small cities

"It's 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina . . . [and] beneath the town's cheerful facade, . . . teens live in constant fear of being sent to The Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a record of putting unruly teens back on the straight and narrow--a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the mysterious deaths that have occurred there . . . At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they've been told: that the students' strange demises were all just tragic accidents . . . But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece . . . goes horribly awry--and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment--Rex and Leif are forced to piece together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder . . . What the boys find--with recent NYU film school student Janine Blitstein and her cousin Donna (a former Whitewood student with secrets of her own) at their side--will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest teenage imaginations, one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core"--Provided by publisher.

Contains sixteen short stories, including a couple comics, addressing misconceptions about small towns.

A young woman saved from freezing to death and drowning in the icy Black Root River outside a small Minnesota town learns her and her friend's accident was anything but, and that she has a personal connection to a similar young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier--and the killer may have just tried to strike again. Determined to get answer, the woman plunges into her own investigation, and uncovers a secret history of violence that, if brought to light, could destroy her hometown.

"Rosary, California, is not an easy place to grow up, particularly without a mom. So cut off from the rest of the world that even the Internet is blocked, Rosary is a town run by evangelicals but named by Catholics (and the evangelicals aren't particularly happy about that). It's a town on very formal relations with its neighbors, one that doesn't have much traffic in or out and that boasts an oil refinery as well as a fairly sizable population of teenagers"--Provided by publisher.

In 1992, eleven-year-old Tikka Malloy and her older sister Laura are shocked to learn that their friends and playmates the Van Apfel girls--Ruth, Hannah, and Cordelia--have disappeared. Perhaps they ran away from their too-strict evangelical parents, or perhaps someone kidnapped them. Years pass and their disappearance is never solved, and now the adult Tikka returns to Australia to try to make sense of what happened that summer of 1992.

For Sophie, small-town life has never felt small. With her four best friends, she can weather any storm. But when Sophie's beloved Acadia High School marching band is selected to march in the upcoming Rose Parade, it's her job to get them all the way to LA. Her plan? To persuade country singer Megan Pleasant, their Midwestern town's only claim to fame, to come back to Acadia to headline a fundraising festival. The only problem is that Megan has very publicly sworn never to return. What ensues is a journey filled with long-kept secrets, hidden heartbreaks, and revelations that could change everything along with a possible fifth best friend: a new guy with a magnetic smile and secrets of his own.

"In Sunshine, the main event in town is Friday night football, the biggest party of the year is held in a field filled with pickup trucks, and church attendance is mandatory. For Kaycee Jean McCoy, life in Sunshine means dating guys she has no interest in... Unlike Kaycee, Bren doesn't really conceal who she is. But as the cool, worldly new girl, nobody at school seems to give her any trouble. Maybe there's no harm if Kaycee gets closer to her too, as long as she can keep that part of her life a secret, especially from her family and her best friend"--Publisher.

When fifteen-year-old Charlie Harker moves to the sleepy town of Rolling Hills, he hears rumors of strange creatures and discovers a mysterious illness spreading across town that may not be what it seems.

Describes what it is like to live in a small town.

Longing to escape the town where his family grew up, Benji and his friends shoot down a flying saucer at the local quarry and confront old tensions when they decide to investigate the ship's mysteries on their own.