Book One · The Nightingale Inn
The Baker and the Innkeeper
A closed-door small-town romance
She came for one wedding season. He gave her a two-week trial. The inn had other ideas.
When pastry chef June Calloway bets everything on a job at a rambling Victorian inn on the Maine coast — hired over the phone, off one bite of galette — she's not looking for love. She's looking for somewhere her too-muchness fits. What she finds is Graham Hartwell: grumpy, precise, carrying his family's inn the way other men carry grief — and rationing his praise at exactly two words: Fine. Good.
And inside a wall, a hidden ledger of guests who paid nothing, stayed in secret, and checked out into new lives. Because the Nightingale Inn used to keep more than visitors.
Setting
Welcome to Larkspur Cove, Maine
Population 2,400. One harbour, one bakery, one pub, one inn perched on the bluff with a view of the water and a boiler that's been threatening to quit since 1987. Lupines bloom along the coastal road every June. The ferry runs unless there's a nor'easter. There's always a nor'easter.
The Knitting Circle knows everything. The harbour master sees everything. And Eleanor Hartwell, proprietor of the Nightingale Inn since 1971, remembers things she has never been asked about.
Explore the Town
Letters from Larkspur Cove
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