Rural Small Town Fiction

Thirteen-year-old Timmy Mantis hates pumpkins and anything to do with them. Growing up in Harvest Creek, the pumpkin-growing capital of Wisconsin, has been hell. Especially at Halloween, when the small town becomes obsessed with everything pumpkin at the annual fall festival. When an accident happens at the local research laboratory and one of the experiments escapes, Timmy realizes he was right to hate pumpkins. As the festival becomes ground zero for a monstrous invasion of gourds-gone-wild and the body count rises—literally—Timmy must face his greatest fears or become another victim.

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.

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.

It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man.

Mason Parker doesn't believe in love. Sure, he cares about people—his younger brother, for example. That's why he's bringing him all the way to an abandoned cabin in the mountains to straighten him out. But love? That's for fairytales and people who haven't had the hope knocked out of them. People like his brand new Little-Miss-Sunshine neighbor with the golden hair and unwavering smile.

Sophy Stevens is moving to Australia. Turning thirty has found her unexpectedly out of a job, out of a relationship, and just in need of Something Different - and Australia, where she can finally meet her grandparents and surprise them on their wedding anniversary, looks like the perfect answer...if she can save up the money for the plane ticket. So when her feckless, absent dad Johnno offers her a job at his vintage clothes shop in Primrose Hill, she can't turn it down.

Mara Davies learned early to keep her heart on ice. Abandoned by her mother, she raised herself while her father drowned his grief in alcohol. Everything changed when she met Fayth Havens, the one person who truly sees her and accepts everything that makes Mara different: her overstimulated mind, wandering thoughts, even her comfort in a pair of worn-out Family Guy pajamas, holes in the ass and all.

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.

Welcome to Too Much - where the women are strong-willed and the men are handsome yet shiftless. Ever since Mary Dell Templeton and her twin sister, Lydia Dale, were children, their Aunt Velvet has warned them away from local boys. But it’s well known that the females in Mary Dell’s family have two traits in common - superior sewing skills and a fatal weakness for men. While Lydia Dale grows up petite and pretty, Mary Dell just keeps growing. Tall, smart, and sassy, she is determined to one day turn her love of sewing into a business.

Darby Dunwell is not a Bond Girl, though she's been blessed with the body of one. An east coast, ivy-league, trust fund kid, she flees a life of expectation, elocution, and executive board rooms to follow her one true love: Coffee. The deeply eccentric seaside tourist hamlet of Townsend Harbor throws its doors wide open for her sex-positive, bikini-themed coffee shop named Brewbies.

I'm a damsel in distress without health insurance and an upcoming surgery. Zane is my billionaire knight in a three-piece suit, an affectionate smile, and a stuttering voice. When I run out of all options, he proposes a gentleman's offer, generous and beautiful, exactly like him. We get into a marriage of convenience until my life is back to normal. Simple. But nothing is simple in my grand wedding and designer wedding dress. Ours is possibly the only fake wedding where every custom is followed to the word—including consummating the marriage.

K9 Officer Otto Gunnersen always had a soft spot for anyone in need. As Monroe's very own Dr. Doolittle, he dedicates himself to rehabilitating the injured souls that cross his path - but for all his big heart, he's never been in love. Until he meets Sarah Clifton's haunted eyes. Until he realizes he'll do anything to save her. All Sarah wants is to escape a life caught between ambitious crime families, but there's no outrunning her past. Her power-mad brother would hunt her to the ends of the Earth...but he'd never expect Sarah to fight back.

When Lori Hawthorne trades her high-powered city life for the unexpected inheritance of her late aunt's neglected fruit farm in Sedona, Arizona, she soon realizes that mending a broken orchard is only half the battle. Seeking a chance to rewrite her story, she's determined to breathe new life into both the farm and her own existence.

Lottery winner and ex-journalist Donal Fitzgerald joins forces with his girlfriend, DNR conservation officer Mercy Virdon, to solve the mysterious death of a beloved angler, Charlie, who was murdered in his tent in a state campground and who was known by all - and who may have known too much. Set in the engaging small town of Ossning on the Borchard River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula - an angler’s dream, filled with eccentric, believable, sympathetic, and unforgettable characters - Riverwatcher is a classic whodunit.

I agree to teach my curvy tomboy best friend how to lose her V-card. The rules are simple: keep it strictly business. Don't fall for her. But Lily Winslow doesn't do simple. With curves that set my blood on fire and a mouth too smart for her own good, she's asking me to teach her how to drive a man wild.

Tess “Mac” McPhail is one of country music's brightest lights, a millionaire many times over, accustomed to public adoration and a life lived on her own terms. Now, eighteen years after she left her hometown, Mac's sisters insist she return to help care for their widowed mother. There Mac faces several rude awakenings—an insulting older sister, an intractable parent, and worst of all, the apparent total indifference of Kenny, the neighbor she taunted through high school and who is now a handsome divorcee.

Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Nick Houston is as tough as they come, and he and his K-9, Saxon, are hot on the trail of a major illegal-gun dealer. But his best lead - the beautiful owner of the Dog Park Cafe, Andi Hardt - is not cooperating. Doesn't matter how sexy she is or that his dog seems to be in love with her. She's a suspect, and he won't cross that line. Ever.