Showing titles in Small Town & Rural

When Marcie Mosse receives news that her grandmother is sick, she rushes back to her childhood village in the remote Scottish Highlands. Despite the tragic circumstances, returning to her family’s ancestral home, a once grand and now crumbling farmhouse overlooking a crystal-clear loch, feels like a long-awaited homecoming. Reconnecting with childhood friends, Marcie is flooded with memories of her life before moving to the city. Then, during a windswept horseback ride along the edge of the loch, she bumps into Ruaridh Balfour.

Midwife Izzy is devastated to learn that her beloved grandmother is dying. Abandoned as a baby by her own mother, her grandparents have been the only family Izzy has ever known and she wants to spend every last precious moment with them. New locum vicar, Noah, is a wonderful support—kind, considerate and always there for Izzy whenever she needs a shoulder to cry on. But secretly Noah is battling his own doubts about his faith—how can he offer Izzy comfort if he doesn’t truly believe his own words?

Eco -architect Olivia Wells returns from her successful life in New York to the Cornish village of Penbartha intent on fulfilling her god-father’s bequest to expand and oversee a co-working community of eco and creative entrepreneurs in a converted railway building.

DS George Cross has always wondered why his mother left him when he was a child. Now she is back in his life, he suddenly has answers. But this unexpected reunion is not anything he's used to dealing with. When a disturbing case lands on his desk, he is almost thankful for the return to normality. The body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol. Nothing is known about Brother Dominic's past, which makes investigating difficult. How can Cross unpick a crime when they don't know anything about the victim? And why would someone want to harm a monk?

Julia Volpe’s Italian dream has turned into a nightmare. Still living with her ex, Luca, a year after they’ve broken up, desperate to sell the dilapidated B&B that was meant to be their future, Jules knows she needs to leave. There are just two problems. Her passport has expired and she’s broke. Not quite ready to ask her parents for help – at the ripe old age of twenty-seven – Jules decides to head as far away from Luca as she can to work on an olive farm until she has enough money to pay for her passport and a ticket back home.

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents...

Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense! "Lazarre-White masterfully portrays people of multiple races, old and young. He also delivers Cosby's reflections on family, grief, and faith with genuine introspection and without distracting from the tense plotlines...This is a gripping...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Kayvan Novak, Josh Cohen, Alistair Petrie, and Richard Hughes. Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire...

When Stella lands a job working at Titheridge Farm, she's thrilled. Stella plans a weekend at the farm for the family and invites five VIP guests, in a bid to win them over. Forty-eight hours later, someone is dead. Trapped by the weather and all with secrets of their own, one of the partygoers is lying and one isn't who they say they are.

Brought to you by Penguin. Costa Best Novel Award 2019 Winner. It was tempting to think, at times like this, that some bizarre hysteria had gripped the British people. Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where...

Is a fake boyfriend really just for Christmas? One fake romance. One magical Christmas. One chance to fall in love. Laura was all set for a quiet solo Christmas – just her, a bottle of wine, and flat-sitting for a stranger. But when the stranger’s parents mistake her for his mystery...

Introducing Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope. The Crow Trap is the first book in Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series – which is now a major ITV detective drama starring Brenda Blethyn, Vera. Everyone has something to hide . . . Three very different women come together at an isolated cottage...

When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is asked to provide crowd control at a statistics lecture given at the Université de l'Estrie in Quebec, he is dubious. Why ask the head of homicide to provide security for what sounds like a minor, even mundane lecture? But dangerous ideas about who deserves to live in order for society to thrive are rapidly gaining popularity, fuelled by the research of the eminent Professor Abigail Robinson. Yet for every person seduced by her theories, there is another who is horrified by them.

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships - at least, that's what she tells herself. Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.

Brought to you by Penguin. WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023 WINNER OF AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS’ PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 The Barnes family are in trouble. Until recently they ran the biggest business in...

For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved.

All Marnie wants is somewhere to call home. Mourning lost years spent in a marriage that has finally come to an end, she needs a fresh start and time to heal. Things she hopes to find in the rural west Lancashire village her mother always told her about. With nothing but her two green thumbs, Marnie takes a job as a gardener, which comes with a little cottage to make her own. The garden is beautiful - filled with roses, lavender and honeysuckle - and only a little rough around the edges. Which is more than can be said for her next-door neighbour, Ned Mars.

Hidden in the midst of a remote Surrey village (at the top of the hill, opposite Budgens) is top-secret scientific research institute Clayton Grange. There, a team of bumbling boffins, led by the keen but hopeless Professor Linden Saunders, try to fulfil their government brief to solve the global fuel crisis, cheer people up and make war just a bit more gentle. Sadly, they're as rubbish at science as they are at life—but they're not going to let mere incompetence stop them from pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.

Newly qualified teacher Tom Dwyer has been given his first post in Risingdale, a sleepy little village at the very top of the Yorkshire Dales. Unsure if he'll ever fit into this close-knit community, Tom joins a motley staff at the village school. With pupils who know more about sheep than they do arithmetic, Tom has his work cut out for him. Add to that an altercation with the beautiful but stand-offish Miss Janette Fairborn and an argument with the local squire's son, and Tom's first term proves a baptism of fire.

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. So when his police colleagues dismiss the death of a man as a squabble among Bristol's homeless community, Detective Sergeant George Cross is not convinced.