Rural Life

With the high summer season underway at the Seabreeze Inn, Ivy Bay faces new challenges. She has just one season to make the inn a success to pay the tax bill her late husband left behind. And her neighbor’s lawsuit could mean an end to the Seabreeze Inn. Yet her daughter Sunny’s arrival in Summer Beach is also a chance to renew their strained relationship. While the mayor, Bennett Dylan, develops deeper feelings for Ivy, new trials weigh on their romantic relationship. Sensing Ivy’s sadness over her sister Shelly’s departure, Bennett encourages Mitch, the Java Beach owner, to contact Shelly.

Welcome to Too Much - where the women are strong-willed and the men are handsome yet shiftless. Ever since Mary Dell Templeton and her twin sister, Lydia Dale, were children, their Aunt Velvet has warned them away from local boys. But it’s well known that the females in Mary Dell’s family have two traits in common - superior sewing skills and a fatal weakness for men. While Lydia Dale grows up petite and pretty, Mary Dell just keeps growing. Tall, smart, and sassy, she is determined to one day turn her love of sewing into a business.

Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she's been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they've dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children

Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil. A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little.

Daniel Green makes crop circles. As a member of a secret organization, he travels across the country creating strange works of art that leave communities mystified. He's always been alone; in fact, he prefers it. But when a dying farmer hires him in a last-ditch effort to bring publicity to a small Vermont town, Daniel finds himself at odds with his heart. It isn't long before he gets drawn into a family struggling to stitch itself back together, and the consequences will change his life forever.

Emma Laurent has always preferred helping others to asking for help. But now, she’s the one in need. Her stepmother is selling her late father’s candy shop, her grandmother’s assisted-living facility has become a financial burden, and the anniversary of her fiancé’s death is quickly approaching. Rather than face her problems, Emma does what she does best - finds someone else to help by offering a mother and son with nowhere to go somewhere to stay.

When Marina Moore’s life blows up on national television, she seeks refuge at her grandmother’s beach house called the Coral Cottage. Now in her mid-forties with children in college, Marina is in dire need of her grandmother's gutsy advice to a well-lived life. Marina meets an old friend, Ivy Bay, proprietor of the Seabreeze Inn, who encourages her to share her love of food at the local farmer’s market. Soon Marina’s sister Kai arrives on a summer break from her musical theater troupe.

The Morgan sisters spent many blissful summers at their family’s lake house growing up, but as they grew older, their lives took very different paths. Hope adores her twin girls, but she doesn’t love being a stay-at-home mom. When her workaholic husband doesn’t support her career aspirations, she packs up the kids and goes to Sunset Cottage, thinking that some time apart will help her decide what she really wants. But when the life she dreamed of becomes a possibility, she is more torn than ever.

The mystery of Elizabeth Keane's father is one that has never been solved by the people of Buncarragh - not for lack of speculation. Her mother, Patricia, had been assumed a spinster until she began dating a mysterious man from out of town and within months had left Buncarragh and had married. Less than two years later, Patricia was back, with a new baby in her arms but no new husband by her side and unbendingly silent about her recent past. A secret she would take with her to her grave.

Violet Clarke is ready to take over the world, one strawberry at a time, after she inherits her grandfather's old farm. That's the plan, at least... But when firefighter, William Baxter, shows up for a routine safety inspection, he informs her in no uncertain terms that her raspberry-themed world takeover is shut down until she fixes the berry farm's storage shed. Yes, she understands it's a fire disaster waiting to happen. No, she doesn't have any money for repairs, Will. So when the rough and rugged fireman returns, offering her his grumpiest help to restore the shed, well... She can't ...

Michelle Turner thought she lost everything at 17. Her father, a Hollywood legend, had finally summoned her to his Montana ranch. But when he learned of her affair with Sam McPhee, a hired hand, he had Sam fired and destroyed his family. Michelle, pregnant and alone, fled to Seattle. Now a successful advertising exec, Michelle is safe-safe from love, safe from hurt. But her son is lost to her, a troubled teen on the verge of self-destruction, a boy who blames her for the absence of his father and grandfather.

Perfect for fans of Gervase Phinn, James Herriot and Alexander McCall Smith. Father Okoli dreams of owning a flock of hens and studying for a PhD, when his bishop saddles him with yet another parish to look after. But as Father moves to Moreton-on-the-Edge, a farming village in the English Cotswolds, he’s plugged into a community of warm-hearted characters, from the motherly parish secretary to her septuagenarian neighbour who’s become a cycling champion, and from teenagers requiring driving lessons to atheist publicans who believe in miracles. Between a wacky race and a scarecrow ...

Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At 26, she's been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family's cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future. Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father.

In the rolling farmland of America's Midwest, Gabriel Fisher is exceptional from the moment he is born, weighing in at an impossible eighteen pounds. He walks at eight months, possesses extraordinary athletic abilities and a gentleness that draws people and animals to him. Taken in by his devout grandparents, for a while Gabriel lives quietly in the Amish community. But it's hard to hide forever when you're nearly eight feet tall and at seventeen, he is spotted labouring in a hay field by the local football coach.

Deftly plotted, defiantly honest, Where You Once Belonged sings the song of a wounded prairie community in a narrative with the earmarks of a modern American classic. In prose as lean and supple as a spring switch, Haruf describes a high school football star who wins the heart of the loveliest girl in the county and the admiration of men twice his age. Fun-loving, independent, Burdette engages in the occasional prank. But when he turns into a man, his high jinks turn into crimes.

As a child, Carmella Remington was boisterous, alive: always one to move too fast, laugh too long, and feel too deeply. She was the middle child of Neal Remington, the fraught one between Elsa and Colton. Until one day, Carmella made one of the biggest mistakes of her life—a mistake so wretched that it cost Colton’s life. In the wake of this, Carmella's entire life changed forever.

The house is dark, quiet, and empty as Frank Wilcox makes a promise to his daddy, Tom. One day, Frank promises, he will tell the stories—the adventures and misadventures—of life on the family hog farm in north Georgia. The farm is the home where Frank and his brothers, Jack and Wayne, learn life lessons about family and faith. That’s the backdrop of Brookwood Road, a novel inspired by author Scott Douglas Vaughan’s childhood. Vaughan turns those memories into rich stories centered around Frank, the thoughtful and protective oldest brother of the bunch, and his life growing up on the...

"It's your job now," Anna says as she hands Caleb her journals, asking him to continue writing the family story. But Sarah, Jacob, Anna, Caleb, and their new little sister, Cassie, have already formed a family, and Caleb fears there will be nothing left to write about. That is, before Cassie discovers a mysterious old man in the barn, and everything changes. Everyone is excited about the arrival of a new family member—except for Jacob, who holds a bitter grudge. Only the special love of Caleb, and the gift he offers, can help to mend the pain of the past.

Patience Avery is a dowser—a "water witch". Her natural gifts enable her to locate lost items, missing people, and aquifers deep within the earth. This last skill is more in demand than ever, as her home state of Vermont is in the grip of the worst drought in years. Patience knows better than most that this crisis is only the start: a sign of worse things to come.

For years, Isobel Latimer has composed serious novels for serious people, but to dwindling acclaim and ever-more dwindling gain. Now her husband is ill and she must carry their financial burden alone, and in secret. But if the public don’t want careful moral fables any longer, why not provide an outrageous tale of sex and satanism, and an author to match? The incomparable, uncontrollable Zelda de Vere is born.