Rural Town Fiction

Andi Callahan prefers the quiet company of the dead. As a morgue tech in a sleepy coastal town outside Boston, she lives for silence, predictability, and zero small talk. Living people? Too loud. Too messy. Too nosy. The dead don’t interrupt her, meddle in her life, or flirt with her. Cole Hartley does.

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.

Bo Tully, sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, has dealt with small-town crime throughout his long, storied career. Now, contemplating retirement after years on the job, Tully is faced with perhaps his most perplexing case yet. When area bald eagles start getting picked off by a ghost-like killer, and when a prominent local rancher is murdered by an arrow with eagle fletching, things gets complicated fast. In this fast-paced whodunit, Tully has a vast array of suspects to choose from, including the rancher's gorgeous, bird-loving wife, who mysteriously leaves for a ranch in Mexico the day of the murder.

When Connor Larkin boards a late-night bus in downtown LA, he's not sure where he's going or what he's looking for. Putting his acting career - and his fiancée - on hold, he's searching for something he can't define, a part of himself he lost on the road to success. Once he dreamed of being a singer in the classic style of Sinatra and Bennett. But his lean good looks soon landed him in movies as the sexy bad guy - and in the arms of a famous young heiress. Now, with his wedding day approaching, Connor finds himself stepping into the sleepy seaside town of Miramar Bay.

Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his closed-minded, stricken coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's constantly reminded of just how messed up his life is. With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, Harley is an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager.

Want to know what happens to a man who barely claws his way out of a tragedy, only to fall right into the arms of the one girl in the world he can never have? Another tragedy, that's what. When I was six years old, my father made a choice that altered the course of my entire life. Because of what he did, the only girl I ever loved became the only girl I couldn’t have. In a lot of ways, I did have her; I had her first steps, her first words, her first smile. I had her milestones, her heartbreaks, her dreams.

Wade Ashby doesn't let anyone in. With the death of his father and his failed marriage, plus the weight of the family business on his shoulders, Wade has plenty to deal with. He thrives on being the one constant and steady thing in his family's life and on their ranch, Silver Pines. Ivy Spencer knows two things for certain: Animals make better friends than people, and she can only count on herself. After a turbulent childhood and a string of bad luck since, Ivy is excited to start fresh at Silver Pines Ranch and live out her dream of training a racehorse en route to the Kentucky Derby.

All John Beauchamp wants is a simple life. He's a widower who is content running his Louisiana sugarcane farm. Then Shelby Mackey breezes in, announcing that she's pregnant with his baby. Their accidental night of passion has changed . . . everything. Shelby insists John doesn't have to be involved—she'll raise the baby on her own in Seattle. But John can't let her go that easily. Even without the baby, Shelby is a breath of fresh air. So when Shelby agrees to stay in Louisiana temporarily, John's determined to make that stay permanent—and as sweet as can be.

My name is Christine, and I'm on the run from a cult that wants me dead. Annabelle Lane is the cult's cunning and venomous leader, who forced me to commit crimes that are unforgivable. Annabelle's threats aren't to be taken lightly, and everybody knows that once you're in the cult, you're in it for life.

Millie Leclair is a mess, complete with a dead-end career and a flatlining love life. So when she inherits her great aunt's oceanfront B&B in a resort town in South Carolina's Lowcountry, she doesn't hesitate to pack up her car and set off on a new adventure. It'll be fun. Of course, life seldom goes according to plan. The B&B is barely habitable for one person, let alone ready to open for business. With dwindling funds, Millie has no choice but to roll up her sleeves and tackle the repairs by herself. Yeah, so much fun.

Downsized from her stellar career at a big-city ad agency, Melinda is already at a crossroads when a phone call brings her back to her rural roots. It’s not long before she moves to the country, takes on a rundown farm and its headstrong animals, and lands behind the counter of her family’s hardware store in the community of Prosper, whose motto is "The Great Little Town That Didn’t."

Morgan Jo Coyle hasn’t been back to the small town of Brambleberry Creek or seen any of her family for years. But when she receives the heartbreaking news that her Memaw Essie is on her deathbed, Morgan knows she has to go home to face Essie—and her complicated past—before it’s too late. Stepping through the door of her family’s charming old farmhouse, Morgan is reminded of all the happy times she spent baking and talking with Essie. And it’s not long before her childhood sweetheart, Emmett Dawson, with his sparkling blue eyes and teasing smile, comes to find her.

You will fall head over heels in love with this 3-audiobook series that will give you all the feels when these cowboys come home to their small town and discover some things (or people) are worth staying for this time.

Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself.

Jane Bancroft has returned to Lovett, Tasmania after 20 years away, minus one ex-husband but plus one outraged teenage daughter. Life in the city – life in general – hasn’t quite panned out as she would have liked. With her mother unwell, now seems as good a time as any to come back to where it all began, and perhaps even start a new life here in the heart of Tasmanian apple country. But the legacy of Jane's wild apple youth has not been forgotten by small-town Lovett and her homecoming is haunted by past tragedy.

Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police's investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big-game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything new.

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.

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.

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care.

Stella Boor's biological father is a nameless, faceless sperm donor. At least, that's what her parents have led her to believe. Imagine her surprise when she learns he's none other than rock legend Billy Jameson and that Billy has died and left Stella a historic inn on a sprawling farm in the mountains of Virginia. A city girl at heart, Stella can't imagine living anywhere but New York. Her first inclination is to sell the property. But the terms of Billy's will stipulate she manages the inn for three years before putting it on the market.