"Feel Good" Books

Evening Class  by Maeve Binchy
A mysterious, eccentric signorina teaching an Italian class in a small Irish village gradually learns her students’ secret dreams and slowly transforms their lives.

Lamb in Love  by Carrie Brown
Norris Lamb, a timid English postmaster and church organist, falls helplessly, secretly in love with Vida Stephen, a nanny to the mentally handicapped son of a rich American widower.

Loose Lips  by Rita Mae Brown
Sisters Julia "Juts" and Louise "Wheezie" Hunsenmeir patrol the night skies for Civil Defense and preside over gossip at the local beauty salon, in a story of rivalry, identity and family set against the backdrop of the World War II homefront.

True Love and Homegrown Tomatoes by Julie Cannon
Grief-stricken over the death of her husband, Imogene Lavender dedicates herself to nurturing her vegetable garden, her daughter Jeanette and her niece Loutishie, and finds love and hope in her garden.

Ladies with Options by Cynthia Hartwick
Thanks to the efforts of 18-year-old Skye, the diverse members of the Mostly Methodist Club develop an interest in investments, as their hopes for a comfortable nest egg take off when their investment in a company called Microsoft suddenly strikes it rich.

Sheltering Rain  by JoJo Moyes
A family drama set in the Irish countryside focuses on three generations of women who are reunited after decades of separation and estrangement.

The Shell Seekers  by Rosamunde Pilcher
The author of Coming Home recounts the passions, tragedies and secrets of Penelope Keeling as she tries to decide the fate of a valuable painting her father symbolically based on her unconventional life.

The Blue Bottle Club  by Penelope J. Stokes
A reporter finds slips of paper on which four teenage girls wrote down their dreams in 1929 and tracks down the now senior women whose dreams have been torn, but who still have a common thread running through their lives.

Sophie and the Rising Sun  by Augusta Trobaugh
When Mr. Oto arrives in Salty Creek, Georgia, kind Miss Anne takes him in, and widow Sophie rediscovers new joy after meeting him, but the relationships are tested after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and Mr. Oto's new life is besieged.

The Choir  by Joanna Trollope
A confrontation between the Dean of Aldminster Cathedral and the headmaster of the Choir School involves the necessity to sacrifice the school in order to restore the cathedral, and results in community-wide rifts.

Quite a Year for Plums  by Bailey White
Introduces the colorful and offbeat inhabitants of a sleepy, southern Georgia town, including Roger, a studious peanut virologist; Della, a newcomer and painter of chickens; and Louise, who is trying to summon Martian invaders.

The Train to Estelline  by Jane Roberts Wood
In 1911, Lucinda Richards begins teaching in Estelline, Texas, where she finds much prejudice and ignorance in her one-room schoolhouse.