Showing results for "Novelle" in Small Town & Rural

With more wind chimes than residents, folks don't move to Goodnight when their lives are going well. That's why all eyes are on chef Sid Solvang and his family from the moment they turn down Emporia Road to the dilapidated Victorian they inherited. While Sid searches for work and a way back to Brooklyn, his daughter searches for answers to the cryptic messages her grandfather left behind to save both her family and the town. But then Sid makes an impulsive purchase: the fledgling May Day Diner, an iconic eatery under the threat of the wrecking ball.

Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there, but already he knows that there is nowhere he would rather live than in the emerald hills and dales of Northern Ireland. The proud owner of a spanking-new medical degree and little else in the way of worldly possessions, Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice. At least until he meets Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.

A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin' motorway and amusement park.

Part human comedy and part mystery, Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told is an enthralling, masterful story about what holds a village together and what keeps people apart. When journalist Patrick Bracken returns to Gohen, the Irish village where he was born, he knows the eyes of the townspeople are on him. He has come home to investigate two deaths that happened decades earlier when he was a child, deaths that were ruled accidental.

Laurel Lake held the title America’s Friendliest Town for seventeen years running, and friendly was just what I needed right now. Unfortunately, friendly wasn’t the welcome I got when I arrived. Instead, I got Fox Cassidy. My tall, dark, and burly neighbor, who grunted at me instead of saying hello. Okay, so I might’ve had his mailbox in my hands the first time we met. And it might’ve been a little crushed after removing it from under my tire. And I might’ve needed his help breaking into the place I was staying in after the key broke off in the lock.

Gerri can't decide what's more devastating: learning her rock-solid marriage has big cracks, or the anger she feels as she tries to repair them. Always the anchor for friends and her children, she realizes it's time to look carefully at herself. The journey is more than revealing—it's transforming. Andy has come to believe that a lasting love is out of reach. When she finds herself attracted to a man without any of the qualities that usually appeal to her, she questions everything she thought she wanted in life.

A city girl leaves her life behind in LA to start over in a small town… It’s a cliché, but it’s also Amelia Taylor’s life. And her new life as a romance novelist and motelier is going great—until Nathan Hart checks in. Of course he’s disastrously handsome, thoroughly disagreeable, and seems to be set against Amelia on sight. Of course there’s smoldering tension between them that can’t be ignored. They’d make the perfect enemies to lovers story. It’s one of Amelia’s favorite tropes.

Bud Threadgoode grew up in the bustling little railroad town of Whistle Stop with his mother, Ruth, church-going and proper, and his Aunt Idgie, the fun-loving hell-raiser. Together they ran the town's popular Whistle Stop Cafe, known far and wide for its fun and famous fried green tomatoes. And as Bud often said of his childhood to his daughter, Ruthie, "How lucky can you get?"

Trucker Sterling (Star) Parson is no stranger to the challenges a woman faces, both in her industry and in life. But she can take care of herself. She’s never needed - or wanted - a man around...until she meets Cade McKenzie. The take-charge bar owner sets off all kinds of alarm bells for Sterling, but he also sets her heart racing.

Readers of Patrick Taylor's books know Mrs. Kinky Kincaid as the unflappable housekeeper who looks after two frequently frazzled doctors in the colourful Irish village of Ballybucklebo. She is a trusted fixture in the lives of those around her, and it often seems as though Kinky has always been there.Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Joe Arneson's ordinary life is upended by troubling dreams of himself as a different man in another place and time. It isn't until he visits his estranged grandmother, Pearl, in her Wisconsin hometown that a startling connection emerges. Drawn into his family's past, Joe discovers secrets weighing on the old woman's soul: the tragic death of her sister Alice a half century ago and its ripple effect on all who loved her.

Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours―most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs

Molly McDaniel’s life is falling apart. Between her day job as a barista, her night job at a call center, and her crushing student loans, she’s barely getting by. And that dream she has of starting a wedding event planning business? The dream that led to all those student loan in the first place? She can feel it slipping farther and farther out of reach every day. So the absolute last thing she needs is to discover she’s inherited a run-down, struggling horse barn out of the blue, courtesy of her estranged late aunt.

Louisa has come to her parents’ house in Maine this summer with her three kids, a barely written book that has a looming deadline, and a trunkful of resentment. Louisa is hoping the crisp breeze will blow away her irritation for her life choices and replace it with enthusiasm for both her family and her writing. But all isn’t well in Maine. Louisa’s father, a retired judge and pillar of the community, is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Louisa’s mother is alternately pretending everything is fine and not pretending at all.

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again.

Elisa Levi's That's All I Know explores the toll of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the fear of the unknown that anchors people to unfulfilling lives, and the bravery it takes to stop deceiving oneself, to give in to longing.

The cute, seaside town of Portneath has been the home of Capelthorne’s Books for nearly a hundred years… The shop, in the heart of a high street that stretches crookedly down the hill from the castle to the sea, may be a tad run-down these days, but to Jules Capelthorne, the wonky, dusty world of literary treasures is full of precious childhood memories. When her great-aunt Florence gets too frail to run it alone, Jules ditches her junior publishing job in London and comes home to make the bookshop’s hundredth birthday a celebration to remember.

After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers’ Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world. Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate.

Random, Colorado, is just another stop on the road for solitary gunslinger Gabriel Valance. Known for his drinking, gambling, and womanizing, he prefers to remain a stranger to anyone who crosses his path. But when an upstart gunslinger catches Gabe off guard and shoots him down, he regrets his empty, lonely life with his dying breath....