"Once a world-famous photographer, known for her iconic image, "Still Life with Bread Crumbs," Rebecca Winter has drifted out of the spotlight, and is now more inclined to think of herself as the Artist Formerly Known as Rebecca Winter. As her income dries up, she decides to leave behind the expensive world she knows in New York City, sublet her apartment, and move to a small, inexpensive cabin in the country, where her life falls into a quieter rhythm....

"A bighearted and moving debut about a wry retired schoolteacher whose decade-old secret threatens to come to light and send shockwaves through her small Texas town"-- Billington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days....

In the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young carve their initials--and those of their loves-into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.

"For decades, ever since the war, Number One Main Street, Ballybucklebo, has housed O'Reilly and his practice... It is to Number One that patients young and old come when they need a doctor's care, for everything from the measles to a rare and baffling blood disease. An unexpected turn of events threatens to drive O'Reilly from his home for good, unless the entire village can rally behind their doctor and prove that love really can conquer all." --...

Mary, the spirited youngest daughter of an angry, violent man, is sent to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife. Her strange new surroundings offer unsettling challenges, including the vicar's lecherous son and a manipulative fellow servant. But life in the vicarage also offers unexpected joys, as the curious young girl learns to read and write -- knowledge that will come at a tragic price.

Tired and fed up, tycoon Simon Shaw seeks refuge in Provence, where he encounters a pretty Frenchwoman who lures him into buying a little hotel that proves far more troublesome than quaint.