Novels About Small-Town Life

Author	Willa Cather
ISBN	1583485090

Through Jim Burden's endearing, smitten voice, we revisit the remarkable vicissitudes of immigrant life in the Nebraska heartland, with all its insistent bonds. Guiding the way are some of literature's most beguiling characters: the Russian brothers plagued by memories of a fateful sleigh ride,...

Author	Larry Watson
ISBN	0671507036

The events of that small-town summer forever alter David Hayden's view of his family: his self-effacing father, a sheriff who never wears his badge; his clear sighted mother; his uncle, a charming war hero and respected doctor; and the Hayden's lively, statuesque Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little...

Author	Sinclair Lewis
ISBN	0375753141

With Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West, Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer.

Main Street, the story of an idealistic young woman's attempts to reform her small town, brought Lewis immediate...

Author	Allegra Goodman
ISBN	0385323905

In the summer of '76, the Shulmans and the Melishes migrate to Kaaterskill, the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox Jews and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August.

Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters,...

Author	Kent Haruf
ISBN	0375725768

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...

Author	Sherwood Anderson
ISBN	0192839772

zut, alors! i don't even know where to begin. i had such a complicated reaction to this book. am i the only person who didn't find this depressing?? this book is life - it is tender and gentle and melancholy and real. not everything works out according to plan here, but what ever does? that's not necessarily...

Author	A.S. King
ISBN	0375865861

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.
 
So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school,...

Author	Joyce Carol Oates
ISBN	0452282829

The Mulvaneys of High Point Farm in Mt. Ephraim, New York, are a large and fortunate clan, blessed with good looks, abundant charisma, and boundless promise. But over the twenty-five year span of this ambitious novel, the Mulvaneys will slide, almost imperceptibly at first, from the pinnacle of happiness,...

Author	Ray Bradbury
ISBN	0671037706

The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in...

Author	Sarah Addison Allen
ISBN	0553807218

In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world--no matter how out of place they feel.

Emily...

Author	Maeve Binchy
ISBN	0752876872

Kit McMahon lives in the small Irish town of Lough Glass, where everyone knows everyone; children who walk to school together grow up and become sweethearts and marry, people gossip and grumble and dream their lives away. For it is a place where change comes slowly. One day, Kit's mother disappears and...

Author	Howard Frank Mosher
ISBN	0618240098

Northern Borders is Mosher’s nostalgic novel of life in northern Vermont’s Kingdom County, as told by a man remembering his boyhood. In 1948 six-year-old Austen Kittredge III leaves his widowed father to live with his paternal grandparents on their farm in the township of Lost Nation. Escapades...

Author	Garrison Keillor
ISBN	0670805149

Lake Wobegon. I have tried to read you over the years and every time I picked you up I was bored out of my mind. This time I tried audio. That helped. I can see why people love to listen to you; I can see why people don’t like to listen to you.

So, Lake Wobegon was founded by Unitarians, and it seemed...

Author	Michael Palin
ISBN	0312205503

Martin Sproale is an assistant postmaster obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. Martin lives in a small English village, where he studies his hero and putters about harmlessly—until an ambitious outsider, Nick Marshall, is appointed postmaster instead of Martin. Slick and self-assured, Nick steals...

Author	Gail Tsukiyama
ISBN	0312144075

A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and...

Author	Robb Forman Dew
ISBN	0316890669

I was 17 when I first tried to read this book, and none of it stuck to me. I didn't understand the protagonist's need to spend time in her small home town when it obviously made her sick, or her need to reconcile with a father who was distant and trying; I hated the husband for his disloyalty; I blamed them both...

Author	Jorge Amado
ISBN	0553346660

A classic Brazilian "Western" full of romance and adventure, violence and courage, and peopled with wonderfully earthy characters from the legendary author's childhood.

"Set in Bahia at the turn of the century, Showdown is brimming with the gunmen, fugitives, prostitutes and other characters...

Author	Larry Watson
ISBN	1571311025

"With you or without you," Margaret insists, and at these words George knows his only choice is to follow her.

It’s September 1951: years since George and Margaret Blackledge lost their son James when he was thrown from a horse; months since James’s widow Lorna took off and remarried that...

Author	Stella Gibbons
ISBN	0143039598

Update I've just watched the film. It's even better than the book, by a long way. It's very affectionate, and very much played for gentle laughs. The cast is fantastic, some of the best actresses around including Eileen Atkins and Joanna Ab Fab Lumley, Stephen Fry and Ian McKellan. The attention to detail...

Author	Pinckney Benedict
ISBN	0385511132

let's see if i still remember how to write a decent book review...

of the five of my goodreads.com friends and "friends" who have read this, all of them have given it five stars, but not one of them has bothered to write a review.so i guess this makes it my responsibility, but i apologize for the timing...

Author	Ron Koertge
ISBN	0152058656

Larry, Teresa, and Elliot are so tight, there's no room in their circle for more than three: boy, girl, boy. And when they graduate, they plan to move to California to start their real lives--together.
    
But who are they fooling? Larry is gay and trying to come to terms with his sexuality....

Author	Erika Marks
ISBN	0451237927

More than a century ago, lighthouse keeper Linus Harris left his beloved wife and waded into the ocean with three other men to reunite with their mermaid lovers. The mysterious Mermaid Mutiny of 1888 has become legend for the residents of Cradle Harbor, Maine, honored by the town’s Mermaid Festival...

Author

L.M. Montgomery

Emily Starr never knew what it was to be lonely -- until her beloved father died. Now Emily's an orphan, and her mother's snobbish relatives are taking her to live with them at New Moon Farm. She's sure she won't be happy. Emily deals with stiff, stern Aunt Elizabeth and her malicious classmates by holding...

Author	L.M. Montgomery
ISBN	1576463214

Sara Stanley is only fourteen, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding tales. And when Bev King and his younger brother Felix arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated...