Rural Life

The fourth book in Anna Jacobs' beloved Ellindale series. Lancashire, 1934. When Tam Crawford is unexpectedly bequeathed some money, he can finally realise his dream of settling down in the beautiful village of Ellindale. Tam knows he can be impulsive - his nickname isn't Crazy Tam for nothing! - but this time he is determined not to be ruled by his big heart and hot head. Yet somehow, within just one day, he has taken on a fiancée and two children to keep them out of the poorhouse - or worse.

Heather doesn’t want to remember her childhood, not when her mother’s extreme hoarding cast her family life into disarray. For Heather’s mother, every possession was intimately connected to a memory, so when Heather uncovers a secret about her past that could reveal why her mother never let anything go, she knows there’s only one place she’ll find answers - behind the locked door of her spare room, where the remains of her mother’s hoard lie hidden.

Fran loves Will with all her heart. They had a whirlwind romance, a perfect marriage and a wonderful life. Until everything changed. Now Fran needs to find her way again, and teaching a yoga retreat in Spain offers her just that. Leaving behind a broken marriage, she has some very important decisions to make. Will needs his wife. He needs her to open up to him if they're to ever return to the way things once were. But he may have damaged any possibility he had of mending their relationship, and now Fran is in Spain, and Will is alone.

Nolan Jackson is a journeyman carpenter by trade and a wanderer by nature. And in 2007, while fellow Americans fight in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Nolan roams, traveling between jobs building tract homes across the West. Following a shocking workplace accident in Las Vegas, he uproots himself from the tentative relationships he has made and heads toward the ocean.

The tight-knit residents of Blue Moon Mountain, nestled high in the Colorado Mountains, form an interconnected community of those living off the land, stunned by the beauty and isolation all around them. So when, at the onset of winter, the town veterinarian commits a violent act, the repercussions of that tragedy will be felt all across the mountainside, upending their lives and causing their paths to twist and collide in unexpected ways.

Er schuldete einer Menge Leute etwas, aber ich war der einzige der noch übrig war, um die Schulden einzutreiben. Ich sagte mir, dass ich mich nicht um ihn schere. Nur darum, was er mir schuldet, was auch immer das genau war. Das habe ich wirklich versucht zu glauben. Als Mitch Quillens Leben aus den Fugen gerät, fürchtet er, dass es keinen Ausweg gibt. Seine Ehe sowie seine Karriere scheitern und die Beziehung zu seinem Vater ist seit Jahrzenten ein Desaster.

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.

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.

This is the story of the trials that beset the McKinnons, the first family of Mattagash, Maine, when they try to arrange a funeral for the family matriarch. Bubbling with quirky humor, this marks a dazzling debut for a gifted and richly talented young writer.

When the younger sister she thought was dead arrives on her doorstep, followed closely by a gun-wielding Russian gangster, a shady New York lawyer, and a desperate Connecticut housewife, ex-cop Shae-Lynn Penrose is forced to grapple with the horrible truth she discovers about her sister's life, and with an ominous question: Will her return result in a monstrous act of greed, or one of sacrifice?

Casie Carmichael is hardworking but softhearted. She has a broken-down mare, two lambs, three lost teens, a busted-up bronco rider, and a whole lot of trouble. Casie has returned home to Hope Springs, South Dakota, to sell the family’s tumbledown ranch with the hope of returning to Sioux Falls and her very practical fiancé. But leaving Hope Springs isn’t quite as easy as she thought it would be, especially since her barn seems to have a homing beacon leading every stray in the territory straight to it.

In a house on the east coast, Jane faces motherhood alone. With her husband away at war, there is no one to protect her from small town suspicions and she must learn to keep her secrets to herself. Three decades later her daughter Felicity leaves their life behind for Montreal, glad to flee the unknowns that have plagued her so far. But her personal battles are nothing compared to the unrest here, where a commune in rural Quebec and a child of her own might be her saviours.

Wie der Erste Weltkrieg den Alltag des Hamburger Geldadels zerrüttete. Der Erste Weltkrieg setzt dem unbekümmertem Leben der Hamburger Familie Bramfeld, die in der Villa am Feenteich residiert, ein jähes Ende. Frederike, die Tochter des Bankiers Bramfeld, versucht verzweifelt das Erbe zusammenzuhalten. Der einzige Lichtblick: Ihre aufkeimenden Gefühle zu Martin Stelling, den sie über ihre Freundin Viktoria Stelling kennenlernt.

It is first holy cmmunion time in Ireland. Good things are happening in Kathleen's school. The children in the holy communion class are doing a project on Latin America. It seems like a good idea, especially as Pope Francis comes from Latin America. The children each take a country and prepare a presentation. It sounds simple. But will Nessa, the little rich girl, make things difficult with her project on Peru? Hmm...probably!

Natalie and Rose are transported in their imaginations to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, where one of their ancestors survived in a lifeboat for 50 days. Natalie struggles when her daughter, Rose, is diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, but the researching and retelling of Grandad Colin's story provides them both with a way to fight through. Louise Beech has always been haunted by the sea, and regularly writes travel pieces for the Hull Daily Mail, where she was a columnist for ten years.

It's finally time for Carmella to marry the love of her life—her best friend turned boyfriend turned fiancé, Cody. As she grapples with her new role as stepmother to Gretchen, she learns some surprising news about her own situation and finds herself rewriting a future she'd once thought would be aimless and incredibly lonely.

Up all night, Marlene drives the highways and back roads near her home in hopes that some landmark will spark an image of her daughter, one untainted by years of grief. Her husband Les steams out to sea in his effort to cope. He is a commercial fisherman on a boat staffed up with desperate loners and shape-shifting friends obliterating their bodies in two-week shifts of crushing labor. The couple keep their pain hidden from each other, and most of their lives separate.

The Carrington family owns the only pub in the small country town of Kangaroo Ridge. It’s been eight years since the five siblings became orphans and since twins Sebastian and Tamara stepped up to look after their younger brothers and sister with the help of their aunt, Maddie. Seb and Tam gave up their teenage years to make sure the family stayed together, but that’s been hard and they’ve grown apart. Seb is silent and stoic; Tam, on the other hand, wants to kick over the traces and catch up on the life she missed out on.

1961. Als die junge Lehrerin Helene von der Großstadt ins ländliche, erzkatholische Hessen versetzt wird, begegnet man ihr zunächst mit Ablehnung. Der althergebrachte drakonische Erziehungsstil, die Gleichgültigkeit der Kollegen: Für die engagierte Helene ist es ein Kampf gegen Windmühlen. In Tobias, dem anfangs wortkargen, später jedoch deutlich zugänglicheren Landarzt, findet sie schließlich doch einen Verbündeten. Niemand ahnt: Ihre Versetzung aufs Land war kein Zufall. Denn mitten durch den Landstrich zieht sich die Grenze zur "Ostzone".

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.