"Love romps home and sets the whole place by the ears, gets her own way in everything, and father and mother don't even notice they're being crossed!"Jane Cranstoun is having a lovely time with friends in England (and has just been proposed to by the charming John Marsh) when she is summoned home to Scotland to welcome her young sister Love, newly returned from being 'finished' in Paris. Keeping her engagement a secret, and drawn back into an 'endless round of good works and dull county functions', Jane promptly gets off on the wrong foot with Peregrine Gilbert, a local politician and naturalist, and soon falls prey to Love's inveterate (and incompetent) matchmaking. Supported by a lively and vividly-portrayed cast of family and friends, Jane must steer carefully to avoid the pitfalls of misunderstandings, gossip, and misguided romance.Molly Clavering was for many years the neighbour and friend of bestselling author D.E. Stevenson, and they may well have...

Miss Dorothea Balfour was nearer seventy than sixty, but there was something childlike about her . . . She felt rather like a child, a lost, bewildered child, and she was doing what Belle had always objected to so strongly: staring out of the window at 'those rather odd persons next-door' . . .Shy, uncertain Miss Balfour is still finding her way after the sudden death of her domineering sister Belle, who-following a failed marriage many years ago-had returned home and made a career of brow-beating her meeker sibling (her memorable final words were 'Don't be a fool Dottie'). But Dorothea soon begins exploring her newfound freedom, observing and then becoming happily enmeshed in the doings of her neighbours, the widowed Mrs. Lenox and her five unusual and charming children, with whom Belle had always forbidden contact. Domestic challenges, romantic difficulties, and efforts to aid a painter's abandoned family-all are facilitated by Dorothea's calm intelligence. And before...

"Don't, please, write and tell me that we're mad. I know it already; and even if I didn't, every friend we possess has pointed it out. My spirit is quailing at the prospect of life at Easter Hartrigg, because I know what pitiful figures we shall cut as landowners in a country quite strange to us."Young Susan Parsons has just moved, with her unmarried brother Oliver, to a newly-inherited property in the Scottish Highlands. Their neighbours prove a mixed bag, including the towering, kindly Jed Armstrong, a farmer whose land 'marches with' theirs, the local vicar and his family, and the three gossipy Pringle sisters, who travel by donkey-drawn cart and get their knives into one and all. After a bumpy start, with a disagreeable cook and her nincompoop daughter as their only help, Susan and Oliver begin to settle in nicely, and find themselves in the midst of romance, confusion, and earthy hilarity.Molly Clavering was for many years the neighbour and friend of...

When the time comes for you to retire, Hugo, if you want a quiet life, don't settle down in the country. Bury yourself in London or any really large city, and you can live like a hermit, but avoid the outskirts of a village. I am dazed by the ceaseless whirl of activities in which almost everyone in and round Ravenskirk is involved.Sara Monteith makes an ideal correspondent for Hugo Jamieson, brother of her lost love Ivo, killed in the war before they could marry. Her neighbours in the lovely Border village of Ravenskirk don't know that Sara has moved here because it's where Ivo and Hugo grew up, but they welcome her warmly. Soon, she's drawn into the active village social scene of tea parties, gardening, carol-singing, and Coronation festivities, dodging the judgments of stern Miss Bonaly, defending her helper Madge Marchbanks, an unwed mother, befriending kind, practical Elizabeth Drysdale and charming Mrs. Currie and her daughter Sylvia (the latter first met halfway...

Miss Flora Milligan, tripping westwards through the royal burgh of Haystoun with a bowl of her famous potted head, decently shrouded from vulgar gaze by a snowy napkin, in a neat basket, was the first person of any social standing to notice that the 'To Sell or Let' board had been taken down from the Soonhope entrance.The town of Haystoun is in a tizzy because Andrew and Lucy Lockhart and their children are boldly returning, several years after Andrew's scandalous liaison with another woman. Most residents are firmly in Lucy's corner, but as Lucy's plans to host a family gathering in celebration of their return exacerbates existing tensions, Andrew's cousin Kate Heron-drafted to help smooth the way-begins to wonder . . . The resulting difficulties draw in Kate's brother Greystiel, elderly Jean Anstruther, who keeps the town under careful surveillance, Jean's nephew Robin, the Lockharts' formidable Aunt Charlotte, and an unforgettable array of supporting characters as the...