E.F. Benson - Make Way for Lucia [FICTION BENSON]

• This complitation of six novels chronicles the hilarious misadventures of Lucia, a vibrant social climber and busybody who wheels and deals in provincial England in the 1920s and '30s.

Maeve Binchy - Silver Wedding [FICTION BINCHY]

• The silver wedding anniversary of Deirdre and Desmond Doyle brings together long-absent family and friends, whose lives have followed a variety of paths over the previous twenty-five years.

Tom Bodett - The Free Fall of Webster Cummings [FICTION BODETT]

• Ed Flannigan, who has one arm, no job, and not a clue about how to get on with his life, winds up in Quartz Creek, Oregon, where he confronts New Age Colonists, organic farmers, and a cranky guardian angel who resides in a peach tree.

Carrie Brown - Rose's Garden [FICTION BROWN]

• As 75-year-old Conrad Morresey struggles to cope with the death of his wife, the visit of an angel leads him to open his life to the people of his small town.

Olive Ann Burns - Cold Sassy Tree[FICTION BURNS]

• When Grandpa Rucker suddenly marries his store's young milliner barely three weeks after his wife's death, 14-year-old Will Tweddy watches as his small, turn-of-the-century Georgia town is set on its ear.

Elizabeth Cadell - The Round Dozen [FICTION CADELL]

• When bachelor business man William Helder sets out to find a missing family heirloom, his sleuthing leads him into the English countryside and face to face with a cast of memorable characters.

Jennifer Chiaverini - The Quilter's Apprentice [FICTION CHIAVERINI]

• While searching for a fulfilling job in a small college town, Sarah McClure learns quilting techniques and lessons about family and friendship from an elderly widow. First in the "Elm Creek Quilts" series.

Sandra Dallas - The Persian Pickle Club [FICTION DALLAS]

• For Queenie Bean, a young farmwife, the highlight of each week in Depression-era Kansas is the gathering of the Persian Pickle Club, a group of local ladies dedicated to improving their minds, exchanging gossip, and putting their well-honed quilting skills to use.

Jane Duncan - My Friends George and Tom [FICTION DUNCAN]

• After her husband's death, Janet Sandison returns to the Scottish fishing village of her childhood and is reacquainted with George and Tom, her closest friends from those early days. (One of a series of autobiographical novels collectively titled, "My Friends.")

Clyde Edgerton - Walking Across Egypt [FICTION EDGERTON]

• At 78, Mattie Rigsbee has no one to cook for anymore, until Lamar, the dogcatcher, introduces her to his adolescent nephew, Wesley, a delinquent with a mouth full of foul language and bad teeth, and a craving for good food.

Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm [FICTION GIBBONS]

• Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her freakish country relatives at gloomy Cold Comfort Farm, and manages to bring a sense of order to the Starkadder family's chaotic world.

Jon Hassler - A Green Journey [FICTION HASSLER]

• Just retired from a career of teaching, Agatha McGee leaves Minnesota for a ten-day tour of Ireland, ostensibly to look up her family tree, but secretly to meet the Irishman she has been corresponding with for a number of years.

Garrison Keillor - Lake Wobegon Days [FICTION KEILLOR]

• This season-by-season history of Keillor's imaginary Minnesota hometown gently exposes the foibles of its residents and paints an affectionate portrait of small-town American life.

Michael L. Lindvall - The Good News from North Haven [FICTION LINDVALL]

• Fresh from seminary and the suburbs, Reverend David Battles discovers that the village of North Haven turns hearts of stone into hearts of grace.

Hugh Miller - Ballykissangel: The New Arrival [FICTION MILLER]

• The rural Irish parish of Ballykissangel is not the sleepy backwater that Father Peter Clifford was expecting, and he is quickly forced to come to terms with the idiosyncrasies of the various local characters.

Barbara Pym - Excellent Women [FICTION PYM]

• A quiet comedy about the complications of being a spinster in the England of the 1950's. Mildred Lathbury, the narrator of the story, is a clergyman's daughter, one of those "excellent women" who tend to get involved in other people's lives.

Miss Read - Thrush Green [FICTION READ]

• The first in a series of charming novels about life in a picture postcard English village, in which a schoolmistress narrator presents cleverly linked stories which lead through neat twists and turns to an invariably happy close.

Bill Richardson - The Bachelor Brothers Bed & Breakfast [FICTION RICHARDSON]

• Hector and Virgil, the Bachelor Brothers, operate a bed and breakfast establishment where people like them, the "gentle and bookish and ever so slightly confused," can come and peruse books and enjoy a cup of tea.

James Calvin Schaap - The Secrets of Barneveld Calvary [FICTION SCHAAP]

• The narrator, a town pastor, brings to life the secret joys and concerns of his parishioners at Barneveld Calvary in a colorful mosaic of grief and tragedy, mercy and reconciliation.

Rebecca Shaw - The New Rector [FICTION SHAW]

• As he contends with his own private struggles, new rector Peter Harris gets to know his parishioners and their stories in the traditional English village of Turnham Malpas.

Roy Shepard - The Latest Epistle of Jim [FICTION NASHEPARDME]

• Small-town pastor Jack Andrews receives a letter bearing important news in the morning mail, but he delays opening it; as he goes through the rounds of a typical day, we learn of the hopes and disappointments of his life, as suspense builds regarding the letter's contents.

D.E. Stevenson - Celia's House [FICTION STEVENSON]

• The story of Dunnian -- a spellbindingly lovely family estate in Scottish border country -- and of the generations of Dunne family that live in it and love it dearly.

Faith Sullivan - The Cape Ann [FICTION SULLIVAN]

• The joys and heartbreaks of life in a small Minnesota town during the Great Depression, as seen through the eyes of a remarkable six-year-old girl.

Angela Thirkell - High Rising [FICTION THIRKELL]

• The first of the Barsetshire series, in which Thirkell creates a lovable, humorous picture of rural England in the years leading up to the Second World War and beyond.

Bailey White - Quite a Year for Plums [FICTION WHITE]

• Interconnected stories of the peculiar yet lovable inhabitants of a small town in south Georgia

Effie Wilder - Out to Pasture (But Not Over the Hill) [FICTION WILDER]

• Hattie McNair, eavesdropper extrordinaire, shares heartwarming stories of the high -- and low -- times at the FairAcres retirement community in North Carolina.