Rural Fiction

Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don't see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to do: deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don't want Georgia Jackson.

A year ago, ex-Delta Force operator Steven Roark left the rigors of combat behind to run fishing charters in Hope Harbor, decompress, and talk some sense into his kid brother. Business is good - but making peace with his past is more challenging than he expected. First-grade teacher Holly Miller leads a low-profile existence - until she’s recruited to advocate for a cause that’s dear to her heart. When she solicits Steven’s assistance, sparks fly - especially after they find themselves on opposite sides of an issue that disrupts their placid seaside community.

Best-selling author Martin Walker’s previous two novels starring Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges became hits with fans and critics around the globe. In this thrilling third mystery, Bruno has his hands full with trouble in the truffle trade in St. Denis’ marketplace. And when a friend is murdered, things really start heating up.

On the eve of a new year, Catherine Glick is expecting her bu of five years to propose. Instead, the unexpected arrival of an old boyfriend, Elijah, sends her life spiraling out of control. When a rash decision damages her current relationship, Catherine leaves for Florida to work in her cousin's bakery - anything to flee the source of her shame. Elijah Graber knows he hurt Catherine when he left their Amish district six years ago. He's determined to explain his actions, even if it means following her to Florida.

For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods, where she sketches nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Then her depressed, unpredictable mother forbids her to climb the trees that give her sanctuary and comfort. Angry, ten-year-old Aggie accidentally lights a tragic fire and flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, then hides among trees and creatures she believes are her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.

Even being her boss couldn't keep him away. After her world is upended, Oakley Rae leaves behind everything she knows to find herself and ends up in the small town of Bell Buckle. With the clothes on her back and a few dollars to her name, she finds herself working at a feed store where the employees are welcoming, the customers are nice, and the boss is, well, bossy.

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.

Andy Catlett's story begins as his grandfather Marce Catlett rises in the dark to travel from his farm by horseback and train to Louisville for the auction of his 1906 tobacco crop. The price paid for each year's crop has been depressed to virtually nothing by the power of a single buyer, James B. Duke. This year is especially grim since the price offered to each grower is less than the expense of bringing the crop to market. A year's labor is lost.

Martha Detweiler has a problem many Amish women her age would envy: She’s the only single woman in a community of young men, and they’re all competing for her favor. Overwhelmed by the unwanted attention, Martha finds herself constantly fleeing from her would-be suitors, dismayed at what her life has come to. Birch Creek’s resident matchmaker, Cevilla Schlabach, suggests a solution: Martha and the bishop’s son, Seth Yoder, should pretend they are dating.

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest—the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn—has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.

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.

Ellie Bowman barely remembers the incident that put her into a coma. When she awoke, filled with unease, all she knew for certain was that her boyfriend, Rick, was missing. She knew she needed to get away from her old life and recover in safety. With the proceeds of a video game she helped develop, Ellie starts over in rural Missouri, working from her cottage and trusting no one except her friend and business partner.

After the sudden death of his father, Jordan Pearce reluctantly takes over the family’s generations-old oyster-farming business on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. He’s still adjusting to the new role when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes offshore, triggering one of the worst environmental disasters in history and throwing his hardscrabble coastal town into crisis.

FBI Agent Dillon Savich is on a challenging case involving the kidnapping of two teenage boys when trouble boils up in his personal life. His younger sister Lily has crashed her Explorer into a redwood in California's Hemlock Bay. Is it another suicide attempt, the second since the loss of her young daughter some seven months before? Savich and Sherlock discover that four of Lily's paintings, left to her by their very famous grandmother, artist Sarah Elliot, now worth millions, are at the heart of an intricate conspiracy.

In the dark, wintry highlands of Lochdubh, Scotland, where the local Calvinist element resists the secular trimmings of Christmas, the spirit of old Saint Nick is about as welcome as a flat tire on a deserted road. Nor is crime taking a holiday, as Constable Hamish Macbeth soon finds himself protecting an unhappy girl, unlocking the secrets of a frightened old woman, and retrieving some stolen holiday goods. Now the lanky lawman must use all his Highland charm and detective skills to make things right.

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.

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr...

After he and Garth had built the A-G Connected, Al thought that he’d fulfilled his dream by owning a horse ranch. But when Garth announced that he was going to get married, Al knew that he would only be in the way, so he decided to find his own place. It was after he found his new ranch almost a hundred miles south of the A-G that things changed dramatically, and he realized that just starting a ranch and raising horses wasn’t a dream at all, and it would take a nightmare to discover what that dream truly was.

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.

After losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast—the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. Soon, she encounters some of the people she met last time around: John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew, Petros, an eccentric mechanic; Niko, a handsome diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, and their sense of who they are.