Rural Life

It's an invitation Steph can't refuse when she's handpicked to compete at the prestigious National Trust property Coleton Fishacre. With the country's top garden designers as rivals and a stunning historic estate for inspiration, it feels like a dream come true. But things quickly turn thorny when the youngest competitor falls mysteriously ill and Steph suspects foul play. Her fears are confirmed when a scream echoes through the gardens, leading her to the horrific sight of a dead body at the foot of the cliff.

In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst thing happens, who do you blame?

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.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.

Fans of Maeve Binchy will love this entertaining read that transcends time with history repeating itself, proving it’s not our circumstances that define us but the power within to change. A story of life, love, loss and seeking more, three generations of women are all on a journey to change their circumstances and find the life they believe they were destined for . . . revealing a terrible secret that changes it all. In 1960s Ireland, Maggie Treacy has never felt she belongs. Determined to change her life, the transformation doesn’t come without cost, but she isn’t going to let ...

If you write an email to a friend about a fantasy involving your gorgeous boss, don't send it to All Staff... Meg It’s not easy to reinvent yourself, but my thirteen-year-old son and I are ready for a new start. Old Maggie was a magnet for disaster, but New Meg is going to be elegant, sophisticated… and blonde. I’ve landed a dream job at the other end of New Zealand as PA to three rich directors who spoil me rotten, I’ve found a beautiful new apartment, and I feel reborn. Then I write an email to a friend describing in vivid detail what I want to do to the sexiest of the directors...

Once Elle lets the tiger out of the cage, it’s impossible to get him back in… Elle Baker’s had enough of men telling her how to live her life. She loves her job at the Treats to Tempt You shop in Doubtless Bay, New Zealand. But repeated issues with her overbearing father and arrogant ex have persuaded her it’s time for a fresh start, and she’s planning to move away to Wellington at the end of the month. When Stuart Casey’s childhood sweetheart lay dying, she made him swear to her that he’d never love another girl as long as he lived. So far, he’s kept his promise, even ...

When 73-year-old Jen announces that she is going to marry Eddie, a man she met just a few months previously on a beach on Boxing Day, her four best friends from aqua aerobics are flabbergasted. The wedding is booked and, when the groom decides to have a stag trip to Las Vegas, the ladies arrange a hen party to beat all others - a week in the city of love, Paris.

Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her 10-year-old daughter in tow, she’s not sure if she’ll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.

How did the hottest hockey player in the NHL wind up braiding hair and hosting tea parties? Because someone was foolish enough to name him co-guardian of their children. That's how. Cole Montgomery's living his best life—until he gets a call from an attorney letting him know he's been entrusted with the care of two little girls. He can't imagine why anyone would think he was a good role model. He can't even keep a plant alive.

Maggie Bailey has not had an easy childhood. Her father, Michael, always too easy with his fists after spending the family’s rent money down the pub. Just sixteen, in love and blinded by promises, Maggie sees marriage to handsome Jack as her great escape. However, she soon finds herself abandoned with a beautiful baby when Jack disappears. Maggie is forced to seek a new life away from the East End of London and finds herself a job at a hotel in Yarmouth.

Sisters Ivy and Shelly Bay are looking forward to hosting a joyful, long-awaited family reunion at the Seabreeze Inn to introduce their new husbands to distant kin. Beach barbecues, games, and other festivities are planned, but everyone is shocked when hidden family secrets emerge. This season, gather on the shores of Summer Beach for sunny shenanigans and warm ocean breezes, as well as unexpected events that will change lives and family dynamics.

It is All Souls Day, and the spirit of Marcus Conway sits at his kitchen table and remembers. In flowing, relentless prose, Conway recalls his life in rural Ireland: as a boy and man, father, husband, citizen. His ruminations move from childhood memories of his father's deftness with machines to his own work as a civil engineer, from transformations in the local economy to the tidal wave of global financial collapse. Conway's thoughts go still further, outward to the vast systems of time and history that hold us all.

Jay Austin did what it took to get ahead and make the quick sell at work. Problem was - the more successful he was, the more he traded what really mattered. His integrity. His relationship with his wife. His time with his son. He was chasing things that had no eternal significance. It wasn’t until God slowly unraveled everything that he saw how empty his life had become.

Long before Hank Crawford arrived in the waters of Ketchikan, his partners and compatriots were already in love with its shores. Following the final, crushing moments of World War II, Japanese officer Kiyoshi Tsurifune, Sergeant Jones Henry, and Resistance fighter Swede Scorden struggle to regain normalcy and any contact with the shimmering, fish-filled sea. Lost honor, fallen friends, their cultural identities gone in the wake of a nuclear blast - these fishermen-turned-soldiers have a long way to go till they regain the waters in which they feel most at home.

Eight years ago, Tyler Donnelly left Wishing River, Montana, after a terrible fight with his father and swore he’d never return. But when his father has a stroke, guilt and duty drive him home, and nothing is as he remembers - from the run-down ranch to Lainey Sullivan, who is all grown up now. And darn if he can’t seem to stay away.

In school, Tom, Holly, Saffron, Paul, and Olivia were the best of friends. Twenty years later, they’re barely more than strangers. But when Tom dies in a heartbreaking instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the four that remain are thrust back into each other’s lives. Quickly falling back into the intimacy of their youth, Holly, Saffron, Paul, and Olivia are forced to reexamine the choices they’ve made. As their secrets rise to the surface, Tom’s death becomes the catalyst that changes them all.

Willow Montgomery is determined to turn her new horse ranch around, no matter how many times she has to fall out of the saddle to make it happen! Lovers Creek horse ranch is all that's left of her father's legacy. She'll do anything it takes to make it flourish again. Unfortunately she knows little to nothing in the way of running a ranch. That's where Luke Harrison comes in. As the best (and sexiest) cowboy on the ranch, he knows everything there is to know about horses. Most days, he likes them more than people. He's also the grumpiest man Willow's ever met. So when sparks fly after he ...

Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances? I went home, of course.

Jenna Abbott’s life went up in flames even before the fire started in Tenmile, Oregon. She was still coping with her husband's affair—and the revelation that he got a much younger woman pregnant—when the fire finally died down, and Ryan was among the missing. Chelsea Goddard still can’t explain how her estranged husband got back to Tenmile from out of the country the day of the fire, and she also can’t shake the nagging feeling that the secrets they’ve kept between them for the last twenty years might just be the tinder that made it all burn.