Big Stone Gap

'The most useful book I ever read taught me how to read faces, an ancient Chinese art. Even dimples have meaning. I have them and according to face-reading, something wonderful is supposed to happen to me when I turn thirty-five. It's been four months since my birthday, and I'm still waiting...'

Big Stone Gap, Virginia, is the sort of sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains where kids get married and start families at eighteen, and stay forever. So thirty-five-year old Ave Maria Mulligan is something of an oddity. A self-proclaimed spinster, as the local pharmacist she's been keeping the townsfolk's secrets for years.

Now Ave Maria is about to discover a scandal in her own family's past that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life. Soon she's juggling two unexpected marriage proposals and conducting a no-holds-barred family feud.

With an unforgettable cast of characters and a heroine with an extraordinary story to tell, all living in this quirky, remarkable town where even Elizabeth Taylor pays a visit, Big Stone Gap is a wonderfully vibrant, unashamedly feel-good debut.