A Mystery Man for Jo

Jo Bailey has had enough of her high-pressure job in the city. With no idea what the future holds, she quits.

Jo goes back to sleepy Hope Valley to manage her newly-married mother's 'little hobby'—a quirky bookstore that seems to be more of a community center than a real business. Clearly, her mother has no clue about how a business should operate. For heaven's sake, what kind of bookstore has a craft group that takes over on Fridays and ladies playing canasta on Thursday mornings?

Not only that, she learns that her mother has saddled her with some old geezer who sets up camp daily in a corner of the bookstore to write his memoirs. His memoirs.

Isn't a bookstore about buying books, not writing them?

Determined to make the bookstore pay, Jo starts planning changes—but meets with gentle resistance from all the locals, including Mr. Smith, the writer of memoirs. He is not the doddery old octogenarian that she expected, but a mystery man who is bent on keeping his real agenda a secret.

Jo is determined to find out what he's really doing, tapping away at that laptop every morning for three and a half hours. He appears to be taking far too much interest in the townspeople and Jo's own affairs for someone who is merely writing his life history. So… what's going on?

By the time Jo manages to winkle out The Mysterious Mr. Smith's secrets, it's all too late. She has already lost her heart to him.