Sheila Connolly

Claire Hastings, professor at a prestigious women’s college, has retreated to an isolated cabin in Maine in midwinter to work on the book that will guarantee her tenure, but she’s having trouble finishing it. Then disgraced journalist Jonathan Daulton stumbles into her cabin late one night, soaking wet and bleeding from what seems to be a gunshot wound. She recognizes him from a romantic encounter at a conference years earlier, one she’s been trying desperately to forget. Much to her relief, and embarrassment, he doesn’t appear to remember her.

Apple orchard owner Meg Corey is finally feeling settled into her new life in Granford—she's made friends, and her relationship with Seth Chapin is warming up—when her old Boston coworker Lauren Converse comes barreling into town, running the Congressional campaign for a former hometown football hero. But Meg doesn’t have time to worry about why Seth seems reluctant to back Lauren’s campaign when her neighbor, local dairy farmer Joyce Truesdell, is found dead from an apparent kick to the head from one of her cows.

Nell Pratt, president of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society in Philadelphia, has to stoke her intuition to find an arsonist/murderer whose identity is veiled in smoke…