Akron Public Library

"When the fun-loving and spontaneous artist Willow West meets buttoned-up, retired English teacher George Emerson, it's not exactly love at first sight. Though she does find the obsessive-compulsive man intriguing. Making it her mission to get him to loosen up and embrace life, she embarks on what seems like a lost cause--and finds herself falling for him in the process. A confirmed bachelor, George vacillates between irritation and attraction whenever...

"Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever ... this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive, strangely content in her second marriage, still in an evolving relationship with her son and his family, encountering a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. Whether it's a young girl coming to...

Mary Lindsay met her little cousin and namesake only once, but she saw in the quiet, imaginative child a kindred spirit to inherit her ancient house. Fifty years later the younger Mary inherited the house with no knowledge of it beyond her indelible childhood memories, and no experience at all of living in the country.

The four-part drama that tells the story of a seemingly placid New England town that is actually wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, all told through the lens of Olive, whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and staunch moral center. The story spans 25 years and focuses on Olive's relationships with her husband, Henry, the good-hearted and kindly town pharmacist; their son, Christopher, who resents his mother's...

Plans for peaceful seaside holidays rarely work out well in the world of classic British mysteries. Retired professor Andrew Basnett, for example, envisioning sandcastles and the blessings of a pale English sun on his pale English skin, is startled to meet his nephew, Peter, on the beach. He's more startled (and not entirely thrilled) when Peter gets him invited to dinner with a celebrity novelist. And he's extremely startled when the novelist's sister-in-law...

Retired teacher and amateur sleuth Phyllis Newsom has entered a Christmas cookie contest. After an annual holiday cookie exchange, she stops by the home of another contestant, Mrs. Simmons, only to find her strangled and lying in a pile of sugar cookies.

A weekend holiday at a wealthy relative's country manor is a recipe that calls for mayhem in this charming cozy English mystery. Andrew Basnett's cousin Felicity is old, rich, and the owner of a swanky Berkshire estate. If Basnett were a savvy mystery reader rather than a retired professor of botany, he would know that an invitation to spend Easter weekend at such an estate is all but guaranteed to involve at least one murder. But since Felicity...

A retired botanist comes to stay in a charming English village, where murder and blackmail disturb the bucolic peace in this mystery series debut. No longer on the sprightly side of seventy, Professor Andrew Basnett is looking forward to retirement and finally digging into the biography he plans to write about an obscure seventeenth century botanist. While his flat in town is renovated, he settles into a little village in Oxfordshire where he's borrowed...

When her friend Georgia Hallerbee asks Phyllis to have her house featured in the annual Christmas Jingle Bell Tour of Homes, Phyllis is equally flattered and flustered. She already has a bridal shower on Christmas Eve and a wedding on New Year's Eve to prepare for, and she's been baking gingerbread cookies as if they're going out of style. But like her tasty treats, she rises to the occasion. Before the tour can even get under way, Phyllis hears a...