Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in Small Town & Rural

Gemma Hayden has returned to her hometown of Alice Springs for a new job as a primary school teacher. It's been six years since her family broke apart following the disappearance of her twin brother. And the scars still run deep. Hard on the heels of her homecoming, Saul Pearce, the man she once loved, is reposted from Parks and Wildlife in Darwin back to Alice. When an old car wreck is uncovered, washed down the river to Ruby Gap, Saul investigates only to find that the wreck belonged to Ethan, Gemma's twin—and there's a coded note for her in the glovebox.

Being thirty-something, broke, divorced and in a cold war with her ten-year-old son is a lot, but Jo's handling it. Just. At least she is until her job at the Natural History Museum is put in jeopardy. An invitation to dig up dinosaur bones on a remote Queensland sheep station arrives at just the right time. It's not her first trip to Yindi Creek, but it's not as though anyone will remember her from fifteen years ago ... And by anyone, of course, she means the pilot she had that fling with. The fling that taught her she's far safer sticking to science.

For children’s book author Imogen, an idyllic life in the English countryside seems like the perfect fit for her and her husband. But when tragedy strikes, Imogen is left widowed, and finds herself moving into Storybook Cottage alone with only her monstrously narcissistic cat for company. After discovering she is pregnant, Imogen grows determined to embrace a new start in Middlemass, with its duckpond, cricket matches and village fêtes. The only thing Imogen can’t seem to shake is her neighbor—a brooding, artisan blacksmith named Gabriel—who she can’t quite decide is friend or foe.

Cordelia McQueen is little more than a prisoner in her father’s house until he barters her off to a stranger in exchange for land and water rights. Now in a new place and married to a man as big and bold as untamed Texas, Cordelia prepares to live within her husband’s shadow and help him achieve his goals. Dallas has one driving ambition: to put West Texas on the map. Convinced he’s too harsh a man to be loved, he expects nothing except a son from his shy wife. But with each passing day, Dallas discovers a woman of immense hidden courage and fortitude.

It’s June 2021, and three old college friends are heading to New England and the twenty-fifth reunion that was delayed the year before. Hope, a stay-at-home mom, is desperate for a return to her beloved campus, a reprieve from her tense marriage, and the stresses of pandemic parenting. Adam is hesitant to leave his bucolic but secluded life with his wife and their young sons. Single mother Polly hasn’t been back to campus in more than twenty years and has no interest in returning—but changes her mind when her struggling teenage son suggests a road trip.

Natalie Kaleta will do anything for the artists at her gallery, including risk life, limb, and the effect of humidity on her naturally curly hair. Braving a downpour to check on reclusive Ronan Mitchell, Natalie gets stranded by a mudslide at his mountain home, where the brooding glass artist reveals his playful side, sending her inconvenient crush from under-the-radar to over-the-top. After a secret tore apart his family and made him question his sense of self, Ronan fled his hometown for Happily Inc, but the sunny small town can’t fix his damaged heart.

Robin Lindstrom spent her first year as a young widow cocooned in the safe haven of the Minnesota farmhouse she’d once shared with Gabe, the love of her life—the man she thought she’d be with ’til the end. But her world is turned upside down when she receives an email informing her that her late husband has enrolled her in a dating app. The subscription lasts 12 months; use it!, Gabe’s message-from-the-grave reads. I don’t like the thought of you being alone. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it as a favor to me. Please.

This time, Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father’s long-unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.

Cerca del lago en Beartown hay una pista de hielo, y en la pista Kevin, Amat, Benji y el resto del Equipo junior de hockey sobre hielo está a punto de competir en la semifinal nacional; y, de hecho, tiene la oportunidad de ganar. Todos los sueños y esperanzas de este lugar descansan ahora sobre los hombros de un grupo de adolescentes. Bajo la pesada carga, el partido se convierte en la catálisis de un acto violento que dejará a una joven traumatizada y a un pueblo en confusión. Se hacen las acusaciones y, como olas en un estanque, viajan a través de Beartown.

After a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless. She reluctantly accepts to refurbish Birdsong, the old family place in Guthrie, Georgia. But, oh, is Dempsey in for a surprise. "Bird Droppings" would more aptly describe the moldering Pepto Bismol - pink dump. There's also a murderously grumpy old lady who has claimed squatter's rights and isn't moving out. Ever.

Chef extraordinaire Gina Foxton doesn't expect anything to be handed to her on a platter. After years of hard work, the former runner-up Miss Teen Vidalia Onion is now the host of her own local Georgia public television show called Fresh Start, and she's dating the show's producer. But when her show gets canceled - and she catches her boyfriend in flagrante delicto with the boss' wife - Gina realizes that she's meant for bigger and better things. Namely, a gig on national television.

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.

Connie Mulligan, daughter of a fourth-generation Tasmanian dairy farmer, feels like she doesn't belong–anywhere. She's got big dreams and big ideas, but she made a mess of her university degree and has been sent home in disgrace. The man who was responsible for her failure won't get out of her nightmares, her father won't listen to any of her ideas on how to make environmentally positive changes to the way the dairy farm is being run, her mom thinks she should go on anti-depressants, and she keeps having what her psychologist calls 'episodes'.

Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances? I went home, of course.

Isobel Ashworth breezes through life, blissfully accustomed to the privilege which comes with her family name. But that changes when she arrives in the exclusive town of Hartwell. Sent there by her father to complete a controversial property development - and prove herself a serious player in the succession plan - her perfect life is unravelling. Isobel's fiance is telling lies, the project is a disaster and the locals hate her; could her father be setting her up to fail? Buzzing with the promise of a big story, journalist Meg Hunter arrives in Hartwell to expose the Ashworth family dealings.

Tras dejar a su esposo infiel, Britt-Marie encuentra trabajo como encargada en el casi clausurado centro cívico de Borg, un abandonado y ruinoso pueblo del que lo único bueno que puede decirse es que tiene una carretera. Esta quisquillosa mujer se verá envuelta en la vida de sus nuevos vecinos, un grupo de malhechores, borrachos y holgazanes que le demostrarán que la vida va más allá de tener un cajón de los cubiertos ordenado.

Bree Johnston has given up trying to be the perfect lawyer. It's time to focus on her own dreams, so she decides to leave the city and set up an alpaca farm and wool shop. Her grandmother Rose might be her only supporter, but that's fine. Bree's done trying to win her parents' approval. She finds the perfect property in the charming small town of Wagtail Ridge but gets more than she bargained for when sparks start flying with the handsome real estate agent.

Rosie Reynolds had come to lakeside Corgi Cove as a lost, lonely girl abandoned by her own mother, but there she discovered a true place to call home. She loves her Corgis, Bonnie and Clyde; loves the lakeside life; and loves her aunt and uncle most of all. But when she discovers their struggling inn is about to be bought out by some big city chain, she hatches a plan: to win a contest naming theirs the best Christmas-themed inn in the USA. It's a long shot, but she knows if the whole town pulls together that they can do it.

Bestselling author and voice of Australian storytelling Tricia Stringer tackles troubled relationships, ageism, and love old and new in this warm, funny, uplifting story of colleagues and unlikely travel companions thrown together on an astonishing (and revealing) train trip across Australia.

The soldiers called her the Angel of Waterloo...Henrietta Bartlett, the esteemed surgeon's daughter who was born on a battlefield, lost her mother on a battlefield, and was widowed on the battlefield, where she worked alongside her father on that fateful day in June 1815. But after the carnage of war, Hen dreams of peace, and her own home, and a society that would allow a woman to practice medicine. The new and faraway colony of New South Wales seems a paradise, where even convicts have a chance of a good life.