Rural Small Town Fiction

Eighteen years ago, Tess McPhail left her tiny hometown of Wintergreen, Missouri, for the bright lights of Nashville and never looked back. Now, one of country music's biggest stars, "Mac" is a hardworking woman with little time for a personal life - until her sister insists she come home to help care for their widowed mother. The welcome Mac receives is less than warm, especially from her former next-door neighbor Kenny Kronek. With a teenage daughter to raise, the handsome divorce refuses to give Mac the time of day.

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.

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Andrew Larimer has left his past behind. Rising up the ranks in a New York law firm, and with a heavily pregnant wife, he is settling into a new life far from Kingsport, the town in which he grew up. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he has no choice but to return home.

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.

In small-town Tennessee, 18-year-old Charlie Ross wagers a kiss from Anna Cochran, the prettiest girl in town, and wins. But before their burgeoning romance can take flight, Charlie is drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. Anna promises she'll wait for him, no matter how long it takes. But when Charlie is taken prisoner, and later presumed dead, Anna is left to pick up the pieces to her shattered world. Eight years later, Charlie comes home. But his triumphant return is short-lived when he discovers the love of his life has moved on.

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.

Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is idling in the unexpected sunshine when Christy makes his first entrance into Faha, bringing secrets he needs to atone for. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. As the people of Faha anticipate the endlessly procrastinated advent of the electricity, and Noel navigates his own coming-of-age and his fallings in and out of love, Christy's past gradually comes to light, casting a new glow on a small world.

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.

An engaging tale full of warmth and wisdom, The Quilter’s Apprentice is the first novel in best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilts series. Sarah McClure takes a job helping elderly Sylvia Compson prepare her family estate for sale. Sylvia, a master quilter, agrees to share the tricks of the trade with Sarah. As the two women grow close, Sylvia shares her family’s tragic past, compelling Sarah to look at her own life more closely.

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.

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.

Cormac McCarthy, best-selling author of National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, delivers his first new novel in seven years. Written in muscular prose, No Country for Old Men is a powerful tale of the West that moves at a blistering pace.

When a ruthless company buys Holly Winter’s small hometown, she’s determined to stop them. But then she comes face to face with the CEO. Josh Gerber is handsome, smooth, and disgustingly successful. He’s also the man Holly spent a night with eight years ago. And now he’s back to steal the home she’s always loved. If anybody can stand up to him, Holly can. She’s clever, single-minded, and most of all, she understands his weaknesses. She has the same ones, after all.

In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected. The Quinns - all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers - live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules. Rozelle's children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are 12 years old so that they can help support her by going to work.

Against the backdrop of windswept, coastal Ireland, two people are brought together under unlikely circumstances, one scarred by tragedy, the other by betrayal.

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.

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.

New York Times best-selling author Jodi Thomas captures listeners’ hearts with her sweet tales set in Harmony, Texas. In Just Down the Road, a rowdy night at the bar lands Tinch Turner in the ER under the care of Dr. Addison Spencer, igniting a passion Tinch hasn’t felt since the loss of his wife. Meanwhile, Reagan Truman, grieving her beloved uncle, finds solace in her new Harmony family—and a new baby.

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.