Rural Poverty

Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.

A gothic novel set in the fictional village of Savilestowe, England, spanning the late 19th and early 20th century. "Shattered Shadows" presents a poignant story set against the gloomy backdrop of a declining village, spotlighting the struggle and courage of the Mendellson family, particularly the protagonist Ashley Mendellson, as she grapples with the challenge of salvaging their derelict farmstead, Applecroft, from the clutches of financial ruin and personal despair.The tale delves into the lives of Ashley and her sister Carly, their daunting task of maintaining the household and the farm...

This classic southern noir follows the seemingly dim-witted small-town sherriff Nick Corey as his bid for re-election takes him down a path of lies, manipulation, and deception. Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows...

In the parish of St. Bruno, sex is easy, corruption festers, and double-dealing is a way of life—and Rene Shade is an uncompromising detective swimming in a sea of filth in this hard-hitting, critically acclaimed trilogy of crime novels. As Shade takes on hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons...

The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect "...exhilarating and hard to resist." —The Washington Post on Westering Women 1937. It’s been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were...

The 1965 film Poverty in Rural America by the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers a documentary portrait of impoverished rural communities across the United States during the early years of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s "War on Poverty." The film highlights the economic and social hardships faced by families in isolated regions, including Appalachia, the rural South, Native American reservations, and agricultural areas in the Southwest.

*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction* Prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity is an expose on how fracking shattered a rural Pennsylvania town, and how one lifelong resident brought the story into the national spotlight. This is an incredible...

For Bread (Za chlebem) is a powerful and heartbreaking short novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz, brought to life in a new modern English translation. Set against the backdrop of the 19th-century immigrant experience, this gripping story follows a poor Polish family as they journey to America in search of a better life. What they find is not the promised land, but a world of brutal labor, hunger, and abandonment. From the forests of Arkansas to the crowded streets of New York City, For Bread explores themes of poverty, displacement, resilience, and the human cost of ...

A sharp and funny addition to Daniel Woodrell's collection of "country noir" novels, featuring anti-hero Sammy Barlach and Jamalee Merridew, her hair tomato red with rage and ambition. In the Ozarks, what you are is where you are born. If you're born in Venus Holler, you're not much. For Jamalee...

In one of the poorest parts of rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads, never to be seen alive again. For 17-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with in her own home, every day. Marjorie has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their ignorance of and disdain for the wider world.

This final chapter in Daniel Woolrell's Ozark trilogy peels the lid back on a dysfunctional Missouri family as infidelity threatens to consume their world in violence and terror. Shug Akins is a lonely, overweight thirteen-year-old boy. His mother, Glenda, is the one person who loves him—she...

Worn out by poverty, Lettie Radley and her miner husband Tommy grasp at the offer of their very own smallholding - part of a Government scheme to put the unemployed back to work on the land. When she comes down to Essex to join him, it's not Tommy who greets her, but their new neighbours. Overbearing and unkempt, Jean and Adam Dell are everything that Lettie can't abide. But as Lettie settles in, she finds an unexpected joy in the rhythms of life. She's hopeful that her past, and the terrible secret Tommy has come to Foxash to escape, are far behind them. But the Dells have their own secrets.

When a young mother's crisis sparked a movement that has the ptential to serves 2,600+ people annually at just $8.50 per person—proving rural communities can solve complex problems with remarkable efficiency and authentic compassion. In the hills of rural West Virginia, Clarissa Tallman faced every parent's nightmare: her infant son needed specialized formula that wasn't available locally, and the stress of trying to meet this basic need threatened to overwhelm her family. What happened next challenges everything we think we know about effective social services and rural capacity. Instead...

In this dark, southern noir, a writer drifting through life escapes his failed marriage and back to his family home in the Ozarks where he finds himself in the middle of a blood feud between his own family and the brutal Dolly clan. “My imagination is always skulking about in a wrong place.”...

From an American master and author of Winter's Bone, this dark tragedy tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations. Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is...

Bestselling author Katie McGarry’s trademark wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance is given a new twist in the gritty YA contemporary audiobook, Only a Breath Apart. They say your destiny is carved in stone. But some destinies are meant to be broken. The only curse Jesse Lachlin believes in is his...

In the recent years, people have studied the unusual increase in the number of prime-aged men who are unemployed. According to Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, the drop of the share of prime-aged men in the labor market in other prosperous democracies has never been as severe as it is in the United States.

A heart-wrenching first novel about the power of place and family ties, the weight of the stories we choose to tell, and the burden of those we hide Frozen in grief after the loss of her son at sea, Edith Baines stares across the water at a schooner, under full sail yet motionless in the winter...

Echoes Between Us is bestselling author Katie McGarry’s breakout teen contemporary novel about a girl with everything to lose and the boy who will do anything to save her. Veronica sees ghosts—more specifically, her mother’s ghost, thanks to the blinding migraines that consume her whole...

Sarah Stovell’s gripping new novel, Every Happy Family is available now! Hilarious, unputdownable, suspenseful fiction, perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Motherland They all have opinions. They all have secrets. ‘Both funny and engaging while tackling some serious stuff’ Jane Fallon...