"Now that her friends are all marrying or moving away, Heart Beachy has started feeling lonely. Worse, everyone keeps asking when she's going to find a man of her own. Don't they realize Heart has her hands full at home with her widowed dad, too many chores, and a menagerie of needy, small animals? Besides, she doesn't understand the fuss about marriage. It's enough to make her consider finally becoming a pet-sitter, or moving to an English community,...

"May Schott would do anything to change the tragic moment when she stepped too close to the fire that left her best friend, Carl Hilty, devastatingly burned. After Carl left Apple Creek for extensive surgeries, May patiently prayed for one chance to ask his forgiveness. Now, six years later, Carl Hilty is coming home. The reunion goes nothing like May anticipated. Overwhelmed with emotion at seeing Carl again, she is speechless, unable to look away....

"Addie Holmes is Apple Creek's resident wallflower. She is kind and giving and has a lot to be grateful for. But she is full of self-doubt because her parents did not want her and gave her to her grandmother to raise. Now her life seems to be just hard work and loneliness. Wary of romance, Addie assumes no man will look beyond her glasses and her tendency to talk to her rescue donkey, Snickers -- until the day she receives a note from a secret admirer....