Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland

Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland

by Mark Kreidler

Somewhere beyond the circle of money, glitz, drugs, and controversy that characterizes professional sports in America, remnants of an ideal exist. In Iowa, that ideal survives in the form of high school wrestling. Each a three-time state champion, Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere have a chance in their senior year to join the sport's most elite group: the "four-timers," wrestlers who win four consecutive state... (more)

The Teacher's Funeral

by Richard Peck

Now that Russell’s teacher’s done passed away, maybe Hominy Ridge School will be shut down for good and he can light out for the endless skies of the Dakotas to join a team of harvesters working the new 1904 all-steel threshing machines. No such luck. Russell and his schoolmates are about to be ruled by a new teacher who is Russell’s worst nightmare—his sister. Russell’s going to do whatever it takes to sink... (more)

Tully

by Paullina Simons

The time is the late 1970s. The place is the windswept heartland of America. The woman is Tully-- defiant young rebel with an agonizing secret, devoted friend faced with a shattering betrayal, impassioned lover haunted by a man whose touch is more powerful than all her pain. But in the years to come, beyond the torments and marvels of adolescence, into a world where men will vie for her and lie to her, Tully will... (more)

Blind Your Ponies

by Stanley Gordon West

A Death in the Family

by James Agee

Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to... (more)

The Bookshop: A Novel

by Penelope Fitzgerald

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar... (more)

Pants on Fire

by Meg Cabot

Katie Ellison is not a liar. It's just that telling the truth is so . . . tricky. She knows she shouldn't be making out with a drama club hottie behind her football-player boyfriend's back. She should probably admit that she can't stand eating quahogs (clams), especially since she's running for Quahog Princess in her hometown's annual Quahog Festival. And it would be a relief to finally tell someone what... (more)

Just Shy of Harmony (Harmony Novels)

by Philip Gulley

Sam Gardner's second year as minister in quaint and charming Harmony, Indiana, is fraught with trials and incidents, a crisis of faith, a marital catastrophe, and a church elder's ill-hatched scheme to scramble scripture with eggs. But a loving heart and a strong sense of humor is almost certain to see Sam through . . . even if all of Harmony is expecting a miracle come Easter morn.

Southern Vampire Mysteries: Book 1

Dead Until Dark

by Charlaine Harris

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out.... Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea. A fun, fast, funny, and wonderfully intriguing blend of vampire and mystery that's hard to put down, and should not be missed. (Susan Sizemore) Praise for Charlaine Harris: ... (more)

Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

“FUNNY, CHARMING, AND ORIGINAL.” –FANNIE FLAGG Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the tiny town of Big Stone Gap is home to some of the most charming eccentrics in the state. Ave Maria Mulligan is the town’s self-proclaimed spinster, a thirty-five year old pharmacist with a “mountain girl’s body and a flat behind.” She lives an amiable life with good friends and lots of hobbies until the fateful... (more)

How to Make an American Quilt

by Whitney Otto

"Remarkable...An affirmation of the strength and power of individual lives, and the way they cannot help fitting together." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW An extraordinay and moving reading experience, HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT is an exploration of women of yesterday and today, who join together in a uniquely female experience. As they gather year after year, their stories, their wisdom, their lives, form the... (more)

Twilight Saga: Book 1

Twilight

by Stephenie Meyer

Deeply sensuous and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite. Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Isabella's life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn.... (more)

Back Roads

by Tawni O'Dell

Harley Altmyer's mother is in prison for killing his father. So Harley is bringing up his younger sisters and working two jobs to pay the bills-and that doesn't leave a lot of time for distractions. But lately, he's getting distracted by Callie Mercer, an older woman who fills him with such desire he fears he might explode. And as he struggles to keep it together while things begin to spin out of control, Harley... (more)

Eventide (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf, award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel of masterful authority. The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their a... (more)

The Tommyknockers

by Stephen King

Bobbi Anderson and the other good folks of Haven, Maine, have sold their souls to reap the rewards of the most deadly evil this side of hell.

Signs and Wonders (Gulley, Philip)

by Philip Gulley

It's another bustling year in the lives of this quirky Quaker community. Dale Hinshaw is back and floating another of his crackpot ministry schemes-this time, quite literally, with his Salvation Balloons project. Pastor Sam Gardner's wife, Barbara, the 1977 Tenderloin Queen, wins a trip to the Caribbean and thinks she might just go without her workaholic husband. Deena Morrison struggles with being single and... (more)

A Thousand Acres: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice,... (more)

Almost Friends: A Harmony Novel (Harmony Novels)

Almost Friends: A Harmony Novel (Harmony Novels)

by Philip Gulley

It's summer in Harmony, but not everything is as sunny as the weather. The good citizens of Harmony are back and stirring up trouble as usual, sometimes with disastrous results. Pastor Sam Gardner must take a leave of absence from his post at Harmony Friends Meeting to take care of his ailing father. But when spunky pastor Krista Riley comes to fill his position, the quirky Quakers seem to fall in love... (more)

Harmony

Life Goes On

by Philip Gulley

Squarely in the crosshairs of the Church's heresy hunters, can Pastor Sam survive? It's a madcap year in Harmony, Indiana, as Sam Gardner struggles through his fourth year as pastor of the Harmony Friends Meeting. Join the thousands of readers who have fallen in love with the charming small town that hosts what BookPage calls "the biggest collection of crusty, lovable characters since James Herriot settled in... (more)

Paris Trout (Contemporary American Fiction)

Paris Trout (Contemporary American Fiction)

by Pete Dexter

A respected white citizen of Cotton Point, Georgia, Paris Trout is a shopkeeper, a money-lender, and a murderer of blacks. And his friends, family and foes do not realize the danger they face in a man who simply will not see his own guilt.#Penguin.

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Browse Subjects: small town

Top Books

by Mark Kreidler

by Richard Peck

by Paullina Simons

by Stanley Gordon West

by James Agee

by Penelope Fitzgerald

by Meg Cabot

by Philip Gulley

by Charlaine Harris

by Adriana Trigiani

by Whitney Otto

by Stephenie Meyer

by Tawni O'Dell

by Kent Haruf

by Stephen King

by Philip Gulley

by Jane Smiley

by Philip Gulley

by Philip Gulley

by Pete Dexter