Fairacre

Summer at Fairacre charmingly recounts this bright, bustling season and the problems and possibilities that unfold against the backdrop of roses, skylarks and bees... Joseph Coggs finds a temporary home in the schoolhouse while his mother is in the hospital. Miss Read’s friend Amy mysteriously disappears. And, perhaps most difficult of all, Mrs. Pringle, the grumpy school cleaner, is unable to work because of her ‘bad leg’.

Having enjoyed robust health throughout her career, Miss Read, the village schoolmistress at Fairacre, is looking forward to an energetic retirement in a few years' time. But, to her dismay, she is suddenly taken ill. She has no wish to give up her post yet, but memories of her former colleague collapsing in front of the schoolchildren haunt her. Is it time to say farewell to Fairacre?

The village schoolmistress, Miss Read, greets retirement with excitement, and settles down to endless lazy days, but her idyll is interrupted by the daily cares of her friends and fellow villagers in this, the latest Miss Read novel.