Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Small Town & Rural

High up on a mountain, young Clay-Boy Spencer joins his father and eight uncles to hunt the mythical white deer. What he finds on the mountainside changes his life - and marks him for a special destiny. Years later, Clay-Boy is the first in his family to get the chance to go to college; but success as an adult is much more complicated and bittersweet than the legendary success of Clay-Boy’s childhood quest.

Chicago surgeon Emily Hartford has never quite shaken off the dust of her hometown in Michigan. She may be a professional success and have a princely boyfriend in the Windy City, but she can’t seem to let go of being “the coroner’s daughter” from Freeport. Once again, she finds herself pulled back to her hometown when Jeremiah—the eleven-year-old son of her best friend, Jo—goes missing on the frigid shores of Lake Michigan.

In the ruggedness of the beautiful Kentucky mountains, Honey Lovett has always known that the old ways can make a hard life harder. As the daughter of the famed blue-skinned Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian, Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life. But when her mother and father are imprisoned, Honey realizes she must fight to stay free, or risk being sent away for good.

Visiting her family's South Carolina estate, socialite Gray Godfrey wakes from a night out to an empty bed. Her husband, Paul, is gone, and a thrashing hangover has wiped her memory clean. At first, she's relieved for the break from her tumultuous marriage; perhaps Paul just needed some space. But when his car is found abandoned on the highway, Gray must face the truth: Paul is gone. And Gray may not want him found. Her life is unraveling. When a stranger named Annie calls claiming to know Paul's whereabouts, Gray reluctantly accepts her help.

Andrew Montgomery is the black sheep of the Montgomery family. Seventeen years ago, Andy and his best friend, Kurt, took off for the army and planned to never look back. Once overseas, they realized the depths of their mistake. But once Kurt died in combat, Andy decided to turn his back on his past for good. Years later, Andrew is bound to the US again with an injury. A phone call a few weeks before Christmas changes everything and beckons him home. His father has been involved in a horrible car accident. When Andrew returns to the island, he finds himself in the center of so many ghosts.

Hadley Donavan can’t believe she has to go home to Nebraska for her sister’s wedding. She’s gonna need a wingman and a whole lot of vodka for this level of family interaction. At least her bestie agreed he’d man up and help. But then instead of her best friend, his evil twin strolls out of the airport.

When Clay-Boy’s father fails to return home on Christmas Eve, Clay-Boy takes to the snowy Virginia hills in search of him, leaving his worried family to keep watch at the homestead. Along the way, he meets an irate deer, a threatening county sheriff, a congregation of African American churchgoers, and two elderly women who happen to be bootleggers. The story of Clay-Boy’s search for his father is told with warmth and intensity.

There's something fishy just below the surface of Scumble River.... School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd is getting ready to return to work from her maternity leave and hoping for a peaceful year in her job as a school psychologist. But when an elderly woman disappears on her first day back and a disgruntled parent threatens to sue the school, Skye realizes that her return will be anything but quiet. When the parent suing Skye's school is found dead and with the missing woman's case still unsolved, Skye suspects the crimes are somehow linked.

Audrey gives birth at the end of February. Although she’s young, healthy, one of the most vibrant people on the Vineyard, the birth is a troubling one—and the baby’s health is cast into doubt. This adds even more stress to an already stressful situation. After all: Christine planned to help Audrey raise her baby, to allow her to return to school and get the degree she so desperately wants. As Christine, Audrey, Lola, and Zach wade the waters of this delicate new family plan, and grapple with the fears surrounding a very sick baby, they find new strength together.

Cathy Andrews wants it all: a husband, a baby, and a little house in her charming small town of Cadillac, Texas. With all that she’s gone through in her past, she’s earned her happily ever after and is more than ready to put down some long-term roots. The trouble is, she’s no longer sure the reliable man she agreed to marry is the right guy. Sure, he’s got great teeth and hair, but he’s also got dreams of being a politician—and Cathy doesn’t know if she’s ready to be just arm candy to a man who doesn’t stir her blood.

When they meet in the 1930s, Doris and Tup’s love is immediate. They marry quickly and Doris commits to the only life Tup ever wanted: working the Senter family farm. Soon their first child, Sonny, is born and Doris and Tup understand they are blessed. More children arrive - precocious, large-hearted Dodie and quiet, devoted Beston - but Doris and Tup take nothing for granted. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered.

Kelli Montgomery spent the previous twenty years in a loveless and abusive marriage. Last Christmas, after her brother, Andy, arrived home after decades away, she finally found the strength to leave her husband—but as anyone who’s ever been through such trauma knows, what happens next—the healing process, the rebirth which is the hardest, and most grueling part of healing. Years ago, Kelli and her ex took over her parents’ prosperous real estate business. Now that Mike has officially left the island, the work has fallen on Kelli’s shoulders.

Holt Davidson, a Kansas firefighter, hasn’t been back to his hometown of Thompsonville, Colorado, for more than two decades, but when he learns that his estranged mother has taken her own life, he returns for the funeral, hoping to make peace with her memory. He spends the night at his childhood home, rummaging through each room, exploring the past. But instead of nostalgic souvenirs, he discovers a gun, a love letter, and a Polaroid photograph of a man lying in his own blood. Who is the dead man? Was his mother the one who killed him, and, if so, why? Who sent the love letter?

Hotel magnate Brent Albright is poised to marry a woman he’s not totally wild about purely for business reasons. His betrothed, busy wedding planner Jackie Webb, has an equally impersonal agenda. Hope Webb has spent her entire life getting her twin sister Jackie out of fixes, and now Jackie’s in the biggest fix of all. She can’t eke out enough time to attend her own pre-wedding parties in beautiful Blue Hill, Maine. What starts out as a favor to impersonate the bride-to-be for one event turns into an all-week affair....

In the shadow of a massive boulder on Oklahoma’s Big Rock Prairie, a squirrel hunter discovers a charred skeleton in a homemade charcoal kiln. Johnston County deputy Hannah Bond and Chickasaw Lighthorse police sergeant Bill Maytubby are called to the scene and soon identify the victim as a young Chickasaw man from a nearby town. What begins as the search for a killer soon throws Maytubby and Bond into the deep end of a conspiracy that puts both the victim’s family and the officers themselves at risk.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy. When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field—one a horse, one a human—she realizes that there might be a real story here.

Willy Cherrymill and his stepdaughter, Lacey, are deeply bruised by a past brimming with unanswered questions. It’s been 30 years since May DuBerry, Willy’s young wife and Lacey’s mother, abandoned them both, leaving Willy to raise Lacey alone. Lacey Cherrymill is smart, stubborn, and focused. She’s also single mother to a young daughter recently diagnosed with a devastating illness. The last thing she needs to think about right now is the betrayal that rocked her childhood. Reluctantly, she has returned to her rural beginnings, a former dairy farm in the Maryland countryside.

A never-before-seen Christmas guest arrives to the island, filled with secrets of her own. The Sheridans welcome a brand-new baby. Complications arise left and right as the Sheridan sisters grapple with another season of changes. The Sheridan sisters’ mother, Anna Sheridan, never spoke much about her family, which is why the appearance of her younger sister is a surprise for all of them. She brings with her a host of troubles at the very worst time, as Audrey arrives home from a tumultuous semester at Penn State, just as Christine gives birth to her very first child.

After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. Ella’s aging parents have requested that she be returned to her childhood home, much to the distress of Ella’s siblings, but more so to Lynetta, her beloved caretaker who has been by her side for decades.

On Oklahoma’s Big Rock Prairie, a deaf boy finds a body in Pennington Creek. Johnston County Deputy Hannah Bond and Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Sergeant Bill Maytubby find a crime scene where nothing seems to fit - from the dead angler’s oversize waders to the kind of fish in his creel. They scour the creekside brush, then hit the road for Texas in a widening search for the killer. On the Big Rock, a towering bearded man is building a limestone replica of Roman Jerusalem for a Christian passion play. His cronies are in league with an interstate fraud ring....