When Olivia Rawlings, Boston pastry chef extraordinaire, sets not only her flambé dessert but the entire building alight, she escapes to Vermont stay with her best friend, Hannah, who lives in a town famous for Bag Balm and contra dancing. Since her previous post at the exclusive Boston club has probably also gone up in smoke, Olivia gratefully accepts a job at the Sugar Maple Inn, not realizing at first that she's been hired to help the cantankerous...

"Deftly spinning genres of his feverish literary invention, Rion Amilcar Scott creates his very own Yoknapatawpha County with fictional Cross River, Maryland. Established by the leaders of America's only successful slave revolt, the town still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding. Among its residents are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God's last son; Tyrone, a ruthless PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood...

"The long-awaited conclusion to the beloved New York Times bestselling and "engrossing" (People) Beartown series--which inspired an HBO series of the same name--follows the small hockey town's residents as they grapple with change, pain, hope, and redemption."--

A mysterious beachcomber appears one day on the coastal bluffs near the small town of Carverville, a place whose best days are long behind it. Who is he, and why has he returned after nearly forty years? His homecoming soon takes a sinister turn when he and a local teenager make a gruesome discovery on the beach forcing him to reckon with the ghosts of his past--and the dangers of the present. Rumors, distrust, and conspiracies spread among the townsfolk,...

The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of her day, renowned for her notorious trick of sawing a man in half on stage. One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt watching from the audience, she swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear. But when Virgil happens...

"This ... debut novel tells the ... story of a rescue dog that helps a struggling young outsider make peace with the past"--Amazon.com. Tragedy sent Addie Andrews fleeing from Chicago to the shelter of an unexpected inheritance-- her beloved aunt's somewhat dilapidated home in Eunice, Arkansas, population very tiny. She's got an elderly next door neighbor who perplexingly dances outside in his underwear, a house needing more work than she has money,...

Hattie Hoffman has spent her whole life playing many parts: the good student, the good daughter, the good girlfriend. When she's found brutally stabbed to death, the tragedy rips right through the fabric of her small-town community. Full of twists and turns, Everything You Want Me to Be reconstructs a year in the life of a dangerously mesmerizing young woman, during which a small town's darkest secrets come to the forefront, and she inches closer...

"FIRST IN A NEW TRILOGY From Charlaine Harris, the bestselling author who created Sookie Stackhouse and her world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, comes a darker locale-populated by more strangers than friends. But then, that's how the locals prefer it. Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town. There's...

"Nell Stillman's road is not easy. When her boorish husband dies soon after they move to the small town of Harvester, Minnesota, Nell is alone, penniless yet responsible for her beloved baby boy Hillyard. Not an easy fate in small-town America at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the face of nearly insurmountable odds, Nell finds strength in lasting friendships and in the rich inner life awakened by the novels she loves"--Dust jacket flap....

When a post-Reconstruction African-American community succumbs to a desperate need for funds and purpose, its mayor puts the small town up for sale and finds a buyer in Bernardine Brown, who believes the town's sale to be a sign from God.