Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Small Town & Rural

When a boy is found dead with the skin of a hare’s head in his hand, everyone knows who killed him—Willis Newland, just released from prison after serving twenty years for an identical murder. But what if everyone’s wrong? Detective Colly Newland reluctantly agrees to investigate a case that seems to involve the whole town, including her dead husband’s extended family. But the deeper she digs, the more secrets she unearths.

In rural Ohio, the last connections lonesome Felicity Lavigne has to her late mom are the blueberry farm she inherited and her mom’s old phone number—which Felicity still calls every day. Until she gets a call back. It’s the number’s new owner, Alex Norse, a surly, homeless teenager who has aged out of the foster care system with no one to turn to except the stranger who’s been leaving rambling voicemails for a dead woman. Felicity takes Alex in on one condition: She has to help scare off some kids vandalizing the fields.

Born and raised in idyllic Sullivan's Island, Susan Hayes navigated through her turbulent childhood with humor, spunk, and characteristic Southern sass. But years later, she is a conflicted woman with an unfaithful husband, a sometimes resentful teenage daughter, and a heart that aches with painful, poignant memories. And as Susan faces her uncertain future, she realizes that she must go back to her past. To the beachfront house where her sister welcomes her with open arms.

When Caroline Wimbley Levine learns that her mother, Miss Lavinia, has supposedly gone mad, she leaves the big city bustle of Manhattan and returns to Tall Pines Plantation. Caroline originally left Tall Pines to escape her feisty, eccentric mother and her drunken brother, Trip. When Miss Lavinia dies, Caroline is forced to come to terms with her family's troubled history as well as her failing relationship with her husband.

Julie Adler’s perfect facade is shattered by grief when her husband commits suicide. His death reveals that their luxurious California life was a house of cards, and his secret business dealings have left Julie penniless. As she strikes out on her own, Julie feels drawn to her old stomping grounds in Banff, a charming and isolated ski town where she once trained for the Olympics. She finds work as a housekeeper at a luxury resort, but just as she starts to piece together a new life, an eccentric guest turns up dead. And Julie, the last person seen in her hotel room, is the prime suspect.

Alone in the Northwoods, Norry Last settles in for another springtime lull at the remote resort she inherited from her father. She’s content with the solitude, maybe resigned. But when a blizzard hits, those little cabins by the lake start to fill up fast. First to arrive is Lizzie, an eight-year-old with resilience and wisdom beyond her years, neglected by a mother struggling with addiction. Next comes Wendell, a cantankerous old fellow whose house collapses in the storm, the same way hope collapsed inside him long before.

Recovering from cancer, Cincinnati news anchor Jessica Fox has no choice but to take a summer leave. Her boss’s proposal: for Jessica to take it easy and recharge at his late grandmother Mabel’s cottage in the Kentucky mountains. The town of Lost and Found lives up to its name. Resistant at first, Jessica grows to appreciate the slower pace, the spectacular sunsets, the affable locals, and even Matt Cordray, the laid-back, too-friendly police chief next door.

Newly divorced Lily Kimura returns to her hometown to start fresh with her daughter and her recently retired parents. She’s committed to rebuilding her life, starting with a new job at the town theater. The Starlight Cove Playhouse has been closed for years, ever since a tragic fire took the life of the lead actress. Now, thanks to an anonymous donor, the town is finally ready for a revival. So is Lily, who wholeheartedly dives into her new duties as theater manager, including an unexpected connection with the visiting movie star playing the lead.

No longer tolerating her husband’s borderline abuse, Faith escapes to her parents’ California beach house to plan her next move. She never dreamed her new chapter would involve befriending Sarah, a fourteen-year-old on the run from her father and reeling from her mother’s sudden and suspicious death. While Sarah’s grandmother scrambles to get custody, Faith is charged with spiriting the girl away on a journey that will restore her hope: Sarah implores Faith to take her to Falkner’s Midnight Sun, the prized black mare that her father sold out from under her.

Back in senior year, Audrey, Micah, Jasmine, and Beck were the Core Four: the lucky one, the beautiful one, the smart one, the sporty one. They had color-coded dreams, inside jokes, and a lifelong friendship they thought would last forever. But graduation night ended in a tragic accident, followed by the kind of silence that stretches for decades. Now, they’ve returned for their reunion, each carrying a life that looks nothing like the glossy future they imagined. There are stalled careers, complicated marriages, outspoken adult children, and secrets that never fit into holiday cards.

Ever since her husband Sean’s death, Jo Myers just can’t move on. Until she receives a video Sean made during his final days, urging her to find happiness after he’s gone. Jolted from her rut, she embarks on a journey forward. Her first step is buying a house she and her daughters can call home. Framed by the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, it’s the very house she and Sean dreamed of owning together one day. It comes with a kindly and elderly resident lodger and an opportunity to make new memories. Jo even dips her toes into the dating pool.

It’s 1989, and college freshman Michael Greco is ready to leave his dreary small town—and the grief of his father’s death—behind. He has everything he needs for a great year: a starting spot on the football team, new friends, and a promising flirtation with a beautiful grad student. But just as Greco settles in to campus life, his uncle shows up demanding that he take care of his father’s unfinished business with a powerful Chicago gangster.

JP swore he’d never return to the small Cornish village where he grew up. After Lucy’s body washed up on the beach, someone made sure JP knew he wasn’t welcome. A scrawled warning. A postcard shoved through his door. If you want to keep your secret, leave now. Now, ten years later, he’s back—the best man for his childhood friend. Trapped in St Hellion for a week, he feels it immediately: the stares, the closed doors, the past pressing in.

Beautifully capturing the rhythms and personalities of small town life, Terry Kay's novel is a tender celebration of the special gifts inside each of us. The simplicity of Kay's prose belies the mythic nature of his story. Luminous, memorable, and deeply moving, The Valley of Light is Kay's finest work to date.

From one of the most beloved Western authors comes an epic historical tale of adventure and romance in the great wilderness. Against the epic backdrop of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad across plains and deserts and through the mountains to meet up with the Southern Pacific in Utah comes a sprawling, historical tale. Warren Neale is a brilliant civil engineer who is constantly confronted with construction problems. He is sided by Larry Red King, a Texas gunfighter and friend.

Finding herself even further estranged from relatives and friends, Fiona is drawn to the one man who wants nothing to do with her. He is her rumored father, Patrick Grady, so cruel and unstable that her Aunt Arlene and Uncle Charles Hollis fear for her safety. But, as always, Fiona will listen to no one. Determined to make Grady acknowledge their relationship, she pursues him in spite of his threats and increasingly erratic behavior.

Meridy Dresden was once a free-spirited, fun-loving girl. All that changed when the boy she loved was killed in a tragic fire. Since then, she alone has carried the burden of a terrible secret. Years later, married to a wonderful man and mother of a teenage son, she is shocked to learn that a childhood friend is being blamed for that long-ago fire. Fearful but determined, Meridy returns to the South Carolina Lowcountry and summons the courage to make a decision that may destroy her well-ordered life, her family’s reputation, her contented marriage, and everything she’s worked so hard to protect....

Abandoned by his father after his mother drowns in a frozen Minnesota lake, fifteen-year-old Wes Ballot is stranded with coldhearted grandparents and holed up in his mother’s old bedroom, surrounded by her remnants and memories. As the wait for his father stretches unforgivably into months, a local girl, whose own mother died a brutal death, captures his heart and imagination, giving Wes fresh air to breathe in the suffocating small town.

Emma and Dele’s dreams came true nine years ago when they adopted their daughter, Isla. It felt like fate, like they were meant to find each other, and now they’re living the life they always wanted. But then one day a new family moves into Forest Grove - and Emma can’t shake the chilling feeling that the wife looks just like Isla’s birth mother.

It’s been more than a decade since Charlie Trewin left her sleepy Cornish fishing village for the dazzling lights of London, vowing never to return. But when shocking news of her father’s death forces her back to Carncarrow, she’s confronted with everything she thought she’d left behind: the tragic loss of her mother, her father’s obsessive hoarding—and her own unresolved emotions about them both.