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

With her adopted son missing and the rest of her family increasingly estranged, Sandra Kaye Darden is drawn to the little pink house where her Uncle Poppy once provided security. What begins for Sandra as a simple painting project, meant to prepare the house for sale, becomes a secret venture that eventually changes everything. Cass Blue is having trouble keeping food on the table since she ditched foster care. When Sandra Kaye shows up with lunch one day, Cass has no way of knowing that the meeting will lead to the creation of a place of refuge that could reunite a divided community.

Sweet Home, Alaska, was once a thriving, idyllic town, where A Stone's Throw Hardware and Haberdashery and the Sisterhood of the Quilt were the cornerstones of the community. Then, in one fatal moment, two young lives were cut short, and everything changed. Now the Stone family businesses have closed, the diner is in the red, and the population has dwindled to 573. After the tragic accident that took her sister's life, Hope McKnight discovered she was pregnant, and gave up her dreams of college to raise her daughter.

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.

Elizabeth Foster has lived in Tillington all her life. She knows everything about the local community… Everything except why another family, the Reedbarrows, now live in her ancestral home, Foster's Mill. When Christopher, a man from 'down south', arrives and begins asking questions about the Mill that no one has dared to ask for generations, secrets begin to surface, and Liz may finally find the answers she's been looking for. And perhaps, at last, Liz and her father will be able to return to their family home.

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?

Even if the years weigh heavily on their shoulders, the Caskey family now enjoy wealth way beyond their wildest dreams. Parties, lavish receptions and social gatherings give a rhythm to their existence, their days spent in carefree abandonment. But the past is not forgotten and a dark presence looms over Perdido, its inhabitants and its rivers. The time of reckoning has come.

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.

Ginny Spain usually loves Christmas. Not this year, though. After witnessing a traumatic accident and breaking up with her ex, she plans to spend it alone. But her formidable art historian mother, Evie, has other ideas. Determined to drag her daughter out of isolation, Evie persuades Ginny to spend Christmas with her at an artist and writer’s retreat at Triskelion, a remote old house in the tiny coastal village of Little Star. But Evie’s plans aren’t without an ulterior motive...

Brought to you by Penguin. She's fallen on hard times but she'll come back stronger… Slung out from her home and onto the slum streets of Manchester at the tender age of twelve, Perdita Barratt has fallen on hard times. Each day she must toil to earn a penny to secure a bed at a lodging house. Each day is a struggle to survive.

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.

As the 1982 school year begins, Jack Sheffield returns to Ragley village school for his sixth year as headteacher. Nora Pratt celebrates 25 years in her coffee shop, Ronnie Smith finally tries to get a job, and little Krystal Entwhistle causes concern in the school Nativity play. It's the time of ET and Greenham Common,. Price William's birth, Fame legwarmers and the puzzling introduction of the 20p piece. Meanwhile, for Jack, the biggest surprise of his life is in store.

Tucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge. In this tender, sly, exquisitely wrought novella, a unique cast of characters give voice to their versions of the truth. But it is the story of Rosalind Bone, of her strength and of all that she has endured, that rises above the rest, shimmering with hope and possibility.

Whenever things get too serious, baker Lolly Crocker knows it’s time to break it off with a guy. Without fail, her gut would tell her that the man she was dating was not Mr. Right. The one exception is Shaun Montana, her high school sweetheart. With Shaun, life felt complete; but her mother convinced her she was too young to be tied down, and Lolly broke up with him the night before she left for college.

July knows 18 things about her mother. But not the truth. Summer, 1995. On her tenth birthday, July's teacher sets the class a project to find out about a relation they don't know. It's easy for July to choose her subject. She doesn't remember her mother, who died when she was small, and her father refuses to talk about her. Ever. The only memories she has of her are flashbacks from the accident that claimed her mother's life. But then she receives the note: 'She didn't die in a car accident.'

Jemima Jones is driving home to her family's magical hill-top farm for Christmas… And on arrival, she soon learns that her dad has been keeping a secret – all is not as it seems, and Hollybush Farm is struggling to make ends meet! Worried about losing the childhood home she loves, Jemima decides it’s time to pull on her winter wellies.

When Charlie Boardman and his beloved Staffy, Ruby, stumble across a corpse in the woods, the sleepy coastal town of Framstone is rocked by the discovery that the local pub landlord has been murdered. Charlie and his fellow dogwalkers take it upon themselves to try and sniff out any clues that might help the local police with their investigation. But what begins as idle speculation and gossip quickly becomes something more sinister, when Charlie starts receiving anonymous threats warning him off the case.

A tiny island community is stunned by the discovery of a long-buried body. For Stella Harvey, the news is doubly shocking: the body was found in the garden of her childhood home. The home her family fled without explanation 25 years ago. Now, questioning her past and desperate to unearth the truth, Stella returns to the isolated Dorset island. But she quickly finds that the community she left isn’t as welcoming as she remembers - and that people in it will go to any length to protect their secrets. But one thing rings true...you can’t bury the truth forever.

The crumbling Gothic mansion of Thornwalk, long-term home of the Gilbert family, is being handed over to a chain of luxury 'historic' hotels. Millions will be spent in its restoration. But for every 'improvement', what will be lost? What value can there possibly be in a threadbare carpet, a tarnished spoon and a thousand empty jam jars? Before the hotel people arrive, with their clipboards and their skips and their bottles of bleach, Maximus, loyal guardian of the Gilberts' legacy, invites us on a final tour of the once-stately home, where each room holds a secret.