London Times best-selling novelist Katie Fforde creates delicious romances that are both light-hearted and intelligent. Suddenly released from her engagement and out of work, Julia Fairfax is looking for a new direction in her life. When a classified ad catches her eye, she embarks on a hilarious trip through the English canals in a rickety hotel boat. Along the way, she encounters hard-to-please guests, an unsettling ex-boyfriend, and the challenges of cooking in a tiny galley with rattling crockery. Life Skills is both a delightful romp and a step-by-step guide about how not to see England’s scenic canals.

A London Times bestseller praised for its irresistible characters, comic timing, and romantic appeal, Stately Pursuits is the story of Hettie Longden, freshly dumped and brokenhearted, who agrees to look after her great-uncle’s long-abandoned mansion in the countryside. She is at something of a lifetime low: no job, no lover, no prospects, and no particular talent for resuscitating crumbling estates. So she hopes for nothing more than a good old-fashioned escape. What she finds, though, is a cast of quirky and ever-present neighbors, a couple of sensitive New Age guys, some very humorless bank officials, two disarming little canines, one gracious, dilapidated, romantic old house—and, just maybe, enough elbow grease to polish everything up again.

Althea Farraday, a thirty-eight-year-old divorced mother of three, has a teenage son who’s a Buddhist, a hypercritical sister who knows how to push all her buttons, a job on the endangered species list, and a love life to match. Just as she’s settling in to a comfortable level of chaos, a near-perfect man enters her life. Equipped to steal her heart and help turn her passion for designing gardens into a new career, Patrick Donahugh may be too good to be true.

Amid wild roses, California poppies, scarlet flax, sweet rocket, love-in-a-mist, and of course, plenty of dirt, Wild Designs is a refreshingly honest and funny read that celebrates the almost-ready-to-bloom aspect of all of our lives.