Rural Town 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.

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.

Marie Bostwick weaves the unforgettable story of four very different women whose paths cross, changing their lives forever. It’s a long way from Fort Worth, Texas, to New Bern, Connecticut, yet it only takes a day in the charming Yankee town to make Evelyn Dixon realize she’s found her new home. The abrupt end of her marriage was Evelyn’s wake-up call to get busy chasing her dream of opening a quilt shop. Finding a storefront is easy enough; starting a new life isn’t....

She's my best friend's little sister. A single mom who doesn't have time to waste on an older, wounded ex-mercenary. She's off-limits. And yet, I still moved to her hometown. I blame it on the job offer and the therapy I get at one of the top rehab centers for wounded heroes. The truth, though… I came to Whiskey Run because Abby Campbell and her daughter are here.

Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.

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.

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.

Ever since his career-ending injury, Pat has bounced from job to job, idea to idea, short-lived relationship to short-lived relationship. But when his father purchases the town of Sheet Cake, Pat suddenly sees his life with clear purpose: get his brothers on board with his dad's wild idea and win back the one woman who got away. Lindy was supposed to be traveling the world, not stuck in a small town, caring for her niece. But she would do anything to keep custody of Jo, even if that looks like a marriage of convenience with the man who already broke her heart once.

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

My dad and I have been estranged for years, but as his only living relative, it's no surprise I inherit his massive cattle ranch when he dies. But the stipulation in his will that requires me to live on the ranch and actively manage it for a year before I can access my inheritance money. I haven't stepped foot in Hartsville, Texas, population one thousand, since my parents split when I was six. Now a city girl through and through, I never imagined having to move back to cowboy country. But I need the money to invest in my company, and a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Farah Highland was raised with more money than most people could ever dream of, but with that wealth and privilege came cold indifference and cruelty. Determined to start living for herself, Farah cut ties with everything and everyone she’d ever known for the chance at starting over in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Cannon Banks, notorious town playboy, grew up living the good life. Love and commitment were the last things on his mind...until he locked eyes with a woman across a crowded bar, and everything changed in a heartbeat.

The last person I wanted to fix up my historic dream home with was the handsome older man with money to burn who bought it right out from under me. Thanks to my father, that's exactly what happened. Colton Crawford was making my house a home, and I was back in my childhood room, trying not to think of the towering, gorgeous Adonis with a killer smile… and how much I hated him. Or at least that's what I tried to tell myself. Because the more time we were forced to spend together in the dust and debris, the less our age gap mattered. And the more the sparks flew.

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....

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.

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.

The Lost Country centers on Edgewater, who's recently been discharged from the navy, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish who takes him under his wing as they both search desperately for a forgotten past and a future that may never come. The Lost Country cements Gay as one of the strongest voices in Southern literature, alongside Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner.

Lisa Wingate has been favorably compared to authors Nicholas Sparks and Richard Paul Evans. In A Month of Summer, Hanna Beth has been caring for her aging husband - who suffers from Alzheimer's - and her developmentally challenged adult son for years on her own. But when she suffers a stroke, estranged stepdaughter Rebecca must take the reins. As she cares for her father and the step-brother she's barely met, Rebecca slowly begins to heal both herself and her family.

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.

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.

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.