Rural Life

Evie Austin, native of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, and baddest girl on the planet, has not lived her life in a straight line. There have been several detours - career snafus, bad romantic choices, a loved but unplanned child - not to mention, her ill-advised lifelong obsession with boxer Mike Tyson. Evie is not plucky, but when life's changes smash over her like the rough surf of the local shoreline, she muddles through - until that moment of loss and longing when muddling will no longer suffice.

When they meet in the 1930s, Doris and Tup’s love is immediate. They marry quickly and Doris commits to the only life Tup ever wanted: working the Senter family farm. Soon their first child, Sonny, is born and Doris and Tup understand they are blessed. More children arrive - precocious, large-hearted Dodie and quiet, devoted Beston - but Doris and Tup take nothing for granted. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered.

It was a straightforward request. Take her gran home to her beloved Scotland. In the space of a few days, Elle loses her job and her home and faces moving back in with her parents - where she knows she'll hear a lot about how she is wasting her life, unlike her three siblings. Then Gran's will is read and everything changes.

When a car carrying five teenagers home from a party crashes into a brick wall, the consequences are devastating - not just for the young people directly involved, but also for their families, their friends and the wider community. By 2:30 a.m. the whereabouts of most of the kids were known. Most - but not all. Because, for a small handful of parents, there was no response to their frantic calls and messages.

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?

Florence Stanville is a woman with a past. When she moves to Guisethorpe on the east coast of England, the townsfolk are intrigued by the glamorous and mysterious stranger, with her flame-red hair and abrupt manners. Florence doesn’t care about the gossips—she’s drawn to the peaceful seaside town by the pull of her childhood, when she lived for a brief but happy time with her beloved late mother. The riddle of those days remains, and now Florence can only snatch at half-remembered memories and shadowy figures in her dreams.

As a child, Carmella Remington was boisterous, alive: always one to move too fast, laugh too long, and feel too deeply. She was the middle child of Neal Remington, the fraught one between Elsa and Colton. Until one day, Carmella made one of the biggest mistakes of her life—a mistake so wretched that it cost Colton’s life. In the wake of this, Carmella's entire life changed forever.

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.

When a young man is found lying on a station platform with a hole in his head, DI Kate Young is called in to investigate the grisly murder. But the killing is no one-off. As bodies start to pile up, she is faced with what might be an impossible task - to hunt down a ruthless killer on a seemingly random rampage.

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.

Pru Reynolds doesn’t have time for drama. Between running the Misfit Inn and finalizing the adoption of her teenage foster daughter, she’s juggling more than enough. A casual fling with her sister’s best friend? Fine. No strings, no complications. Until the social worker shows up. Unannounced. At the absolute worst possible time.

'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.