When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, everyone has a passionate opinion about whether the town will benefit or suffer. But young Father Flynn is most concerned with the fate of St. Ann's Well, which is set at the edge of the woods and slated for destruction. People have been coming to St. Ann's for generations to share their dreams and fears, and speak their prayers.

When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she's born. But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can't do it alone.

At the heart of every Irish family, the hopes of the future are tied deeply to the dreams of the past. And at the heart of every Maeve Binchy novel, the lives and loves of vividly drawn characters are deftly woven into unforgettable, beautifully realized tales. Now, in this charming audio set, three of Maeve Binchy's classic coming-of-age tales are collected together. These wonderful audio presentations represent the very best work of one of the world's most celebrated authors. And listening to her comforting stories feels just like coming home.

Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.

Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms.

Maeve Binchy imagined a street in Dublin with many characters coming and going, and every once in a while she would write about one of these people. She would then put it in a drawer; “for the future,” she would say. The future is now. Across town from St. Jarlath’s Crescent, featured in Minding Frankie, is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities.

The Mountainview School in working-class Dublin boasts a brightly festooned room brimming with paper flowers and Renaissance posters. There, in an evening class, "An Introduction to Italian," come Aiden Dunne, the supervisor, Signora, the professoressa, and 30 or so students, whose hopes and dreams are bound up in the Tuesday and Thursday lessons.

New York Times best-selling author Maeve Binchy has a way of making everyday experiences extraordinary. Scarlet Feather introduces budding entrepreneurs Cathy and Tom who, along with their extended families, meet the trials and rewards of life head on. Scarlet Feather is a new catering company formed by two friends from cooking school, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather. Their dream is to have the best business in Dublin.

From Maeve Binchy’s earliest writings to the most recent, her work is filled with wisdom and common sense and also a sharp, often witty voice that is insightful and reaches out to her listeners around the world and of all ages. Whether it is one of her best-selling novels or a short story, Maeve shows us that times may have changed, but people often remain the same: they fall in love, sometimes unsuitably; they have hopes and dreams; they have deep, long-standing friends whose secrets are shared; they go on holidays and celebrate new jobs....

Evacuated from Blitz-battered London, shy and genteel Elizabeth White is sent to stay with the boisterous O'Connors in Kilgarret, Ireland. It is the beginning of an unshakeable bond between Elizabeth and Aisling O'Connor, a friendship which will endure through 20 turbulent years of change and chaos, joy and sorrow, soaring dreams and searing betrayals.

From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.

After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Set against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this captivating story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home.... In 1935, Judith Dunbar is left behind at a British boarding school when her mother and baby sister go off to join her father in Singapore.

A place you will never forget. Rosamunde Pilcher's Scotland...where the fields flourish with greenery, the bills bloom with purple, and the lochs glitter with the bright blue of the sky. A time you will never forget. September...when the heather is in full flower, the first chill of autumn cools the air, and the countryside stirs with the hunt, balls, dinner parties, and dance. Rosamunde Pilcher's September...a story of homecomings and heartbreaks, friendships, betrayals, forgiveness, and love.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice (the basis for the TV movie) is the story of five unforgettable characters, lonely and haunted strangers who find love and loyalty as a reborn family of friends during the Christmas holidays.

When the Templeton family from England takes up residence in a stately home in country Australia, they set the locals talking – and with good reason. From the outside, the seven Templetons seem so bohemian, peculiar even. No one is more intrigued by the family than their neighbours, single mother Nina Donovan and her young son Tom. Before long, the two families' lives become entwined in unexpected ways.

A privileged girl from a privileged class, Eliza has a dazzling career in the magazine world of the 1960s. But when she falls deeply in love with Matt, an edgy working-class boy, she gives up her ritzy, fast-paced lifestyle to get married. By the end of the decade, however, their marriage has suffered a harrowing breakdown, culminating in divorce and a dramatic courtroom custody battle over their little girl. Also at risk is Eliza's gorgeous family home, a pawn in the game, which she can't bear to give up.

For the past 33 years, Angela Gillespie has sent to friends and family around the world an end-of-the-year letter titled ‘Hello from the Gillespies’. It’s always been cheery and full of good news. This year, Angela surprises herself - she tells the truth....

Tamila Soroush wanted it all. But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, dreams are a dangerous thing for a girl. Tami abandons them…until her twenty-seventh birthday, when her parents give her a one-way ticket to America, hoping she will “go and wake up her luck.” If they have their way, Tami will never return to Iran…which means she has three months to find a husband in America.

It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. "Confused today," read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know - what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead.

Mary Doyle arrives in Dublin in 1913, doomed, she fears, to a life of domestic service. Instead, however, she finds herself deeply affected by the social and political turmoil of a fledgling nation struggling for independence. Suddenly, all that was once inevitable is no longer a certainty as she is embroiled in the very heart of the Easter Rising.

Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.

This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.

Hope Dunne has carved out a name for herself as a top photographer, known the joys of marriage and motherhood and the heartbreak of loss. In her chic SoHo loft, Hope is content with her life, finding serenity and beauty through the lens of her camera. She isn't looking for a man or excitement. But these things find her when she accepts a last-minute assignment to fly to London at Christmas and photograph one of the world's most celebrated writers - an Irish-American author known for novels of thrilling literary darkness.

The brilliant Alexander McCall Smith became an international sensation with his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. His award-winning wit, made famous through that series, is fully on display in 44 Scotland Street.

Seventeen-year-old Lorelei Patio is the adopted daughter of 200-year-old vampire Sergio Patio. She never realized why her family has had to move so often or why she is not permitted to get too friendly with other young people. In fact, except for one shocking moment that seemed more like a dream, Lorelei never fully realized who and what her father was nor what her sisters were brought up to do for him. But one day, that all changed.

Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.

With a heart full of dreams, Sallie Coleman leaves Texas and heads west determined to get as far from the squalor of her dirt poor beginnings. With its shifting sands, smoky saloons, and bingo palaces, Las Vegas seems like a paradise. A paradise where an extraordinary twist of fate makes Sallie the most powerful businesswoman in Nevada.

Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms.

With the insight, humor, and compassion we have come to expect from her, Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff who are part of a heart clinic in a community caught between the old and the new Ireland. Dr. Clara Casey has been offered the thankless job of establishing the underfunded clinic and agrees to take it on for a year. She has plenty on her plate already - two difficult adult daughters and the unwanted attentions of her ex-husband - but she assembles a wonderfully diverse staff devoted to helping their demanding, often difficult patients.

New York Times best-selling author Maeve Binchy has a way of making everyday experiences extraordinary. Scarlet Feather introduces budding entrepreneurs Cathy and Tom who, along with their extended families, meet the trials and rewards of life head on. Scarlet Feather is a new catering company formed by two friends from cooking school, Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather. Their dream is to have the best business in Dublin.

Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.

It began with Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, 2 inseparable young Irish women, growing up in the village of Knockglen. Benny, an only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents and Eve, an orphan, abandoned to be raised by nuns, seemed an unlikely pair. Together, Eve and Benny knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains...except their own. The pair becomes a circle when Benny and Eve leave for university in Dublin, and meet beautiful Nan Mahon and Jack Foley, a doctor's handsome son. But heartbreak and betrayal would bring the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Long-hidden lies would emerge to test the meaning of love and the strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a...Circle Of Friends.

When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she's born. But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can't do it alone.

Maeve Binchy imagined a street in Dublin with many characters coming and going, and every once in a while she would write about one of these people. She would then put it in a drawer; “for the future,” she would say. The future is now. Across town from St. Jarlath’s Crescent, featured in Minding Frankie, is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities.

Lough Glass is at the heart and soul of the namesake town clinging to its shore. They say that if you go out on St. Agnes' Eve and look into the lake at sunset you can see your future. But beneath its serene surface, the lake harbors secrets as dark and unfathomable as the beautiful woman who walks beside its waters.

The Mountainview School in working-class Dublin boasts a brightly festooned room brimming with paper flowers and Renaissance posters. There, in an evening class, "An Introduction to Italian," come Aiden Dunne, the supervisor, Signora, the professoressa, and 30 or so students, whose hopes and dreams are bound up in the Tuesday and Thursday lessons.

When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, everyone has a passionate opinion about whether the town will benefit or suffer. But young Father Flynn is most concerned with the fate of St. Ann's Well, which is set at the edge of the woods and slated for destruction. People have been coming to St. Ann's for generations to share their dreams and fears, and speak their prayers.

In the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people 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.