Showing titles in Small Town & Rural

Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.

Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.

A collection of five addicting standalone small town romances by USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charity Ferrell.

Liam Castle knows the secrets of everyone in Bunyip Bay. As the owner of the pub, he's heard it all - from marriage proposals and farming disasters to family rifts and everything in between. The locals love to confide in him, but no one knows he's hiding a tragic past. And he wants to keep it that way.

Bristol detective DS George Cross, champion of the outsider, the voiceless and the dispossessed. DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. An outsider himself, having been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, DS Cross is especially drawn to cases concerning the voiceless and the dispossessed. Now, Cross is untangling the truth about a young woman who died three days ago.

After the violent death of her husband, Callie Jones retreats to a cottage in the grounds of an old mansion in Tasmania. The relative remoteness of the place and the wild beauty of the Tasmanian landscape are a balm to her shattered nerves, and the locals seem friendly, particularly horseman Connor Atherton and his siblings at the nearby property, Calico Lodge. But all is not well: The old mansion has a sinister past, one associated with witchcraft and murder.

All I wanted was a casual plus-one to my brother's destination wedding, but those idiots on my family tree hacked my dating profile and sabotaged my quest for the perfect weekend fling. Now I'm stuck on a tropical vacation with only my hand to keep me company. Until I'm forced to share a room with the bane of my existence: my sister-in-law's best friend.

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.

Logan Murphy should come with a warning. He’s as hot as a Carolina Reaper on black asphalt in the middle of July. With perfectly messy dark hair and smoldering blue eyes—and don’t even get me started on the way that black tee stretches across his toned chest… He’s my brother’s best friend. He’s also a football star on track to win the first wide-receiver MVP in league history. Good thing I only date golfers… or I did.

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.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

In the spring of 1990, we return to Champton, where the characters we've come to love are all aflutter as a glamorous Hollywood movie takes over Champton House as its set location. As the actors and extras hired from the village don their farthingales, gowns and crowns for a masque set in the 1600s, a murder interrupts filming on set - and it's an ingenious one. Can Daniel solve the mystery with help from his sidekick Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo - even when things are so sticky between them?

When three-year-old Harry goes missing, the whole of America turns its attention to one small town. Everyone is eager to help. Everyone is a suspect. Desperate mother Jess' grief is driving her to extreme measures. Newcomer Jared, with an easy charm and a string of broken hearts in his wake is also a suspect. Photographer Jerry is a suspect who is determined to break away from his controlling mother once and for all. And investigating them all is a police chief with a hidden obsession of his own....

Hidden away, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Here is where Takako comes to nurse a broken heart, finding within its crowded shelves books to soothe and uplift her flagging spirits. Over the course of two novels, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Takako and her uncle Satoru discover their similarities and differences, and learn all about life, love and the healing power of books.

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.

Arriving at High Wraith cottage, Detective Morgan Brookes joins her horrified team, who have found a woman’s body chained and dangling from the gnarled branch of an old oak tree. It’s a race against time to preserve any evidence as heavy rain destroys the scene, but they’ve already identified the victim as a woman who once tried to kill her own family. Twenty years ago, Margery Lancaster went to prison for poisoning her husband and infant son. They both survived, and Morgan must treat the pair as her first suspects.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis". But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.

I should have known I’d be playing with fire when I found the sexy as hell woman moving in next door... It was pouring rain, so I figured the neighborly thing to do would be to lend a hand. I nearly dropped to my knees when I realized who she was. Hailey Wagner. It’s been six years since I’ve seen her, and she’s always been the one person on earth who is off limits.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

Country-girl Cressida Knight fills her days with her farm, a mischievous pet bull called Reggie and her volunteer emergency services work. The busier she keeps, the less she thinks about the cowboy who left her behind. She's convinced the small-town Woodlea grapevine that she's moved on, but now it's time to move on for real. Champion bull rider Denham Rigby shares Cressy's deep love for the land and all he's ever wanted was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Cressy through life. But three years ago a dark family secret left him no choice but to run.