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

When 18-year-old Tam Lambert learns that her family’s upscale home is in foreclosure, the life she's known is forever changed. Tam and her family must move into a tiny house in a changing Dallas neighborhood called Blue Sky Hill.... New resident Shasta Reid-Williams knows nothing of real estate schemes when she and her husband purchase a home in Blue Sky Hill. To her, it’s the perfect place to raise her children. Better yet is getting to know Tam, who lives right across the street.

In her first weeks at Hawthorne College, Malin is swept up into a tight-knit circle that will stick together through all four years. There's Gemma, an insecure theater major from London, John, a tall, handsome and wealthy New Englander, Max, John's cousin and a shy pre-med major, Khaled, a wise-cracking prince from Abu Dhabi, and Ruby, a beautiful art history major. But Malin isn't quite like the rest of her friends.

The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!'

When Sarah's Aunt Evelyn passes away, she discovers a hidden fortune has been left to her, including a foreboding mansion in a small Northumberland town. But it comes with one condition. For most of her life, Evelyn had been haunted by the loss of a friend who went missing in Cragsmoor—the very house Evelyn has left to Sarah. Now, Evelyn's final wish is for Sarah to return to Cragsmoor and uncover the truth. If she does, she will inherit everything. But someone wishes for the secrets of Cragsmoor to remain hidden.

1949, County Durham. When Angie marries her sweetheart Quentin and moves into Cuthford Manor to begin their new life together, she feels like the luckiest woman in the world. But Quentin falls victim to a tragic accident and Angie's life is left devastated. Now, along with the prospect of rebuilding her life, she is faced with an impossible choice that will have far-reaching consequences for herself and those she loves most. Only with the help of her family, the community of Cuthford Manor and her old friends from the Shipyards, will Angie draw on the inner strength to find happiness again.

It’s summer and a young man walks through the gates of a luxurious mansion in the south of France. At the dinner table, the Blakes are waiting for him: Annie, the family matriarch and world-famous singer, her inscrutable husband David and their children, Dot, aloof and rebellious, Lily, the man’s carefree university friend, and their enigmatic older brother Felix. Between sun-drenched days spent lounging by the pool and nights blurring into endless, opulent parties far from the reality of life in London, a restless attraction grows between Felix and the man.

In Perdido, Alabama, the Caskey family have endured; some face death whilst others welcome new life. Unexpected alliances have formed, bitter conflict divides former friends. Hardened by years of experience, Miriam, now head of the family business, is relentless in her pursuit of wealth. And when she makes a surprising discovery beneath their lands, it is not just the Caskey family that benefits, but the whole town. But will this sudden fortune be enough to lay to rest the ghosts of the past? And how long before nature comes to reclaim its debt?

Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled 'Quiete Retreate' and 'Greate laundrie'. It is, Flora winces, 'exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time'. Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the 'sadistic owl' Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump.

It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.

The tale of Billy Lee Turner, a 10-year-old boy convicted of the murder of a white girl in Mississippi in 1937, illuminates the monstrous face of racism in America with harrowing clarity and power. Narrated in the rich accents of the American South, Billy's story is told amid the picking fields and town streets, the heat, dust and poverty of the region in the time of the Depression.

Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach to scrape for shrimp; spending the rest of the day selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.

At Ravendale Castle, nestled in the snowy heart of the Lake District, Lara is busy preparing for the Winter Spectacular — a glittering light trail that will fill the grounds with the magic of Christmas. It’s the perfect distraction from her recent heartbreak until Flynn, the ruggedly handsome technical manager, arrives and sparks start to fly.

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy investigating calm, low-stakes embezzlement cases—that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a case only he can solve. Adam Valois, the missing son of a wealthy Los Gatos couple, was found floating dead in the Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police have lost interest, ruling it a likely overdose. But as Clay digs deeper into Adam’s mysterious death, he begins to suspect darker forces are at play . . .

On a cold, snowy winter's night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together, in a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, they imagine they will remain so forever. The next morning, each is a key suspect in a murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other. The hunt for Mikael Söderström's killer will take over twenty years. It will see a detective leave the force forever. And it won't end until a second body is found, and the tight-knit community's secrets are finally brought to light...

Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know. When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe.

For fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn, The Gates of Evangeline is the addictive first book in a fantastic new crime series that will have you guessing until the very end. When grieving mother and New York journalist Charlie Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children after her only son passes away, she’s sure that she’s lost her mind. Yet she soon realizes these are not the hallucinations of a bereaved mother.

Newfoundland, Canada, 1992. When all the fish vanish from the waters, and the cod industry abruptly collapses, it's not long before the people begin to disappear from the town of Big Running as well. As residents are forced to leave the island in search of work, 10-year-old Finn Connor suddenly finds himself living in a ghost town. There's no school, no friends, and whole rows of houses stand abandoned. And then Finn's parents announce that they, too, must separate if their family is to survive.

Billington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement—or, district mandated exile as she calls it—Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days.

In a time of rolling blackouts and terrible storms battering America, the neighbourhood of 1st Street, Charlottesville, is attacked by violent white supremacists. Families, friends and strangers flee for their lives in an abandoned bus, taking refuge in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's historic plantation home in the hills above town. Over 19 heart-stopping days the group find ways to care for and sustain one another as the world burns beneath them.

Laurel Hill and her precocious daughter, Skye, have always been each other's everything. The pair lives on Lake Superior, where the local school has classes of just four children and the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away. Though they live frugally, eking out a living with Laurel's patchwork of jobs, their deep love for each other feels like it can warm them even on the coldest of nights. What more do they need? One otherwise normal afternoon, their landlord decides to evict them in favor of a more profitable summer rental, and they are pushed farther to the margins.