Rural Town Fiction

While New Bern, Connecticut, lies under a blanket of snow, Cobbled Court Quilts remains a cozy haven for its owner, Evelyn Dixon, and her friends. Evelyn relishes winter’s slower pace—besides, Internet sales are hopping, thanks to her son Garrett’s efforts. In addition to helping out at the shop, Garrett has also been patiently waiting for his girlfriend, Liza, to finish art school in New York City.

Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle - and turns Otter Lake completely upside down. Maggie, the Reserve’s chief, is swept off her feet, but Virgil, her teenage son, is less than enchanted. Suspicious of the stranger’s intentions, he teams up with his uncle, Wayne - a master of aboriginal martial arts - to drive the stranger from the Reserve. And it turns out that the raccoons are willing to lend a hand.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and to seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. Thomas Hardy’s timeless masterpiece is brought to life in this new recording by Anne-Marie Duff (Shameless, His Dark Materials).

As a recently divorced single mom, I have zero interest in flirting with guys while on a rare girls' weekend away with my sisters. I just want to have fun, celebrate my new job, and listen to live music at a honky tonk. But when I literally stumble into the most gorgeous guy ever on the dance floor, those plans go up in smoke. Growing up on the barrel racing circuit, I've seen my fair share of sexy cowboys. But this particular one is hot as hell: Sawyer's got a mustache, tattoos, and a very filthy mouth.

Someone is shooting horses, and Sadie is determined to find out who it is. That is until she begins to suspect that Mark, her boyfriend, may be involved. Will Sadie discover the truth? Will it be too hard to bear?

Celebrating its 75th anniversary, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men remains one of America's most widely read and beloved novels. Here is Steinbeck’s dramatic adaptation of his novel-as-play, which received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play in 1937-1938 and has featured a number of actors who have played the iconic roles of George and Lennie on stage and film, including James Earl Jones, John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

Missing Links is the story of four middle-class buddies who live outside Boston and play golf together at Ponkaquogue Municipal Golf Links and Deli, not so fondly known as Ponky. An 18-hole garbage dump with hazards that include a concrete river surrounded by a chain-link fence and the pillars of the elevated train that runs through the course, it is reputed to be the worst golf course in America.

Mary Stoltzfus is 30 years old, splashed with freckles, and unmarried. In her Amish world, that qualifies her to be called an old maid. She is living her quiet schoolteacher life in the Lancaster County Amish community when she gets a surprising invitation in the mail one day. Would she come to Montana to teach?

It is 1916, and Roberta Jewett is surprised to find that her hometown of Camden, Maine, considers a divorced woman little more than a prostitute. Condemned by her mother and scorned by neighbors, she nonetheless perseveres in her struggle to forge a good life for her girls and herself. Embittered by her painful marriage to an unfaithful husband, she has no intention of being any man's victim again. So Roberta is taken aback to find the widowed carpenter Gabriel Farley has somehow found his way into her heart.

Sadie may be married now, but she's as spirited as ever, and her life is no less tame. In fact, soon after she and Mark are settled into the farmhouse Mark is renovating, she's visited by three FBI agents who question her about the two children who mysteriously appeared one day at the ranch. Before the agents leave, they warn Sadie that her beloved horse, Paris, is highly valuable, and that she and Mark may be in grave danger because of Paris.

The Amish community of Lancaster is being terrorized by barn fires. David and Malinda Beiler's barn was the first to go. The clues are sparse, but Levi, the Beilers' oldest son, happened to be awake in the middle of the night and spotted a white vehicle driving past the house with its lights off. Sarah, David and Malinda's daughter, observes her parents' agony. Not only is she afraid and wishing she could protect her parents, she's entranced by the flirtatious Matthew Stoltzfus.

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.

N'attendez plus : le phénomène TikTok planétaire arrive enfin en France ! Lorsque la tante de Jeanie lui confie le Pumpkin Spice Café, lieu de rencontre bien-aimé de la petite ville de Dream Harbor, la jeune femme saute sur l'occasion pour prendre un nouveau départ, loin de son travail de bureau déprimant. Logan, un agriculteur local, a beau se tenir à l'écart de la communauté et de ses ragots, l'arrivée de Jeanie vient le perturber dans sa routine. Lui qui ne veut rien savoir de cette fille à l'optimisme agaçant est pourtant inexplicablement attiré par elle.

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing. Dora becomes Miss B.’s apprentice, and together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives.

When a ruthless company buys Holly Winter’s small hometown, she’s determined to stop them. But then she comes face to face with the CEO. Josh Gerber is handsome, smooth, and disgustingly successful. He’s also the man Holly spent a night with eight years ago. And now he’s back to steal the home she’s always loved. If anybody can stand up to him, Holly can. She’s clever, single-minded, and most of all, she understands his weaknesses. She has the same ones, after all.

Barns are burning in Amish author Linda Byler's second book in the Lancaster Burning series, and no one knows who's doing it or why. Can Sarah Beiler end the terror that is pulling apart her community, even as her own heart is pulled between two young men? Sarah Beiler's barn was the first to burn, and it was quickly followed by two other barn fires.

A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair. But they’ve always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it’s a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact. As the tension mounts between the two adversaries, a newcomer arrives who gives Beartown hockey a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback.

Simon can't stop thinking about the pretty Amish teacher at the local one-room school. But he's ignored the sparks between them because he's so shy. So Simon's little brother, Isaac, takes matters into his own hands. He's determined to give his brother the best Christmas present ever - a date with his favorite teacher. Amish novelist Byler brings her tender humor and skillful observation of family relationships to this holiday story.

One moment Ben Miller was high up in the rafters at his neighbor's barn raising. The next his foot slipped, and he plunged to his death, leaving behind a young wife and six children - the youngest born four months after his death. Ruth Miller is not alone. Her Amish neighbors help her to make the difficult transition from wife to widow. But while the community has been generous, raising six growing children, all grieving their father's death, is overwhelming.

Lucy is sixty years old and has spent his entire life in Thomaston, New York. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be—chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.