenaw to the Soo and from St. Ignace to Escanaba.

I've been pining for Abel Miller since we were teenagers. He's sexy as hell and has always played a starring role in all my fantasies. Too bad he only sees me as his best friend's little sister. He's also a broody playboy who takes home a new girl every night, while I'm looking to find forever with someone. Abel and I couldn't be more different. When my dad gets sick and says he just wants to see me safe, settled, and happily in love, Abel shocks me by offering to pretend to be my husband.

The sole witness to a horrific crime, Kaylee Ramay flees to the Colorado Rockies to start a new life. There, she becomes Grace, a dog kennel employee desperately trying to avoid attention - especially from dangerously attractive K9 Officer Hugh Murdoch. Because Hugh is tall, dark...and nothing but trouble. Hugh is anxious to get back in the field after an act of heroism left him warming the bench. Until then, he and his K9 partner Lexi spend their hours teasing the town's mysterious newcomer.

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.

Cowboy Sawyer Garrett has no intention of settling down. But when he becomes a single dad to tiny baby June, stepping up to the responsibility is nonnegotiable. And so is finding a woman to be a mother to his infant daughter. So he decides to do it the way the pioneers did: by putting out an ad for a mail-order bride.

Shane Hendrix had a hundred-foot reinforced steel wall around her heart to keep people out, so when she first laid eyes on Jensen Rose, she wanted nothing to do with him. But what started as disdain quickly grew into something so much more. He went from being the boy she hated to the man she loved with all her heart. Then he left without so much as a goodbye, leaving her shattered.

Caroline Boyer is seventeen, pregnant, and stuck in a loop of bad choices. At her mother's deathbed, Caroline finds herself at the center of an unexpected plot that has the potential to turn her world upside down. At the funeral, she discovers a father she's never known. Whether she likes it or not, her life will never be the same.

Luka and Rook have been best friends since they were nine years old. Five years ago, Luka threw it all away. When his dad’s health takes a turn for the worst, Luka must come home to say his goodbyes and mend the bridges he burned all those years ago. Coming home is harder than he imagined, and after reuniting with his family, there’s only one person he needs. Rook. His best friend. The one man he pushed away, the one man, no matter how hard he tried to forget, he can't stop himself from loving. Even if loving him means breaking his heart all over again.

Five long years ago, Laura Dalton stood on the bleak Nantucket shore waiting for her beloved husband Rye to return—until the day she learned his ship was lost at sea. Now, Laura's lonely heart has found solace in Dan, Rye's closest friend. Dan has been a beacon of light in her time of darkness, becoming a father to the child that Rye never knew and giving her a reason to live again. But who could foretell that a wind-roughened sailor with sun-bleached hair would come back into their lives? That Laura's heart could betray her soul? That Rye would come home again . . .