Showing titles in Small Town & Rural

When the recently widowed Melinda Monroe sees this ad, she quickly decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache, and to re-energise the nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving - the cabin is a dump, the roads are treacherous, and the local doctor wants nothing to do with her. Realising she’s made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning.

A dramatic and heartwarming Victorian saga, perfect for fans of Maggie Hope and Anne Bennett. Shropshire, 1875. Hettie Jones has grown up in Ironbridge. She has never known her father and, since her mother's death, has been brought up by the Malone family, who treat her as one of their own. She works as a pit girl at the local coal mine, alongside her childhood playfellow, Evan - although lately, their friendship seems to be blossoming into something more. But when Queenie King takes a fancy to her, Hettie's life is transformed.

When Leah and her husband moved to France, it was with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. But in truth, it’s not the ‘good life’ she’d imagined, as three hours of digging barely yield a single straggly carrot. Worse, her teenage daughter is acting up, and her husband seems to find every strange excuse under the hot French sun to disappear. So when her friend entreats her to join the new book club she’s forming, Leah decides it’s something she will do for herself.

In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to "your people" carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After 15 years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn't being pushed around, he is being completely ignored.

Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change.

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we're connected to our environment, to history and to each other.

Two men marked by the boyhood adventures of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now stand together to confront a country changing beyond recognition. In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch, encroached upon from the north by the military. On the southern horizon are the mountains of Mexico, where one of the men is drawn incessantly in this story of friendships and passion to a love as dangerous as it is inevitable.

Jaxie dreads going home. His mum’s dead. The old man bashes him without mercy, and he wishes he was an orphan. And then, in one terrible moment, his life is stripped to little more than what he can carry and how he can keep himself alive. There’s just one person left in the world who understands him and what he still dares to hope for. But to reach her he’ll have to cross the vast saltlands on a trek that only a dreamer or a fugitive would attempt.

I laid a plan to trap her for I'm the predator and she's my prey. I'm Anson Larue, and this is my truth. Nova King was once my everything until she stole from me. Back then, I didn't get a chance to make her pay. Seven years later, I'm shocked to see Nova in Savannah, working at my buddy's sister's company. She's hoodwinked all her colleagues, and even her boss refuses to cut ties with her after I reveal her deceit. This time, I'm not letting her get away. I hatch a plan to show the world who she really is.

When Avery Beckett is proposed to by Jude Masters, a widowed father and the man she loves, it should be a time of great joy. Instead, Avery is on edge. She’s wary of the idea of family, doubtful of happy endings, and too afraid to take the leap. It’s the kind of fear that comes from having secrets. Before Avery commits to a new life, she must reconcile with the one she left behind.

Jane Bancroft has returned to Lovett, Tasmania after 20 years away, minus one ex-husband but plus one outraged teenage daughter. Life in the city – life in general – hasn’t quite panned out as she would have liked. With her mother unwell, now seems as good a time as any to come back to where it all began, and perhaps even start a new life here in the heart of Tasmanian apple country. But the legacy of Jane's wild apple youth has not been forgotten by small-town Lovett and her homecoming is haunted by past tragedy.

A young woman’s struggle to save her family and her soul during the most extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly visited a small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elected to quarantine themselves to limit the contagion.

Interior stylist Grace Davenport has come to the mountains for solitude and a place to heal after her parents' death. Returning to their beloved town of Bundilla, she plans to restore a local bluestone mansion in honour of their memory. She'll just be there for the summer, until she figures out her next step.

When Sassi Stapleton receives a middle-of-the-night phone call to tell her that her beloved grandmother is unwell, she quickly puts her job on hold, packs her ute and sets off on the long drive home, knowing her grandfather will need her. Less than an hour away from Sassi's hometown, Barker, she swerves to miss a roo and her car rolls down an embankment. By the time Sassi is found, her grandmother has already passed away.

The third volume in the best-selling Wideacre trilogy. Set in the 18th century, they launched the career of Philippa Gregory, the best-selling author of The Other Boleyn Girl and Three Sisters, Three Queens. Meridon, a desolate Romany girl, is determined to escape the hard poverty of her childhood. Riding bareback in a travelling show while her sister, Dandy, risks her life on the trapeze, Meridon dedicates herself to freeing them both from danger and want.

In the ruins of Caswell, Maine, Carter Bennett learned the truth of what had been right in front of him the entire time. And then it – he – was gone. Desperate for answers, Carter takes to the road, leaving family and the safety of his pack behind, all in the name of a man he only knows as a feral wolf. But therein lies the danger: wolves are pack animals, and the longer Carter is on his own, the more his mind slips toward the endless void of Omega insanity. But he pushes on, following the trail left by Gavin; the son of Robert Livingstone. The half-brother of Gordo Livingstone.

In Autumn of 1912, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins arrives at his new post in the fading gold town of Colley, NSW. On his first day, he is ambushed by a hidden gunman, his junior officer is killed before his eyes, and he escapes back to town to find the police station burning to the ground. Someone has it in for the mounted troopers. A traumatised veteran of the Boer War, and a stranger to Colley, Hawkins is deeply shaken and ill-equipped to solve the case. But with only green troopers and a drunken, incompetent detective available to hunt down the murderer, he is forced to take the lead.

You’ve heard of those kids who peak in high school? Meet my love life. Garrett Bradford was mine from the moment we saw each other in ninth grade. Even then, he was a six-foot-four mountain of muscles with bright blue eyes, a wide grin, and a way with his hands. He was the high school football star, and I was the dance team captain. We were the storybook cliché… until we weren’t. Now he’s the most famous offensive lineman in the league, and I’m a buttoned-up, ultra-professional lawyer.

Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas, when she was 17, sent away because she was gay. Fifteen years later - long after she'd hitch-hiked to Los Angeles, put herself through college, and had written her first best seller - Jacqueline is persuaded to go back to the tiny town of Pine Springs after her father's death. The quick trip she'd envisioned for the funeral turns into weeks as she learns her father's business is suddenly hers to manage. And she is also again face-to-face with the woman who, as a teen, had been Jackie's first crush.

Celia Burrows thought she had it all - a handsome husband, two successful children, and a gorgeous beach house on the northern coast of Maine. But her perfect life cracks apart when her husband of 30 years informs her that he's leaving. In a note. And since problems come in threes, her adult children reveal they've both been struggling with issues of their own.