Small States

The Best of Me: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! Get swept up in a timeless story of lost dreams and redemption, in which former high school sweethearts get a second chance at first love - from the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Notebook.

Ever since she was a teenager, Carmen Douglas couldn't wait to finally say goodbye to Pronghorn, a small town that catered to tourists along a remote stretch of the Colorado river. When she receives word of her father's death, she returns to Pronghorn with the idea that it will be her last trip. Yet while she settles her father's affairs, she is confronted by events of her own past. Tim was never interested in leaving his hometown and happy working for Carmen's father taking guide trips up the river. And although Carmen ran off to Seattle to get far away from him and Pronghorn,Tim has never...

The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War: the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War.

In the fifteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race.

The fourteenth installment in Melanie Jackson's bestselling Chloe Boston Cozy Mystery Series is a 9k word short story. Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch." —WritersWrite.com It's Saint Patrick's Day in Hope Falls and the citizens are celebrating by having the mayor of their sister city in Ireland over to join in the festivities. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse as rivers run red, drinking of Guinness takes its toll, and a criminal pursuit by Officer Bill is required. This is a fast paced short story with plenty of laughs as Saint Patty's becomes a day to remember not for the ...

In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When 10-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.

This is an exciting story, set in a small, almost unknown country, where the country's president and local poet Darko are trying to save the political and social system. Their friendship strangely evolves from their very personal letters, which are intercepted by the state authorities... - a captivating novel that takes readers on a profound journey of self-discovery, purpose, and the complexities of life. Set against a backdrop of neglected tables, dusty memories, and the longing for significance, this literary masterpiece explores the human desire for meaning and the quest for fulfillment...

In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father.

On a beautiful Pennsylvania fall morning, a gunman holds college freshman Yoona Lee and three of her classmates hostage in the claustrophobic confines of their dorm room. The desperate man with his finger on the trigger - Yoona's onetime friend, Lloyd Kang - is unraveling after a mysterious accident in Korea killed his closest friend, Jaesung, who was also the love of Yoona's life.

Most people think the reason Prudy Millings married the best-looking preacher in the Carolinas—who inexplicably turned psychotic and mowed her down with the church van—is that she was raised all wrong. So not true. Prudy's reclamation of her life begins two years after the crime spree that nearly stopped her heart. She packs up her two precocious children and settles in her parents' South Carolina hometown where she deals with a delightful Proverbs-spewing mama who pretends her grown daughters are virgins.

She staggered through the dark alley...Finding work as a private investigator, ex-cop Frank Harper settles into the small Ohio town of Cooper's Mill. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a young Hollywood starlet's career is on its last legs. Jessica Mills struggles with drugs and alcohol. But when a dangerous accident changes her life forever, she must pay her debt to society. An audacious plan keeps Jessica out of jail, for now, putting her on a collision course with a man obsessed with possessing her...no matter what the cost.

The twelfth book in Melanie Jackson's bestselling Chloe Boston Cozy Mystery Series is a 31k-word book containing the stories "Snow Angel" and "High Society." "Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch." —WritersWrite.com In "Snow Angel," Alex and Chloe are headed out of town, ready to spend a peaceful Christmas at a ski resort in Bethlehem, Colorado. Once there, Chloe finds that all is far from peaceful and bright in the newly restored hotel with a dark history. Someone wants to keep the hotel from officially opening on New Year's Eve and is willing to sabotage the resort, even if it puts ...

Hugh McVey is an inventor who moves from Missouri to Bidwell, Ohio. He creates a mechanical cabbage planter to ease the workload of farmers, but an investor exploits his product. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a fortune and transforms the small town in Ohio into a center of manufacturing. McVey, lonely and ruminative, meets Clara Butterworth, who attends Ohio State.

Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Siméon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural differences and goes on to share her life with the Pekuakami Innu community. They accept her as one of their own: Almanda learns their language, how to live a nomadic existence, and begins to break down the barriers imposed on Indigenous women. Unfolding over the course of a century, the novel details the end of traditional ways of life for the Innu.

Investigator Cassie Dewell is headed to Anaconda, Montana, in search of a slippery con-man who has disappeared somewhere in the Treasure State. A wealthy Florida divorcee has accused him of absconding with her entire fortune, and wants Cassie to find him and get it back. But Anaconda, a quirky former copper-mining town, is the perfect place to reinvent yourself, and as the case develops, Cassie begins to wonder if her client is telling her everything.

Cyrus Brandt’s life is falling apart. Amid a disintegrating marriage and a failing career, he returns to his childhood home on an Illinois farm to make a new start. Adapting to the slow pace of his new environs, Cyrus quickly finds himself in a burgeoning romance with Annie, who owns a diner in the nearby town. But when a spring tornado deposits the body of a murdered man on a nearby rural roadside, Cyrus’ quiet new life is turned upside down. Annie’s brother, Sheriff Thomas Bales, is now caught up in a manhunt, and Cyrus volunteers to assist the sheriff’s under-staffed department ...

The Center for women's reproductive health offers a last chance at hope - but nobody ends up there by choice. Its very existence is controversial, and to the demonstrators who barricade the building every day, the service it offers is no different from legalised murder. Now life and death decisions are being made horrifyingly real: a lone protester with a gun has taken the staff, patients and visitors hostage.

In small towns between the North Carolina Piedmont and the coast, the best scenery is often in the sky. On flat sweeps of red clay and scrub pine, the days move monotonously, safely, but above, in the blink of an eye, dangerous clouds can boil out of all four corners of the sky. The flat slow land starts to shiver and anything can happen. In such a storm, on Annie Peregrine’s seventh birthday, her father gave her the airplane and minutes later drove out of her life.

Throughout his career, Bill Geist's most popular stories have been about slightly odd but loveable individuals. Coming on the heels of his 5,600 mile RV trip across our fair land is Way Off the Road, a hilarious and compelling mix of stories about the folks featured in Geist's segments, along with observations on his 20 years of life on the road.

Enjoy this sweet cowboy novel by small-town romance author Erin K. Wright… Maybe it’s not too late for her happily ever after… As the owner of the only flower shop in the small mountain town of Sawyer, Idaho, Carla can quote every line in The Princess Bride and still believes in true love. Which wouldn’t be quite so pathetic if she wasn’t thirty-seven and single. So single, in fact, she’s forgotten what it’s like to have a man give her so much as a carnation. Then Christian walks into Happy Petals, and she knows the fragrance of flowers has gone to her head. It’s ...