Winesburg, Ohio is a series of loosely linked short stories set in the fictional town of Winesburg. The stories are held together by George Willard, a resident to whom the community confide their personal stories and struggles. The townspeople are withdrawn and emotionally repressed and attempt in telling their stories to gain some sense of meaning and dignity in an otherwise desperate life.

Middlemarch is a recognized masterpiece that explores the complex social world of 19th century England. It is concerned with the lives of several ordinary people, albeit ones with high social standing. The novel explores the very fabric of Victorian society in the 1800s, showing how various human passions--heroism, egotism, love, and lust--interrelate within this society.

For fans of books like THE READERS OF BROKEN WHEEL RECOMMEND, a feel-good story of going home again to get things right. Crocker County crowns a new Corn Queen every year, but Jane Willow's the one you would remember. She can't forget Iowa, either. Even though she fled to LA to become a film critic years ago, home was always there behind her. But when a family tragedy happens, she's forced to drive back to Crocker County. The rolling farmlands can't...

"With the spirit of the holidays wafting through the Beacon Bakeshop, Lindsey thinks she has the recipe for the sweetest Christmas ever--winning the town-wide cookie bake-off. Unfortunately, striving for a picture-perfect December in Beacon Harbor is a lot like biting into stale shortbread. Low on staff and bombarded by visits from family, Lindsey can barely meet demands at work, let alone summon the confidence to face fierce competition . . . Self-appointed...

Ain't She Sweet? Not exactly . . . The girl everybody loves to hate has returned to the town she'd sworn to leave behind forever. As the rich, spoiled princess of Parrish, Mississippi, Sugar Beth Carey had broken hearts, ruined friendships, and destroyed reputations. But fifteen years have passed, and life has taught Sugar Beth its toughest lessons. Now she's come home-broke, desperate, and too proud to show it. The people of Parrish don't believe...

In 1948, a mysterious and charismatic man arrives in a small Virginia town carrying two suitcases; one contains his worldly possessions, the other is full of money. He soon inserts himself into the town's daily life, taking a job in the local butcher shop and befriending the owner and his wife and their son. But the passion that develops between the man and the wife of the town's wealthiest citizen sets in motion a series of events that not only upset...

In the course of this wide-ranging, richly detailed novel, every kind of human problem finds its way to the doorstep of Quee Purdy, a tireless entrepreneur for whom love and sex are the "hot commodities" in which she deals. McCorkle's extraordinary storytelling skills allow her to juggle at least six parallel stories in a novel about playing God. And she does it divinely. Jill McCorkle's first two novels were released simultaneously when she was...

"Maeve Binchy, "the grand story teller,"* returns with a cast of characters you will never forget when they all spend a winter week together on holiday at Stone House, a restful inn by the sea... Stoneyville is a small town on the coast of Ireland where all the families know each other. When Chicky decides to take an old decaying mansion, Stone House, and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, the town thinks she is crazy. She is helped...

"Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie, who is terrified by the thought of a killer in her very own backyard. But it's not just Morgan's death that has Sadie on edge. It's their eerie old home, with its decrepit decor and creepy attic, which they inherited...

In 1916, Sisters Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada, a hardscrabble world of potato farms, rough men, hard work, and baffling beauty...