Rural Vs. Urban Fiction Books
Maybe to some it is weird to pick your next book based on the setting, but not to us! Which will you pick? Rural or Urban?
New and popular books from 2 different styles of living. With a list of book recommendations full of awards, book club picks, and bestsellers, there will be no disappointment. Set in rural or urban living, do you choose to read where you live or where you don't? The choice is yours. All we can promise is an amazing read.
First up, urban setting. Skim through these book sections from Tokyo to New York City, with the hustle and bustle of making it in a fast-paced city, it adds intensity and style with each page turn. More people to fall in love with, but also more people to become your enemy.
Next will be rural settings. Enjoy the slow walks of life with closer communities and outdoor grit to bring people closer or maybe farther apart depending on the romance or the thrills.
The choice is yours - rural vs. urban!
URBAN Setting Books
All the Lovers in the Night
by Mieko Kawakami
Finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction | A BEST BOOK OF 2022
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition.
City of Girls
by Elizabeth Gilbert
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
From the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and The Signature of All Things, a delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person.
"Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are."
Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure).
The Imposters
by Tom Rachman
From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Imperfectionists, the story of a chameleonic writer desperate to finish her final book, and the indelible characters from her own life who intrude on those efforts with increasingly unpredictable results.
Dora Frenhofer, a once successful but now aging and embittered novelist, knows her mind is going. She is determined, however, to finish her final book, and reverse her fortunes, before time runs out. Alone in her London home during the pandemic, she creates, and is in turn created by, the fascinating real characters from her own life.
The Monsters We Defy
by Leslye Penelope
NPR Best Book of 2022! Paste Best Fantasy Book of 2022!
"Never make a deal with shadows at night, especially ones that know your name."
Washington D. C., 1925: Clara Johnson can talk to spirits--a gift that saved her during her darkest moments, now a curse that's left her indebted to the cunning spirit world. So when a powerful spirit offers her an opportunity to gain her freedom, Clara seizes the chance, no questions asked. The task: steal a magical ring from the wealthiest woman in the District.
Nightcrawling
by Leila Mottley
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, TIME, GOODREADS
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison.
River East, River West
by Aube Rey Lescure
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she's never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America.
1985: In the seaside city of Qingdao, Lu Fang is a young, married man and a lowly clerk in a shipping yard. Though he once dreamed of a bright future, he is one of many casualties in his country's harsh political reforms.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
by Sidik Fofana
WINNER of the Gotham Book Prize * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award, and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence * Longlisted for the Story Prize
Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Chicago Review of Books, LitHub, and Electric Lit
At Banneker Terrace, everybody knows everybody, or at least knows of them. Longtime tenants' lives are entangled together in the ups and downs of the day-to-day, for better or for worse. The neighbors in the unit next door are friends or family, childhood rivals or enterprising business partners. In other words, Harlem is home. But the rent is due, and the clock of gentrification--never far from anyone's mind--is ticking louder now than ever.
In eight interconnected stories, Sidik Fofana conjures a residential community under pressure.
To Sir, with Love
by Lauren Layne
Love Is Blind meets You've Got Mail in this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy following two thirty-somethings who meet on a blind dating app--only to realize that their online chemistry is nothing compared to their offline rivalry.
Perpetually cheerful and eager to please, Gracie Cooper strives to make the best out of every situation. So when her father dies just months after a lung cancer diagnosis, she sets aside her dreams of pursuing her passion for art to take over his Midtown Manhattan champagne shop.
Twice Lived
by Joma West
Two Worlds. Two Minds. One Life.
There are two Earths. Perfectly ordinary and existing in parallel. There are no doorways between them, no way to cross from one world to another. Unless you're a shifter.
Canna and Lily are the same person but they refuse to admit it. Their split psyche has forced them to shift randomly between worlds - between lives and between families - for far longer than they should. But one mind can't bear this much life.
The Verifiers
by Jane Pek
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST MYSTERY BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Claudia is used to disregarding her fractious family's model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She's also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls--and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency.
Very Nice Girl
by Imogen Crimp
Selected for Malala's Book Club
Anna doesn't fit in. Not with her wealthy classmates at the selective London Conservatory where she unexpectedly wins a place after university, not with the family she left behind, and definitely not with Max, a man she meets in the bar where she sings for cash. He's everything she's not--rich, tailored to precision, impossible to read--and before long Anna is hooked, desperate to hold his attention, and determined to ignore the warning signs that this might be a toxic relationship.
Ways and Means
by Daniel Lefferts
* A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 * Them * Debutiful * Literary Hub * Electric Literature * And Many More! *
Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance.
But by the spring of 2016, Alistair's plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, he's mired in student debt, and in his desperation he's gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than Alistair could have imagined.
Your Driver Is Waiting
by Priya Guns
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Autostraddle, Shondaland, Booklist
Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast-food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests--everybody's in solidarity with somebody--but while she keeps hearing that they're fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can't afford to pay attention.
RURAL setting books
All the Sinners Bleed
by S. A. Cosby
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - USA Today Bestseller - Washington Post's The Twelve Best Thrillers of the Year - TIME's 100 Must Read Books of the Year - Goodreads Choice Award Nominee - USA Today's Best Reviewed Books of the Year - BookPage's Best Mystery of the Year - Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year - New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.
Then a year to the day after Titus's election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus's deputies.
Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories
by David Means
Finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A new collection of stories by David Means, a visionary "master of the form" (The Observer).
Two nurses meet in the hospital parking lot to share a cigarette. They flirt and imagine a future together. They tell stories of patients lost and patients saved, of the darkest corners of human suffering and the luminous moments that break through, even here in small town USA, in the shadow of death.
Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner
by Barbara Kingsolver
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE - WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
A New York Times "Ten Best Books of the Year" - An Oprah's Book Club Selection - An Instant New York Times Bestseller - An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller - A #1 Washington Post Bestseller
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Just for the Summer
by Abby Jimenez
Instant #1 New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club Pick!
This witty, slow-burn rom-com is the "ideal beach read." --Elle
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other's out, and they'll both go on to find the love of their lives. It's a bonkers idea... and it just might work.
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
Safe and Sound
by Laura McHugh
In a town no one ever leaves, there are only so many places to hide.
As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.
Small Town Sins
by Ken Jaworowski
EDGAR AWARD FINALIST
In Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a former coal and steel town whose best days seem long past, five thousand residents have toughed it out, and have reasons for both worry and hope as this neglected place teeters between decay and renewal. For some of them, their biggest troubles have just arrived.
After years of just scraping by, three restless souls have their lives upended: Nathan, a volunteer fireman who uncovers a secret stash of money in a burning building and takes it; Callie, a nurse whose tender patient may not have long to live, despite the girl's fundamentalist parents' ardent beliefs; and Andy, a recovering heroin addict who undertakes a nightmare mission to hunt down and stop a serial predator.
Women and Children First
by Alina Grabowski
A gripping literary puzzle that unwinds the private lives of ten women as they confront tragedy in a small Massachusetts town.
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town's industries for generations. When a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around the tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper. Some are left to pick up the pieces, while others turn their backs, and all the while, a truth about that dreadful night begins to emerge.
Told through the eyes of ten local women, Grabowski's Women and Children First is an exquisite portrait of grief and a powerful reminder of life's interconnectedness.
Colton Gentry's Third Act
by Jeff Zentner
Recommended by The TODAY Show, this "story of love, healing, and second chances " (Emily Henry) from an award-winning author follows a down on his luck country musician who, in the throes of grief after a shocking loss, moves back home and rekindles a relationship with his high school sweetheart.
Colton Gentry is riding high. His first hit in nearly a decade has caught fire, he's opening for country megastar Brant Lucas, and he's married to one of the hottest acts in the country. But he's hurting. Only a few weeks earlier, his best friend, Duane, was murdered onstage by a mass shooter at a country music festival. One night, with his trauma festering and Jim Beam flowing through his veins, Colton stands before a sold-out arena crowd of country music fans and offers his unfiltered opinion on guns. It goes over poorly.
This Other Eden
by Paul Harding
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys' descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community's fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children.