Small Town America

The Waitress 🌟 A Story of Love, Loss, and Hope in a Changing World Step into the life of Betty Powers, a woman whose life unfolds amidst the chaos of a country rebuilding itself. Set in the post-Depression era, The Waitress is a powerful tale of resilience and the enduring strength of the human spirit. Born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, Betty’s childhood during the Great Depression was filled with harsh realities of economic hardship and emotional struggle. But her spirit is unshakable, even during the toughest challenges of her life. As a young woman, she becomes entangled ...

One of the bestselling novelists of the American West brings us a gripping tale of gold, greed, and vengeance.

Young Nina Macciocco weds handsome Italian soldier Angelo Taglieri in an arranged marriage, and they move to Steubenville, Ohio. Angelo works in a steel mill, and Nina cares for their daughter. They live happily in a house on Seventh Street. Years later, Angelo dies.Steubenville is a rough town where Mafia don Vincenzo Santucci runs everything from bars to restaurants to brothels. His vast influence extends over some local doctors, lawyers, judges, and police. Vincenzo’s cousin, Vito Santucci, is also a Mafia don in Italy. Brothers Enzo and Bruno Pagano work for him. Everyone likes even-...

Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, a baseball whisperer who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl's original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the ghetto in Los Angeles who would one day become a beloved Hall of Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith.

From one of the bestselling western novelists of all time, comes another classic story. Templeton Lambeth had so desperately wanted a son - an heir to ride by his side through the vast, wild ranges just west of the Pecos River. But to his disappointment, his wife bore a girl. His hopes crushed and in denial, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a boy. In honor of Lambeth's more successful brother, they named her: Terrill.

The lonely predicament of Carol Kennicott, caught between her desires for social reform and individual happiness, reflects the position in which America's turn-of-the-century "emancipated woman" found herself.

Elvira is home to creatures the world doesn’t want—or wants too much, like the fairies. Now the secret’s out, and tourists are coming to see the tiny town’s wonders. Before they arrive, someone spellbinds fairies, slashes werewolves and sets the vampires at each other’s throats. Ghost hunter Josh Seldom and his (mostly human) friends must stop the mayhem. But in a town full of monsters, how do you find a killer? Expect realism & fantasy, mystery & humor. Pure fun!

"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.

His need to dominate could destroy everything. There’s a darkness within Eric, fueled by control and the need to dominate. It poisoned his last relationship. Refusing to let it out is tough when his new flame, Catherine, desires a man with power over her. She’s strong, a self-assured business owner, and craves a different experience in the bedroom. When her parents come to town trying to set her up with another man, he agrees to pretend to be her boyfriend, but the deception quickly turns far too truthful. And Eric’s heart isn’t the only thing at stake.  

Assigned to the CIA's survivalist school in the Appalachians, Sasha Kopytina intercepts a short wave radio transmission from a long-dormant Russian sleeper agent, a spy ring headed up by her father. They went off the grid after the Berlin Wall fell twenty-five years ago. A quick phone call to her half-brother, Sam Mulchay, in the CIA's Black Ops, and he appears on the scene under the guise of FBI Special Agent Adam Brookfield. Sam arrives in the dusty, hot small town of Brownville, Alabama, to investigate and quickly finds himself caught up in the spiraling mystery of the disappearance of ...

The story of a Civil War soldier finding his humanity in the face of horrible savagery. Emerging from the Civil War a shamed and broken man, Stephen Latch turns to a life of thievery and murder. Still hoping to uphold the values of the Confederacy, Latch sets his sights on the wealth of resources pouring westward from the northern United States, putting together a band of ruthless misfits to help him stake his claim of the riches of the caravans.

Folk who value their sanity and their lives would be wise not to visit Larson's Cove this summer. Death, danger, and intrigue have drifted into the small town of Meadowville, and the growing sense that something is amiss is almost palpable on the hot, still air. Larson's Cove isn't a popular spot with the locals, but it is home to Larson's Shed. The seafood restaurant on the bay's falling-down wharf was once somewhat of an icon in the area, but it has stood vacant for quite some time. However, circumstances have recently changed. Boyd Paine, an out-of-towner with a mysterious past, has ...

John Henry Cole is an operative of Ike Kelly's Detective Agency, based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Returning to Cheyenne from what had been a deadly assignment in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Cole has decided that he has no alternative but to resign from the agency and pursue a different line of work. However, in Cheyenne, Cole learns that Ike Kelly has been murdered and his body burned in a fire that destroyed both the agency office and the shop next door.

Nothing casts a more sinister shadow over our nation's history than the gruesome lynchings that happened between 1882 and 1937, claiming 4,680 victims. Often, in a show of racist violence, the lynchers tortured their victims before murdering them. Most killers were never brought to justice; some were instead celebrated as heroes, their victims' bodies displayed or even cut up and distributed as trophies.

Named "Finalist, Best Fiction of 2017" by the N. Texas Book Festival, this critically acclaimed novel is a story you'll live and breathe rather than just read. The high price demanded of a nation embroiled in a far-off, unpopular war grips small town America where such sacrifice is ultimately borne. In the hardscrabble west Texas town of Conroy, folks prepare to send their favorite son off to that war, as a parallel battle of domestic violence erupts at home, explosive and relentless, forging bonds of strength and fortitude within the young generation struggling to surmount the violence and...

While out checking their lobster traps, two Landry cousins and skipper Dwayne Samson saw Boudreau in his boat, the Midnight Slider, about to vandalize their lobster traps. Like so many times before, the small-time criminal was about to cost them thousands of dollars out of their seasonal livelihood. Boudreau seemed invincible, a miscreant who would plague the village forever. Meanwhile, the police and local officials were frustrated, cowed, and hobbled by shrinking budgets. One of the men took out a rifle and fired four shots at Boudreau and his boat.

Right after high school, Joe Goffman left sleepy Bush Falls, Connecticut, and never looked back. Then he wrote a novel savaging everything in town, a novel that became a national bestseller and a huge hit movie. Fifteen years later, Joe is struggling to avoid the sophomore slump with his next novel when he gets a call: his father's had a stroke, so it's back to Bush Falls for the town's most famous pariah. His brother avoids him, his former classmates beat him up, and the members of the book club just hurl their copies of Bush Falls at his house.

Born in Brooklyn, Sammy Gregg is small in stature and naive to the ways of the world, yet headstrong and resolute to save enough money to marry Susie Mitchell. Gregg calculates that he needs $15‚000 and figures he can earn enough in six months out west. Although he is a small man who knows nothing of fighting‚ guns‚ or horses‚ he takes his $5‚000 in savings and heads west‚ arriving in Munson‚ a tough, lawless town.

Cape Cod, a bookstore, and three cozy mysteries. Ivy Bloom starts her life over again in her childhood home on Cape Cod. She and her sister Gigi open a bookstore in an old mansion they have inherited. With help from Gigi's daughter Jen, one very handsome detective named Drake, and a small and adorable dog, Ivy tries to concentrate on selling books. The universe has other plans and keeps dropping dead bodies in her way. What can she do but investigate? If you like your cozy mystery heroines funny and frank, with a little bit of sass, then you'll like Ivy Bloom because she's your kind of woman!

Blood, sweat and tears are common in war but war doesn’t belong in a peaceful small town. Hickory Grove is no longer peaceful and it’s CJ Thompson’s fault. When he left Iraq, he hoped he’d be able to rest. When he found Jesse Evans, he found love and his rest came to an abrupt end. The people don’t want two men living together in their town and they’ve taken extreme measures to remove them to the point where it’s becoming dangerous for the two soldiers to remain there. CJ was born and raised in Hickory Grove. He doesn’t want to leave. Ever since Jesse left Afghanistan, ...