Rural Life

In a tumbledown cottage in Willoughby’s grounds, Dolly and Olive King lived with their eccentric explorer father. One of the last things he did was to lay a treasure hunt before he died, but when events took an unexpected turn, Dolly and Olive left Willoughby for good, never to complete it. But when Ruben uncovers a secret message, hidden for decades, he knows he needs Olive and Dolly’s help. Can the three of them solve the treasure hunt, and will piecing together the clues help them understand what happened to their families that summer, all those years ago?

Joe Starling, a man teetering on the edge of spectacular failures—as an artist, rancher, lover, and human being—is also a man of noble ambitions. His struggle to right himself is mesmerizing, hilarious, and profoundly moving.

On the cusp of summer, 1986, Rowan Brockman's mother asks if he can come home to Septimus in the Western Australian Wheatbelt to help with the harvest. Rowan's brother Albert, the natural heir to the farm, has died, and Rowan's dad's health is failing. Although he longs to, there is no way that Rowan can refuse his mother's request as she prepares the farm for sale.

When brutish miner Hugo Mitchum is found murdered on the frozen shore of a North Country lake, the local officials and town gossips of Beau Caelais are quick to blame Marietta Abernathy, outspoken environmental activist and angry, witchy recluse. But Marietta herself has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child to her mother's abandonment and now an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Yet when her grandmother calls and asks her to watch over the children of a recent widower in a small, isolated town in Colorado, she takes it as a chance to finally organize her life.

“I live in a holler, and I’ve heard some folks talk that holler bunch won’t amount to a hill of beans, and I’ve heard others say that the sun never shines in those hollers.” “My mother let me know I was as good as anyone. ‘Ralph, don’t walk with your head down. There’s nothing shameful about running out of taters.’” “My daddy said, ‘Ralph, don’t quit. Quitting follows you to the grave.’” The philosophy in these words was with Ralph from the time of his childhood. He heard them from relatives and witnessed the people around him live them.

When local real estate shark Edgar Coleman is murdered and "good riddance" is the response from every Pecan Spring resident, China Bayles quickly learns that Coleman was no stranger to adultery and blackmail. China's fiancé, the interim police chief, is immersed in the investigation, and the suspect list grows steadily longer. China puts her honeymoon plans aside and starts hunting for the killer. As her investigation gets underway, she digs up dirt and secrets on people she knows.

1975. In the town of Rexburg, Idaho, aspiring artist Aran Rigby, his younger sister, Tamsin, and their two brothers are locked in orbit around their emotionally abusive father. Gad is the kind of man who soothes the failures of his own life by controlling the lives of others. But Aran and Tamsin are united in rebellion against their father. They understand each other. They have dreams beyond their small town.

From the author of the “enthralling” (New York Times Book Review) and “beautiful” (Washington Post) debut novel The Vexations comes an exciting new story collection that is “perfect for fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell” (Booklist), moving boldly between the real and the...

The Black River flows from Missouri into Arkansas, east of Branson and west of the Bootheel. It meanders where the foothills of the Ozarks begin to rise out of the Mississippi plain. The area was sparsely populated when E. R. Coleman was a young man. Like the population they served, businesses were modest, mostly small, and scattered. Arkansas was still the Bear State; slogans boasting that it was - or predicting that it would become - the "Land of Opportunity" were yet to be conceived.

Better Than Mom's is a neighborhood diner in a small city in Wisconsin where good food and interesting people come together. Meet Brady, the warm-hearted owner who takes pride in making homemade food for his customers, Fay, the sassy morning waitress who cares for people more than she lets on, Naomi, the welfare mom who cooks like an angel and needs a job, Steve, who sits in the back booth and won't let anyone see what he's writing, and Officer Bates, who comes to investigate a crime but ends up sweeping Fay off her feet.

'Ghar-vaapasee' un visthaapit logon kee kahaanee hai jo behatar bhaviṣy ke lakṣy kaa peechhaa karate hue, apane samaaj se door hone ke baavajood, vahaan se pooree tarah nikal naheen paate. Yah kahaanee bihaar-uttar pradesh aadi ke gaanvon, chhoṭe shaharon se shikṣaa aur naukaree kee talaash men nikale yuvaa_on ke aantarik aur baahy sngharṣ kee kahaanee hai. Apane jadon kee ek chintaa se joojhate hue ki magar vo vaheen hote, to shaayad kuchh badalaav le aate.

On the rebound from being dumped after 10 years with the man she'd hoped would be the father of her children, Maggie Ellis buys a neglected cottage in Tingara on acreage to start her life over and fulfil her dream of owning a garden nursery. Divorced truck driver and single dad Nick Logan has his hands full enough raising three sons alone without getting distracted by his new neighbour.

With a missing father, sister, and grandfather - and a mother who refuses to explain - 11-year-old Clara lives with many questions. When she begins interviewing an elderly immigrant for a school biography assignmnent, she learns he too has a shadowy past. Attempting to fill in gaps, Clara invents version upon version of stories for both her new friend and herself. As the tales evolve, she uncovers some unsettling family history, but most importantly, she begins to discover what matters most in life. Filled with small surprises, Shadow Baby is at turns funny, poignant, and heartwarming.

Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle's girlfriend after the death of both of his parents. Now his uncle has gone missing, probably on a drug binge. It's Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who's been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals - encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening. Meanwhile, Riggle marks each day by remembering the mythology his late mother invented for him about how the days got their names.

Peter Rock's stunning autobiographical novel begins in the '90s on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin. The narrator, a recent college graduate, and a young widow, Mrs. Abel, swim together at night, making their way across miles of open water, navigating the currents and swells carried by the rise and fall of the lake. The nature of these night swims, and of his relationship to Mrs. Abel, becomes increasingly mysterious to the narrator as the summer passes, until the night that Mrs. Abel disappears.

When Jamie Paddock learns of his father's suicide, memories of his childhood in West Virginia come roaring back. One of the few people in his town to ever make it out, Jamie is living in New York City now, developing marketing videos for YouTube, struggling to write and partying a lot, all while suppressing the accent that gives him away. Spurred by an artistic curiosity surrounding his silent and private father, Jamie goes home, staying with his disabled mother and sister in their trailer.

The Chinese Economic miracle is happening despite, not because of, China's 900 million peasants. They are missing from the portraits of booming Shanghai, or Beijing. Many of China's underclass live under a feudalistic system unchanged since the 15th century. Wu Chuntao and Chen Guidi undertook a three-year survey of what had happened to the peasants in one of the poorest provinces, Anhui, asking the question: have the peasants been betrayed by the revolution undertaken in their name by Mao and his successors?

Jenny Hayward cannot believe that she's become a divorced fifty-year-old woman with adult children. When did that happen? It wasn't that long ago that her three daughters were still young, and Jenny was following her dream studying for her nursing degree. In the last two years, since her husband walked out, Jenny hasn't had the time to be interested in other men until she is thrust unexpectedly into the world of dating when her daughters and her best friend secretly set her up with a profile on a dating app. Initially outraged, Jenny finally agrees that it's time to move on.

Books bring them together - but friendship will transform all of their lives. Five very different women come together in the Northern Territory of the 1970s, by an exceptional new Australian author. In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cyclone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle stations dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard, and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect.