Rural School

Rural education leadership matters more than ever. The Empowered Rural Education Leader is a practical guide for superintendents, principals, and aspiring school leaders who want to strengthen rural schools and the communities they serve.

In April 1937, the body of a vagrant is found in the middle of a little-used country lane in Somerset. He was evidently run over by a motor vehicle. Who is the man? Who killed him? The autopsy suggests that all is not what it first seemed, and Detective Inspector Leo Paget is assigned to investigate. He finds that the matter is linked to a major fraud in Suffolk, and also to a case of false imprisonment in Bristol. In the second mystery, a boy is found battered to death in the bicycle shed of his prestigious boarding school. Who is responsible? And why was the boy killed? DI Paget ...

Retirement is bliss—or is it? Newly retired music teacher, Susan Wiles, puts her natural nosiness to work and discovers a talent for solving murders. In Murder is Elementary, Susan finds her former principal dead on the office floor, a half-eaten funfetti cupcake on the desk, and a list of suspects rivaling pre-pandemic lines at Disney! In book two, a dead body is discovered in a construction site behind a school. Susan puts her sleuthing skills into action to save her husband’s best friend, Tank, who is accused of the crime. While Susan works to solve this mystery and exonerate Tank, ...

The sirens were meant for spring. But the sky had a different plan. Harry Booker knows Kansas weather. After eleven years maintaining Mercy Consolidated High School, he’s seen his share of ice and wind. But when a late-March sleet suddenly escalates and the power grid fails, Harry quickly realizes this is no ordinary front. Trapped inside the school with a handful of stragglers—including a pregnant teacher, a pragmatic nurse, and an elderly man on dwindling oxygen—Harry watches the unthinkable unfold. A violent, massive twister touches down, tearing through the freezing, snow-blind ...

They say the truth will set you free… but what if the truth ruins your life? Ellie Ryan is seventeen and determined to move to Nashville to pursue her dreams of making it as a songwriter, but an unexpected pregnancy shatters her plans and sets her on a course she never imagined. Shawn Klein has it all. The beautiful girlfriend. The scholarship to play football at Vanderbilt after he graduates high school. At eighteen, he leads worship at his father’s prosperous megachurch. His life is perfect. So why isn’t he happy? Everything changes when Shawn’s parents bring Ellie into their home...

Ted Hammond loves a good mystery, and in the spring of his fifth-grade year, he's working on a big one. How can his school in the little town of Plattsford stay open next year if there are going to be only five students? Out here on the Great Plains, in western Nebraska, everyone understands...

A dead body, stolen jewelry, a barn full of secrets... not the vacation retired teacher Susan Wiles and her husband Mike expected when they decided to visit their old friends Emily and Henry Fox. Are the ominous events related to the true crime book Emily is writing? To the ten year anniversary of the unsolved disappearance of a local college student? Or to a builder's dream of creating a community of miniature homes at any cost? In a team effort, Susan, Mike, and their friends band together to restore harmony to the idyllic community of Sugarbury Falls, Vermont.

He’s in it to win it. But when he brings in a troubled teen as a ringer, is the price of success too high? Vietnam vet Donny Doyle has a job no one wants: coaching Tsalagee High’s basement-dwelling football team. And despite the school’s decade-long record of failure, he promises to deliver the backwater Oklahoma town a state championship. But the only way to do it is to recruit a terrifying, mammoth kid straight out of juvenile detention. Battling his own PTSD, Coach Doyle struggles to tame his ticking time bomb of a player into a disciplined gridiron beast. And after a fast five-win...

Under the Greenwood Tree is an affectionate and youthful portrait of a world Hardy knew well - village life in 'Wessex' - in which a romantic tale is set against changing circumstances. The traditional feature of local music making performed by the village band and choir is challenged by the modern innovation of organ and organist providing music in the church.

Spirit of the Flint Hills offers 60 stand-alone chapters of true experiences during the late Depression and World War II on a small Midwestern farm. The reader will step back to share anecdotes, illustrations, and photographs that deliver the simple beauty and vivid descriptions of daily farm life. From "Anvils in the Clouds," to "Peanut Brittle Parties," and "Willow Whistles," hard work, faith and community are all emphasized. Take this journey with the author and find a certain peace and reflection in the bare existence of a time that has disappeared forever..

A Lesson in Dying is the first mystery novel in the Inspector Ramsay series by Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera Stanhope crime series. Who hung the headmaster in the playground on the night of the school Halloween Party? Almost everyone in Heppleburn either hated or feared the...

A Prequel to "The Impelled Series": Sixteen year old Emma Walker’s world revolves around one thing: horses. When Emma isn’t navigating her junior year of high school with her two best friends at her side, she is riding or working her horses board off at the barn. There is one thing that taints a perfect day at the barn though – the barn owners son, Luke, and his posse of infuriating friends. To make matters worse, Luke attends her high school and is friends with Emma’s former friend, and now sworn rival, Jaclyn Alcott. As if juggling horses and high school isn’t hard enough, ...

Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.

A feel-good story of unexpected second chances and hope. Birch Springs was supposed to be my past. But when my dad needs me, I walk away from my city life and come back to take care of him. What I don't see coming is Blake Donovan, my first love, living right across the street. Now he's a widower with a son. Before I know it, I’m sharing sweet moments with Blake and his son. Reconnecting stirs up feelings I thought I'd buried for good. Suddenly those old feelings are back, stronger than ever. Spending time with Blake feels like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, but I wonder if ...

#1 New York Times Bestseller Jamie McGuire returns to self-publishing with this page-turning YA account of Erin Easter, one of three Erins in the small senior class of rural Blackwell High School who not only share a first name, but also their birthday. Easter, raised by a neglectful single mom, keeps to herself and admires Weston Gates from afar. The other Erins, Erin "Alder" Alderman and Erin "Sonny" Masterson are the darlings of the community: daughters of the two wealthiest families in town, best friends, cheerleaders, and everything Easter isn't--and they never let her forget it. Alder...

OLD RIVALRIES NEVER DIE. BUT SOME RIVALS DO. Juliet Townsend is used to losing. Back in high school, she lost every track team race to her best friend, Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, she’s still running behind, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning rooms at the Mid-Night Inn, a one-star motel...

The Murders at Fleat House is the suspenseful and utterly compelling crime novel from the author of the multimillion-selling The Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley. Read by Gemma Whelan (The Woman Who Lied) 'A cleverly woven mystery to savour' – Sunday Express The sudden death of a pupil in...

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices -- those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved...

A coach and a substitute teacher meet where men go to relax and work out, but both of these men had no idea what would transpire between them...

From the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Young Writer Award and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction Shortlisted for The Hindu Prize for Literature 2015 ‘Explores with sharp beauty the mystery at the centre of loving anyone’ Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure How does the world see...