Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Small Town & Rural

Iris Benedetto’s wedding day just went viral … for all the wrong reasons. After a heated blowout with her lying, cheating fiancé at the altar, Iris storms off on a solo honeymoon—loudly announcing that she’s finally going to find out what good sex is all about. Rebranding from small-town preschool teacher to #HornyRunawayBride was not the plan, but the insanely hot stranger who ends up double-booked in her bungalow on the island of Kauai is an opportunity even devastated Iris can’t ignore.

Unspoiled by the trappings of wealth, Judy Lovin shunned the family fortune to take a job teaching preschool. But with her father’s empire on the verge of collapse thanks to a hostile corporate takeover, Judy reluctantly rides to the rescue. Her negotiations bring her face-to-face with the beast himself, a ruthless tycoon who takes what he wants—and what he wants is Judy. Shocked at her attraction to a man she was prepared to loathe, Judy agrees to his terms: alone time with him at his island getaway.

It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

Cormac McCarthy, best-selling author of National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses, delivers his first new novel in seven years. Written in muscular prose, No Country for Old Men is a powerful tale of the West that moves at a blistering pace.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis". But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.

The Earl of St. Merryn needs a woman. His intentions are purely practical - he simply wants someone sensible and suitably lovely to pose as his betrothed for a few weeks among polite society. He has his own agenda to pursue, and a false fiancée will keep the husband-hunters at bay while he goes about his business. The simplest solution is to hire a paid companion. Finding the right candidate proves more of a challenge than he expected.

One of America’s most celebrated novelists, Cormac McCarthy announced his towering presence on the literary stage with his first novel, The Orchard Keeper. Within the pages of this classic work, John Wesley Rattner, his uncle Ather, and bootlegger Marion Sylder find their lives dangerously entwined in pre-World War II Tennessee. There, the men’s tragedies and struggles are mirrored by the looming specter of industrialization.

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She's been married to Roy Tupkin for 15 days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy's wife.

Hannah Russell’s carefully crafted plans for her life have been upended without warning. When her best friend died suddenly, Hannah became guardian to a five-year-old named Noah. With no experience at motherhood, she’s terrified she’s not up to the challenge. She and Noah need time to get to know each other, so she decides to rent a country house with stunning views on a lake in rural Colorado.

In 1919, Delano, Georgia, appoints its first chief of police. Honest and hardworking, the new chief is puzzled when young men start to disappear. But his investigation is ended by the fatal blast from a shotgun. Delano's second chief-of-police is no hero, yet he is also disturbed by what he sees in the missing-persons bulletins. In 1969, when Delano's third chief takes over, the unsolved disappearances still haunt the police files.

A year ago, ex-Delta Force operator Steven Roark left the rigors of combat behind to run fishing charters in Hope Harbor, decompress, and talk some sense into his kid brother. Business is good - but making peace with his past is more challenging than he expected. First-grade teacher Holly Miller leads a low-profile existence - until she’s recruited to advocate for a cause that’s dear to her heart. When she solicits Steven’s assistance, sparks fly - especially after they find themselves on opposite sides of an issue that disrupts their placid seaside community.

Jordan Peele and Jeff Vandermeer meet The Overstory in comedy writer Allison Mick’s darkly humorous debut eco-horror novel, as a Black woman returns home to the redwood forests of northern California, only to unearth the monsters that lurk among the trees....

Sierra Ravenswood is the new part-time employee of the Flower House, a flower shop in Aerieville, Tennessee. Things take a decidedly negative turn when a customer drops dead in the middle of her new bouquet-arranging workshop at the store. The town is on edge, and Sierra knows that murder is something that an upbeat attitude and a bouquet of sweet-smelling roses can't fix. She's determined to figure out whodunit, before anyone else in town meets an untimely reason for needing funeral flowers.

Rising sous-chef Kelly Matlock's sudden collapse at work is a wake-up call. Disillusioned and burned out, she's retreated to her sister Jillian's house in Virgin River to rest and reevaluate. Puttering in Jill's garden and cooking with her heirloom vegetables is wonderful, but Virgin River is a far cry from San Francisco. Kelly's starting to feel a little too unmotivated…until she meets Lief Holbrook.

Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, working in a Louisiana circus and as a hootchy kootch dancer in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory. Disguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, Genevieve intends only to visit briefly and leave.

Lemon, poppy seed, sun-warmed sand. These visions convince Aoife to quit her job, leave her manipulative boyfriend, and escape to the isolated shores of the Farmstead commune. There, among its charismatic and hedonistic residents, Aoife finds everything she’s been missing: a community that adores her, the freedom to indulge, and the promise to be a part of something miraculous. But darkness underpins her airy new way of life. A disappearing cave looms above an ocean no one dares step foot in, mysterious crying fills the night hours, and a rot is spreading across the island.

Ambition drove Joe Dollarhide across the parched plains from Fort Sam Houston to Dodge City. One day, he was determined to have a spread every bit as vast and impressive as his employer's. But when a wild stampede separates him from the cattle drive, it is survival that keeps him going when most would have given up. Survival and a burning need to settle the score with Benteen Calder, the cattle boss he used to worship, the man who left him for dead.

The first time wealthy rancher Ryan Kendrick sees Bethany Coulter, he falls in love. She shares his passion for horses and can light up a room with her smile. She is perfect in every way - except a riding accident years ago has confined her to a wheelchair. Bethany is convinced that she will never marry or bear children. Now Ryan wants to change her mind.

In an immersive Southern Gothic with echoes of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, a restauranteur lured by pandemic-era incentives moves her family to a seemingly idyllic small town in Georgia, only to discover a darkness lurking beneath the Southern hospitality and sun-dappled streets.

Ellie Bowman barely remembers the incident that put her into a coma. When she awoke, filled with unease, all she knew for certain was that her boyfriend, Rick, was missing. She knew she needed to get away from her old life and recover in safety. With the proceeds of a video game she helped develop, Ellie starts over in rural Missouri, working from her cottage and trusting no one except her friend and business partner.