Rural Small Town Fiction

I'm keeping some pretty big secrets from my best friend. Secrets, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold onto. Secrets that'll likely destroy our friendship. Because he thinks we're going to college together—but I just can't do it. I can't spend any more time with this lie. Big Bend may have been my beginning, but it never felt quite right. Something was always off—truly, I think it was my false start. Now it's time to live my life with nothing but the truth.

A million likes vs. one true love. Bryce Bauman is one half of a famous influencer couple...until his boyfriend dumps him and puts the whole ugly scene online. Several months later, Bryce is at the end of his rope—he’s lost all his endorsements, along with his so-called friends. Licking his wounds, he escapes to the tiny town of Serenity, Pennsylvania, where he’s surrounded by too much nature and quiet. And...the hot as hell owner of the bed-and-breakfast who makes him think there might be life beyond what’s on a screen.

For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Only spoken of in whispers as "the sandman," he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation's main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons' dreams and ambitions and also preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a mid-twenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine's siren song.

I've been a recluse since the accident, but there was a wedding I refused to miss. I just never expected to come home with the bride. Now, I have a runaway bride in my Montana cabin who needs time to lick her wounds. Summer Kerrigan is as bright as her name, even on her worst days. Too bad she's been off-limits since she dated my brother in high school. It doesn't matter that fifteen years have passed since we lost him. She was his. She'll never be mine.

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.

The unexpected luxury of a day spent at the home of a Hollywood star leads three old friends to share secret facets of their lives, both tragic and triumphant. Excited to return to the home of her youth after a lifetime spent away, a woman learns that the life of a childhood friend has been a bleak, awful shadow of her own. These are only a few of the stirring, unforgettable, often heartbreaking stories in a lyrical collection exploring life and love, terror and joy, fury and deep sorrow.

For more than fifty years, Wendell Berry has been telling us stories about Port William, a mythical town on the banks of the Kentucky River, populated over the years by a cast of unforgettable characters living in a single place over a long time. In A Place in Time, the stories dates range from 1864, when Rebecca Dawe finds herself in her own reflection at the end of the Civil War, to one from 1991 when Grover Gibbs's widow, Beulah, attends the auction as her home place is offered for sale.

For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods, where she sketches nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Then her depressed, unpredictable mother forbids her to climb the trees that give her sanctuary and comfort. Angry, ten-year-old Aggie accidentally lights a tragic fire and flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, then hides among trees and creatures she believes are her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.

After a painful divorce and years of trying to outrun heartbreak, she returns to her parents' ranch in Texas seeking one thing—a fresh start. No drama. No distractions. And definitely no second chances. But then Grady Wilde shows up. Once her high school sweetheart, Grady is now a country music superstar looking to settle down. When an unexpected reunion brings them face-to-face for the first time in over a decade, they are both faced with emotions they thought were long gone. Cleo never expected to see him again, let alone feel the familiar pull of the boy who once held her heart.

Working as the head trainer at Lodestar Ranch is my chance to prove I have what it takes to be a woman in a man's world. The only problem? My boss is the world's grumpiest cowboy… and I can't keep my eyes off him.

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House.

Soon after banker Willard Carmichael and his young bride arrive in Pickax, a string of petty burglaries follow. Then Willard meets his demise—an apparent victim of a mugging—and the banker's home restoration project goes to the widow's cousin. Though the clues are as elusive as a cat burglar, the suspicious Qwill and his feline companions, Koko and Yum Yum, are determined to catch a thief—and a killer.

It’s all fun and games until the fake relationship puts their lives on the line. Gage Howard’s last name is a legacy, and not a good one. The Howards and the Pattons have been rivals for half a century, but his sister's actions have branded her a traitor. Now, his own loyalty is divided. Hadley Morgan has no clue how bloody the family feud between the Howards and the Pattons is when she volunteers to help her new roommate get information to Gage. A fake relationship with her roommate’s brother is a simple solution to stay below the radar.

The Hathaway sisters might have grown up apart, but when they agree to move to Jasper Creek, Oregon, to revitalize their grandfather’s farm, it seems a straightforward decision. Until they meet their neighborhood cowboys… Sweet-natured Teddy has never met a man worth taking a risk on, until now. Tomboy Joey has more affinity with farm equipment than men, until a brooding cowboy changes her mind. Prickly baker Georgie can’t resist the temptation of the most forbidden cowboy of all, and sparks fly between ceramicist Elliot and the grumpy single-dad rancher next door.

Samantha has a secret. Returning home from her dream honeymoon to the normality of running her beloved Hedgehog Hollow rescue centre, she's ready for the next chapter of her life with Josh. Or is she? Lauren has given up on love. Twenty-six years ago the love of her life, Shaun, left her a note and was never seen again. Samantha and Lauren will need the love and support from the Hedgehog Hollow family more than ever. After all, some dreams are worth chasing.

In this second installment of the Saddlebrook Falls series, Rhett Bennett is forced to white-knuckle new feelings he's definitely never had before for a girl he shouldn't care about while simultaneously trying to prove to his brothers he has his shit together.

Samantha Parker is picking up the pieces of her life—and a pen to sign divorce papers—after she finds out her husband has been cheating on her and the other woman is expecting his child. While the idea of leaving town and starting over is appealing, Sam's only option is to head back to her childhood home of Cocoa Beach, Florida, to help her recently widowed mother run their family inn. Can she go home and start her whole life over at forty-three?

I is Another follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours' drive south of Dylgja, where he lives.

Sully Raines sets out to find his birth mother, and ends up in Blessings, Georgia. A new surprise awaits him here, but of the best kind - his childhood sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen since she moved away when they were teens, is living in Blessings now. He's not sure she's as happy to see him as he is to see her, but it's been a lot of years, and a lot of water under the bridge... Sully's heartfelt search for answers about his past might just turn out to be the key to his future.