A stranger's arrival in the village stirs up ripples of speculation and interest. The village finds itself paying tribute to the stranger's hero, a missionary born and bred in Thrush Green, and the stranger's presence alters the romantic prospects of Miss Dimity Dean.

Feelings are running high in the Cotswold village of Thrush Green. The rector's plan for the neglected churchyard doesn't meet with universal approval; there is a clash of personalities at the local school; and someone has returned to the village after an absence of fifty years.

Retired school teachers Miss Watson and Miss Fogerty make a return visit to Thrush Green to see old friends.

Summer arrives in Fairacre, and "Joseph Coggs finds a temporary home in the schoolhouse while his mother is in the hospital. Miss Read's friend Amy mysteriously disappears. Perhaps most difficult of all, Mrs. Pringle, the grumpy school cleaner, is unable to work because the pain in her bad leg flares up."--Cover.

40 stories in the life of a village schoolteacher.

On the first day of summer holiday, Miss Read plunges literally into the end of the term when she falls and twists her ankle. An old friend insists on taking her to the idyllic island of Crete. The two women, so dissimilar but united in friendship have time to assess the values of married and single life.

Plans for the centenary celebration of Nathaniel Patten's time as a missionary in Africa are merged with a celebration of Thrush Green's own village school.

Revisits the English village of Fairacre and its school mistress whose busy life revolves around her charges and the bustling activities of village life.