Nora Kessler

Harlow James has a plan: fix the car, sign the papers, sell the ranch, and get back to Dallas before the town of Copper Creek notices she’s there.The plan lasts approximately twelve minutes.Her car dies in front of Hank’s Gas & Go. The woman behind the counter knows her last name on sight. And the tall, green-eyed rancher who pulls up in a dusty Ford F-250 looks at her like he already knows how this story ends. Callum Brennan has been running her late grandfather’s two hundred acres for years. He also happens to be the neighbor whose family sold Earl James the land in the first place.The will is clear. If Harlow wants to sell, she has to live on the property for ninety days. No exceptions. No shortcuts. Just her, a house full of unanswered questions, a town that has been talking about the James-Brennan feud for nearly thirty years, and a man who keeps showing up exactly when she’s decided she doesn’t need any help.She came to settle an estate. She did not come to stay.But Copper Creek has a long memory, and some inheritances refuse to stay buried.Fences and Foolish Hearts is a slow-burn small-town romance about family secrets, stubborn hearts, and the dangerous difference between the life you planned and the land that claims you.

Tess Daly has nothing left but a car and the stubborn refusal to go home.After her business partner empties their Portland bakery’s accounts and disappears, she drives west until the Oregon coast appears out of the fog. In the small town of Saltbreeze Harbor she finds a hand-lettered sign outside a yellow Victorian: Help Wanted — Cook, Hawthorn House B&B. The woman who opens the door is Agnes Hawthorn, seventy-something, silver-haired, and not in the habit of offering second chances. The attic room is small, the work starts before dawn, and one door on the ground floor stays locked.For a few days the arrangement almost feels like safety. Then a guest who has been asking too many questions about the house is found dead, and the quiet town Tess hoped would let her disappear starts watching her instead.Someone in Saltbreeze knows more than they’re saying. Someone else is willing to keep the truth buried a little longer.