In the small town of Virgin River, John "Preacher" Middleton is about to close the bar when a young woman and her three-year-old son come in out of the wet night; Preacher knows a crisis when he sees one--the woman is covered in bruises.

Virgin River is abuzz with the news that a stranger bought the town's abandoned church on eBay. The buyer, a young widowed reverend, is a little like the building itself: in need of some loving care. Noah Kincaid arrives ready to roll up his sleeves and revitalize his new purchase, but he's going to need some help. An ad in the local paper brings an improbable candidate his way. "Pastor's assistant" is not a phrase that springs to mind when Noah...

After years spent on ranches around Los Angeles, Clay Tahoma is delighted to be Virgin River's new veterinary assistant. The secluded community's wild beauty tugs at his Navajo roots, and he's been welcomed with open arms by everyone in town -- everyone excerpt Lilly Yazhi. Lilly has encountered her share of strong, silent, traditional men within her own aboriginal community, and she's not interested in coming back for more. In her eyes, Clay's earthy,...

Kaylee Sloan's home in Southern California is full of wonderful memories of the woman who raised her. But the memories are prolonging her grief over her mother's recent death. A successful author, Kaylee hoped she could pour herself into her work. Instead she has terrible writer's block and a looming deadline. Determined to escape distractions and avoid the holiday season, Kaylee borrows a cabin in Virgin River. She knows the isolation will help her...

"Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is...

"The life Olivia Harper always dreamed of isn't so dreamy these days. The 16-hour work days are unfulfilling and so are things with her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when she hears that her estranged mother, Juliet, has been seriously injured in a car accident, Liv has no choice but to pack up her life and head home to beautiful Cape Sanctuary on the Northern California coast. It's just for a few months-that's what Liv keeps telling herself....

In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent-her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error"-Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents...

Sisters Eva and Nell struggle to survive in a world that has reverted to its natural state after war, nuclear melt-downs, earthquakes, paramilitary attacks, and other long-predicted cataclysms culminate in a total breakdown of modern technology.

In the fall of 1978, on the 640-acre family deer-hunting ranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, an eleven-year-old boy goes hunting with three men: his father, grandfather, and a friend of his father's. Goat Mountain is a dry place of live oak and buck brush and poison oak with occasional relief from stands of ponderosa pine, white pine, and sugar pine, and even a swampy bear wallow. This is the place where all the family's memories and stories...

It is the beginning of December. Oak fires are burning in the stately flickering hearths of Nideck Point. It is Yuletide. For Reuben Golding, now infused with the wolf gift and under the loving tutelage of the Morphenkinder, this Christmas promises to be like no other . . . as he soon becomes aware that the Morphenkinder, steeped in their own rituals, are also celebrating the Midwinter Yuletide festival deep within Nideck forest. From out of the shadows...