Rural Fiction

Margaret Dane Clayton has spent her entire life at the Dane Crown Inn, the beautiful resort in the quiet beachside town of Emerald Bay. But the inn once hailed as the "gem of Florida's Treasure Coast" is showing its age, much like its fiercely independent owner. Margaret swears she'll keep the doors of the inn open forever—until an accident forces her to accept that she can no longer cater to guests on her own. After reaching the most difficult decision of her life, Margaret asks her daughter and nieces to grant her one final wish before she places the property on the market.

Sal seems to appear out of nowhere - a bruised and tattered 13-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home, where he's welcomed into the Bliss family, who assume he's a runaway from a nearby farm town. When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him, and tensions rise along with the temperatures as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him.

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.

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for 15 days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy's wife.

From New York Times best-selling author Marie Bostwick comes a beautiful novel of sisterhood lost and found - and of the ways we create the rich tapestries that encompass the past and the future. The economic downturn has hit New Bern, Connecticut, and Tessa Woodruff’s herbal apothecary shop, For the Love of Lavender, is suffering. So is her once-happy 34-year marriage to Lee. They’d given up everything to come back to New Bern from Boston and start their business, but now they’re wondering if they made the right decision.

After breaking free from the gilded cage of my abusive marriage, I have nothing to my name but a letter from a long-lost relative. Come home, Willow. Your family is waiting for you. I sacrificed everything to flee for the tiny town of Briar Valley and its promise of a better life for my young daughter. Hope often takes the unlikeliest of forms, but I didn't expect to find it nestled among the rugged, snow-capped mountains. Nor did I intend to surrender my heart to three tortured mountain men hiding from their own grief in the thick forest of pine trees.

After the death of her mother, Rebecca is sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope postmarked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home. Rebecca arrives at Chynalls to find the house crumbling into the ground and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.

Cecelia Leary is ready for a fresh start. And starts don't get any fresher than where she is right now—back in her childhood small town, jobless and newly single. She needs to take some time and figure out what to do with her life. She cannot afford to be distracted by the sexy brewer who just offered her a job. But...she is... Liam Quinn works alone. Always. But if he wants to take his brewery to the next level, he needs Cecelia's marketing expertise. Entertaining any stupid romantic notions about the curvy, wild-haired beauty would be a huge mistake.

Eva - known to all as Lovey - grew up safe and secure in Oxford, Mississippi, surrounded by a rich literary history and her mother's stunning flower gardens. But a shed fire, and the injuries that it caused, seemed to change everything...especially when her older sister, Bitsy, blamed Lovey for the irreparable damage. Bitsy became the cheerleader. The homecoming queen. All the while, Lovey served as the family scapegoat, always bearing the brunt when Bitsy threw blame her way. At 18, Lovey fled to Arizona. In time, she became a successful advertising executive....

Sunny never expected to find herself owning a centuries old silk mill in the shadow of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains or becoming a half-sister to a 10-year-old named Bailey. Once the shock subsides, she plans to cash in and head back home. But the overgrown greenhouse she finds on the property calls out to the gardener in her, and she senses Bailey's need for nurturing too.

Southern historical fiction novel of drama and intrigue set on the Blue Ridge of the Appalachian Mountains in Western North Carolina. Excerpt from Chapter Nine: She hid in the woods all night long. Didn’t even come out to milk the goat or feed her mother’s chickens. The goat was starting to bleat to be milked by the next morning, but she was too afraid to take a chance on being out in the open long enough to milk her. By the time the sun started going down, she gathered enough determination to slip close enough to the cabin to see through the open door. There was enough light left in ...

The last thing Beck Foster wants to do is attend a party for her estranged aunt in the Florida Keys. One month earlier, Beck’s seemingly ideal existence imploded when her husband of 34 years announced he was leaving her. Now, so she has to sell her house, get a job, and somehow put her broken heart and life back together. She can’t do all that if she runs off to visit a woman she barely remembers. Or can she? Accompanied by her grown daughter who also longs for an escape, Beck heads to Coconut Key, where she’d lived the earliest years of her life.

Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't. It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. He is as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a Jew While gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon ...

After his father’s retirement, Elia Montalto took over organized crime in King’s Trace, Maine. His pragmatic nature makes him popular and allows him to strike alliances with government officials, which keeps prying eyes off his business. But even a town as small as theirs is not without risk or envy, and Elia has only ever really wanted one thing: Senator Harrison’s daughter.

Doctor Rowan Dupont knows death. She grew up surrounded by it in her family’s Victorian funeral home, and it’s haunted her since the day her twin sister drowned years ago. Between her mother’s subsequent suicide and the recent murder of her father, coming home to run the funeral home feels fitting - even if it leaves her vulnerable to an obsessive serial killer.

He's the hottest man I've ever seen, someone I can't forget. So it hurts when I find out I've slept with the enemy. As a list maker and a rule follower, the last thing I planned on one of the worst days of my life was to fall into bed with a guy who literally charmed the clothes right off of me. With him, I felt safe to lay my sadness down for the night and embrace a stranger. Little did I know, that hot, gorgeous man would be Jamison Ledger, the one who has taken everything I've ever wanted—my legacy, my happiness, and what I've worked my whole life to attain.

The Copperfields were once the most beloved family on Nantucket Island. Twenty-five years ago, their lives changed forever. And they never saw one another again. Not until now. In the spring of 1997, Julia watched as a judge sentenced her father, the renowned novelist, Bernard Copperfield, to twenty-five years in prison for conning, swindling, and stealing millions of dollars from his dearest Nantucket friends and fellow artists. With her family in ruins around her, seventeen-year-old Julia packed up her bags and ran away, pledging never to return to Nantucket ever again.

Zander Wicked lives life fast, on his bike, on the job, and with women. But one split second shatters his world and forces him to face truths he’s spent a lifetime outrunning. His family doubts he can change, but Zander knows better, and when the woman who helped save him needs more than a little help herself, he sets out to prove everyone wrong.

Niko West is the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on: six feet, four inches of broody, chiseled Greek god in a firefighter suit. He’s also been my best friend since kindergarten. He always says the only solid thing in his life is our friendship. He’s Honey Mountain's favorite player and I’m what you’d call "a relationship girl". But when I find myself single for the first time since turning sixteen, I make Niko an offer he can’t refuse. Who better to show me what I’ve been missing?

As the eldest of the Rivers sisters, she's too focused on keeping her family's campground running in the wake of a devastating tragedy to even think about romance. When Kim Jefferies shows up at the local small town bar looking like a lesbian snack on a stick, Emily writes her off as yet another tourist just passing through-no matter how much the butterflies in her stomach try to tell her otherwise.