Rural Small Town Fiction

Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is "cruising along at medium altitude" when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives, but his language and memory are altered, and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.

Danniella is running from her past, so when she arrives at the beautiful seaside resort of Whitsborough Bay, the last thing on her mind is making friends. Alison is fun, caring and doesn't take herself too seriously. But beneath the front, she is a lost soul. Karen's romance has taken a back seat to her fitness business. But she doesn’t want to give up on love quite yet. When the women meet at their local bootcamp, a deep friendship blossoms. And soon they realise that the secret to happiness is where they least expected to find it....

Seventy-two men arrive in the middle of the Sicilian countryside. They are "immigrants," "refugees" or "migrants." But in Altino, they're called the ragazzi, the "guys" that the Santa Marta Association have taken responsibility for. In this small Sicilian town, their arrival changes life for everybody. While they wait to know their fate, the ragazzi encounter all kinds of people: a strange vicar who rewrites their pasts, a woman committed to ensuring them asylum, a man determined to fight against it, an older ragazzo who has become an interpreter, and a reclusive poet who no longer writes.

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.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

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.

The Nomination is a fast-paced action and suspense thriller that brings events from the final days of the Vietnam War into direct conflict with contemporary American politics. Vietnam War hero and Massachusetts Judge Thomas Larrigan is hand-picked by his friend the president to fill the upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court. Larrigan seems like the perfect candidate: a family man with an uncontroversial judicial record. The president's credibility needs a sure bet. Larrigan will do anything to win the nomination, but he has some old skeletons rattling around in his closet. He calls his old Marine buddy, now a hit man, to sweep the closet clean.

When Christopher Hostettler comes from Ohio to work at his uncle's shop in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, he gets off on the wrong foot with Emily Fisher. But when he finally opens up to her about his tragic reasons for leaving home, her heart begins to change. When Christopher compliments an old quilt, Emily decides to make a similar quilt for Christopher as a gesture of friendship. Emily knows she must guard her heart, as Christopher is not a baptized member of the church, but she's suddenly found someone with whom she can imagine sharing a future.

It should be the most wonderful time of the year for Samantha and Josh as they prepare for the arrival of their first baby. But life at Hedgehog Hollow rarely goes to plan and the pair are faced with adversaries, old and new, and unexpected challenges to overcome. Fizz's job at the heart of the rescue centre is a dream come true but her personal life is more like a nightmare. With her love life a disaster and her past about to dramatically catch up with her, she needs the love and support of her Hedgehog Hollow family more than ever.

Im abgelegenen Bergdorf Eschberg wächst Johannes Elias Alder heran – ein junger Außenseiter mit einem Gehör, so fein, dass er den Flügelschlag einer Mücke hört und Bachs Choräle wie Feuer durch seine Adern jagen. Seine leidenschaftliche, unerfüllte Liebe zu seiner Cousine Elsbeth treibt ihn zu immer waghalsigeren musikalischen Höhenflügen – und zu einer Entscheidung, die alles verändert: nie wieder zu schlafen.

When witchy candle-maker Clover Bishop agrees to help create a line of enchanted scents for Rook Katz's luxury spa, she expects a business deal—not a smoldering attraction that threatens to burn right through her carefully guarded heart. Clover isn't ready to throw herself into fate's hands, but resisting a possessive, swoon-worthy tiger shifter who looks at her like she's his forever? That's a whole different kind of magic.

This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.

“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace―the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are.

Of course, I said yes when Hannah Bell asked me to help her save the library. I say yes to everything. After an accident destroyed my career as a rodeo cowboy, the only things on my schedule were brawling, drinking, and bedding, so it wasn't like I didn't have the time. Now, I have regrets. Because the nerdy little librarian drives me crazy. She has five cats. Five. Her nose is buried so deep in her romance books that she can't see me standing right in front of her. And those long skirts and baggy sweaters leave far too much to the imagination.

What happens when you accidentally throw a blueberry pie in your brother's best friend's face? You marry him a week later for health insurance, of course.

It’s been three years. It’s time to let go of the past. When a man covered in tattoos walks into the bar where I work, with a guitar case slung over his back and a determined swagger, I think I’m finally ready to move on...until I see his guitar. I’d recognize it anywhere. It was the last gift Nate ever received from his father.

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.

I was supposed to be attending a friend's birthday party, not used as bait to lure out the elusive Holden Hayes. Holden was the last thing I needed. My life was already spiraling, a slow-moving head-on collision that you couldn't swerve to avoid. In hindsight, so was his. Neither of us was looking for a relationship, but that is precisely what we found. An instant, all-consuming, soul-deep connection that few people ever find.

One night, no names, and no kissing seemed like a good idea —until I got a big, fat plus sign on a pregnancy test, and I had no idea who my baby daddy was. I'm determined to raise my baby on my own, but then he waltzes into my classroom to drop off his son. Blake Walker. The newly retired linebacker and single dad is even more gorgeous now than the night we spent together, and since he knows I'm pregnant with his baby, he's adamant to do right by us.