Rural Small Town Fiction

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.

Five years ago, Clara Hayes got the diagnosis no one wants: cancer. She fought it and won, but it altered everything. She moved back home, changed her career, and now she approaches life without fear or hesitation. Then her brother’s best friend moves to town. She’s loved Holden for as long as she’s known him. And though she’s been gently turned down by him once before, Clara decides she needs to take one more chance on him, even if ends in heartache. Because as she knows all too well, life’s too short for regrets.

In Claire-Louise Bennett's shimmering debut, an unnamed young woman - wry, somewhat misanthropic, keenly observant - chronicles her life on the outskirts of a small coastal village.The charms of bananas and oatcakes in the morning and Spanish oranges after sex; the small pleasures and anxieties of throwing a party, exchanging salacious emails with a new lover, sitting in the bath as it storms outside. Broken oven knobs prompt a meditation on survival that's both haunting and playful.

Luca Torres, a struggling journalism graduate, never meant to take a vow of celibacy. It was just a dumb idea from a job interview gone wrong. He never thought they'd approve the article. Or make his future career conditional on delivering it. Now, with no choice but to steer clear of temptation for the summer, he takes the most isolated job he can find: a fire lookout in the rural and picturesque mountains of Washington State. However, his goal becomes much harder with the arrival of the husky and flirtatious Artair Osmond, a musician and wilderness enthusiast who takes up camp nearby.

All Parker Hayes wanted was a fresh start, serving up frothy lattes and decadent desserts at her charming new cafe, Catch You Latte. But just as she's perfecting her caramel drizzle, her grand opening takes a bitter turn when a face from her past turns up dead… right behind the cafe. Suddenly, Parker's at the center of town gossip—and the prime suspect. Dodging murder accusations was definitely not part of her business plan. Then an ominous text turns everything upside down, and the clues start pointing to one of Magnolia Grove's most upstanding citizens.

Vallée de l'Asse. Provence. Été 1965. Il vit dans une station-service avec ses vieux parents. Les voitures qui passent sont rares. Shell ne va plus à l'école. Il est différent. Un jour, il décide de partir. Pour aller à la guerre et prouver qu'il est un homme. Mais sur le plateau qui surplombe la vallée, nulle guerre ne sévit. Seuls se déploient le silence et les odeurs du maquis. Et une fille, comme un souffle, qui apparaît devant lui. Avec elle, tout s'invente et l'impossible devient vrai.

Rene Descartes, a recently released ex-con, is living in a ramshackle trailer only a short distance from Hidden Cove, a secluded paradise for the country’s rich and famous. A savage attack against Rene by the son of the fourth richest man in the country spurns a brutal act of revenge that will ignite this paradise into a fiery vision of hell on earth. As the flames threaten to engulf rich and poor alike, only Deacon Riis, a small-town reporter haunted by his own past, suspects it wasn’t Rene who set Hidden Cove ablaze but someone with a far more sinister agenda.

No hay lugar más universal que el más pequeño de los pueblos. Lea tiene 19 años, un ardor en la tripa y una vida entera en un pueblo con cuatro calles, una iglesia, un ultramarinos y un bosque que nunca ha cruzado. Sentada a la sombra, ve aparecer un señor que ha perdido a su perro y, en lo que dura un cigarrillo con hierba, le cuenta por qué ayer se acabó el mundo.

Hurricane Fanny left no one in Blessings, Georgia unscathed - including Rowan Harper, the only surviving member of her family. Rebuilding her life now seems almost impossible. Bowie James comes back to help repair his grandmother's house, but he doesn't intend to stay long. He and his mother were forced out of Blessings a decade ago, and he's neither forgiven nor forgotten those responsible. But Rowan is kindhearted, beautiful, and lost, and Bowie discovers that he can entrust her with his deepest secrets.

Grady Dalton is in a rut. He’s 38, without a boyfriend, and has yet to find the place that feels like home. The closest he ever got was his best friend, Nathan. But it’s been seven years since he passed, and life isn’t getting easier. That’s how he ends up in Briar County, hoping to grow roots in the place Nathan had loved. Deacon Sharpe spends his days serving homemade ice cream and his nights alone, pretending he’s getting by after his wife’s death better than he is. His world is rocked when a man shows up who claims to have been his brother-in-law’s best friend.

Charlene Ann Baumbich—award-winning journalist and best-selling author of the Dearest Dorothy novels—launches a series of heartwarming stories linked by the swirling flakes of one special snowglobe. In this charming tale of second chances, renewed faith, and forgiveness, a captivating heirloom triggers inexplicable changes.

Detrás de las altas paredes perimetrales, más allá de los portones reforzados por barreras y flanqueados por garitas de vigilancia, se encuentra Altos de la Cascada. Afuera, la ruta, la barriada popular de Santa María de los Tigrecitos, la autopista, la ciudad, el resto del mundo. En Altos de la Cascada viven familias que llevan un mismo estilo de vida y que quieren mantenerlo cueste lo que cueste.

Grace Dempsey is at the height of her career when she suffers a debilitating panic attack. Returning to her aunt's Victorian home in Mistletoe Meadows was supposed to be temporary. The last thing she expected was to find purpose in the small Christmas-obsessed town where music seems to be the centerpiece of every celebration. Noah Parker gave up his own promising musical future years ago to run the family music shop and raise his siblings after their parents' deaths. Now that his brothers and sisters are grown, he's stuck in Mistletoe Meadows with a struggling business and abandoned dreams.

Agatha and Anthony Award nominee Susan Wittig Albert has garnered popular and critical acclaim for her whimsical mysteries based on the life and times of Beatrix Potter. Set in the summertime splendor of 1913 England, this eighth tale finds Beatrix eager to marry her fiancé, solicitor William Heelis. But a few obstacles are still blocking the happy couple’s path to the altar - like the troubled remodeling of Castle Cottage, Will and Beatrix’s future home.

A spa stay turns into a homicidal holiday.... A bit snobbish and a trifle high strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her scurrying to a chic spa for a rest cure, a liaison with the spa's director...and an apparent suicide. Her autopsy holds one surprise, a secret drawer a second.

As a motorcycle club member and firefighter, Ian Walsh is used to riding the line between the good guys and the bad. He may owe the club his life, but his heart rests with his fire station brothers - and with the girl he's loved since they were kids, Rory Sorenson. Ian would do anything for Rory. He'd die for her. Kill for her. Defend her to his last breath - and he may just have to.

Twice in her life, college counselor Gayla Oliver fell in love at first sight. The first time was with Brian - a lean, longhaired, British bass player. Marriage followed quickly, then twins, and gradually their bohemian lifestyle gave way to busy careers in New York. Gayla's second love affair is with New Bern, Connecticut. Like Brian, the laid-back town is charming without trying too hard. It's the ideal place to buy a second home and reignite the spark in their 26-year marriage. Not that Gayla is worried. At least, not until she finds a discarded memo in which Brian admits to a past affair....

Two years ago, Ellie Grant would have fallen apart at any reminder of her ex-husband, Tucker. But now she doesn't bat an eye when "their song" comes on the radio. She's unfazed by the thought of Tucker's perky new girlfriend. Ellie is totally over him. And things are better for Tucker as well. The single life agrees with him. And they've both done a good job of being civil to each other, for their sons' sake. But the kids aren't buying it. Zach and Kody are convinced that, deep down, their parents are still meant to be together.

When Clay-Boy’s father fails to return home on Christmas Eve, Clay-Boy takes to the snowy Virginia hills in search of him, leaving his worried family to keep watch at the homestead. Along the way, he meets an irate deer, a threatening county sheriff, a congregation of African American churchgoers, and two elderly women who happen to be bootleggers. The story of Clay-Boy’s search for his father is told with warmth and intensity.

When Zoe's best friend shows her the box of dreams they put together as kids, she would never have foreseen herself dumping Mr. Perfectly Fine and quitting her draining job. But when she looks in that box and realizes her life isn't even close to where she envisioned she'd be when she was ten, she panics and implodes everything she knows.