Showing results for "The Rural" in Literature & Fiction

Curl up this Christmas with this gorgeous festive story from the No.1 bestselling author of The Christmas Invitation ‘A warm-hearted and comforting read. Trisha at her best’ Carole Matthews This Christmas is about to go off with a bang! Things can’t possibly get worse for Tabby. Framed for...

When a body turned up at her last catering gig it certainly put people off the hors d’oeuvres. With a reputation to salvage, Jodie’s determined that her next job for the village’s festival will go off without a hitch. But when chaos breaks out, Jodie Parker somehow always finds herself caught up in the picture. The body of a writer from the festival is discovered at the bottom of a cliff, and the prime suspect turns out to be the guest of honour, the esteemed painter Duncan Stovall.

This will be the summer to remember… Izzy has broken off her engagement to her no-good fiancée Kieran and is seeking refuge in her childhood home – the sleepy village of Halfhidden. She soon realizes that life in the village is going to be anything but peaceful – for one thing she’s...

‘A sparklingly delicious confection to satisfy the mystery reader’s appetite’ Helena Dixon, bestselling author of the Miss Underhay Mysteries A PINCH OF PARANOIA It’s three days before Christmas, and detective-turned-chef Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is drafted in to cater a charity event...

The Comfort Food Cafe is perched on a windswept clifftop at what feels like the edge of the world, serving up the most delicious cream teas, beautifully baked breads and carefully crafted cupcakes. For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship and security - a place like no other, a place that offers friendship as a daily special and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu.

An all-expenses-paid autumn break in the mountains at a luxury art retreat? As a broke single mom, I can't believe my luck. Until my boss's whirlwind son crashes my private cabin. Charlie is my work problem, the rockstar Creative Director with a Kickstarter addiction and a charmed life. The man I can't stand… or stop thinking about. For two years, I've hidden my feelings. But as we explore the experimental art classes, small-town magic, and the wilderness, truths are exposed. Heat turns up and fake dating turns real.

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr...

Der gerissene Kater Spiegel, der den Hexenmeister über den Tisch zieht; der schmollende Tagedieb Pankraz, den eine Begegnung mit einem Löwen und einem eitlen Frauenzimmer zum Manne macht; drei rivalisierende Gesellen, die an dem gierigen Verlangen nach einer reichen Jungfer reihum zugrunde gehen: Das sind die Leute von Seldwyla. Anhand ihrer Lebensbilder schildert Gottfried Keller die Engstirnigkeit, Beschränktheit und Zerrüttung, die hinter dem scheinbaren Idyll eines Dorfes schlummern. Tragikomisch und grotesk satirisch - "Die Leute von Seldwyla" ist eine Perle des poetischen Realismus.

Auf dem E-Bike der Sonne entgegen – ein herrlich komischer Syltroman. Die Mittfünfzigerin Marina lebt ein freudloses Leben, seit die Kinder ausgezogen sind. Doch unerwartet erreicht sie ein Hilferuf ihrer Cousine Sabine, die auf Sylt einen E-Bike-Verleih betreibt. Sabine muss für drei Monate nach Barcelona und bittet Marina, sie in dieser Zeit zu vertreten. Mutig sagt Marina zu, das Problem ist nur: Sie hat eine massive Angststörung. Noch nie war sie ohne ihren Mann irgendwohin unterwegs – und nun soll sie sich allein in die Bahn setzen und an einem fremden Ort einen Betrieb managen.

A community of outsiders takes over an abandoned gas station. They spend their days ripping up asphalt, drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and wandering through woods and towns in search of new ways of living. People come and go: a charismatic landscaper, Italian anarchists, a policewoman, travelers. A teenager drifts into homelessness. And The Girl With No Name keeps a journal of her attempts to meet new people and sleep with them, sex that is “not a sideline” but the motivating force in a story she is struggling to understand.

When the sleepy Scottish village of Cuddyford is colonised by well-heeled retirees and big-city commuters, Jigger McCloud, a Jack-the-lad local with an eye for the ladies, isn’t slow to make a quick buck at their expense. Life seems rosy for Jigger and his odd-but-loveable family, until he tries to scam a mysterious foreign millionaire, who arrives on the scene with plans to develop the area in unappealing ways. The folk of Cuddyford, native and otherwise, promptly close ranks.

Farley stands out among his Iñupiat neighbors in the Alaska village he calls home, both white and enormous, like the hungry polar bears that wander its streets. Jovial and a little hapless, he works as an investigator for a North Slope oil company, passing the long Arctic winters drinking whiskey with the village’s preacher and playing in the weekly poker game hosted by its matriarch and mayor. When his young daughter visits from thousands of miles away in Portland—where she lives with her mother, who despises him—a shocking moment of violence leaves her dead and Farley injured.

Holly Banks is on a desperate mission to have it all, but nothing in life goes according to plan. She’s quickly learning that keeping up with the Joneses is a full-time job, especially when the women of Primm, her new neighborhood, seem to have it together all the time. With her husband’s job in flux, her daughter’s difficulty with learning to read, and her mother’s new zest for dating, Holly’s life is already anything but picture perfect. Then her dog digs up an old artifact in the village center, and the mishap draws the attention of local media.

Durch eine Verkettung unglücklicher Ereignisse gerät das Leben in dem ostfriesischen Dörfchen Depsholt aus den Fugen. Das Schicksal scheint es mit den Bewohnern nicht gut zu meinen. Das Chaos ist komplett, als ein Fremder auftaucht. Und so kommt ein bisher wohlgehütetes Geheimnis ans Licht. Nicht nur die Depsholter mussen erfahren, dass es im Leben oft anders läuft als gedacht. Daran kann selbst ihr Lieblingsgebäck nichts ändern. Und erst recht nicht ein kauziger Pastor, der mit seinem unkonventionellen Handeln reichlich für Verwirrung sorgt.

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.

Jacqueline Große ist ein sympathisches Landei aus der Eifel mit einem IQ von 132, von dem sie jedoch mit üppiger Oberweite und hellblonden Haaren geschickt abzulenken weiß. Im Friseursalon ihrer Mutter hat sie sich auf eine Karriere im Showgeschäft durch jahrelangen Yellow-Press-Konsum fundiert vorbereitet und arbeitet konsequent auf ihr großes Ziel hin: reich und berühmt werden.

When 73-year-old Jen announces that she is going to marry Eddie, a man she met just a few months previously on a beach on Boxing Day, her four best friends from aqua aerobics are flabbergasted. The wedding is booked and, when the groom decides to have a stag trip to Las Vegas, the ladies arrange a hen party to beat all others - a week in the city of love, Paris.

Three years on from her fairy-tale country wedding to the deliciously handsome Charlie Wellbeloved, Bella's life is far from the 'happily ever after' she dreamed of. Now, heading for the big three-oh at horrifying speed she has gained a couple of stone from boredom and comfort eating, her fledgling interior design business is succumbing to infant mortality, she talks to her black Labrador Dolly more than she does her own husband, and now her close friend Maddy has announced that she's expecting a baby. How can Bella be happy for them when she pines for a family of her own?

Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this: providing surveillance for a chicken coop being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan P.I. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation, of course. Well, it's not exactly a vacation. Younger has been paid to investigate a doctor aboard a luxurious first-class cruise ship up the Alaskan coast. Except passengers are dying. Now Younger finds himself trapped on a ship of fools with a murderer who is leaving a trail of well-to-do passengers in his wake...and leaving evidence pointing an accusing finger at Cecil!

On the same day Bells Walker learns that her IUD has failed, her husband Harry is denied tenure at his Manhattan university. So Bells, Harry, their two adolescent children, and her baby bump move to New York’s Hudson Valley, where Harry has landed a job at Dutchess College in the town of Pigkill. When the farm-to-table utopia Bells envisioned is anything but, she turns to the blogosphere. Under the pen name the County Dutchess, she anonymously dishes about life in Pigkill, detailing the activities of hypercompetitive parents and kombucha-drinking hipsters.