Harvest Magic

Summer in Lower Thistlewick has never been quite like this. The film crew for Shadowlands — Dimity Armstrong's beloved fantasy series — arrives in July, bringing equipment, enthusiasm, and more opinions about the village's hanging baskets than anyone anticipated. The village adapts with its usual unhurried grace. Alf Cooper, already cast as the inn's publican in the production, discovers that playing an innkeeper while also being one is slightly more complicated than it first appeared. He sends for his nephew, Harvey. Harvey Cooper arrives on a Tuesday with two bags, no explanation, and an apparent talent for making people feel immediately at home. He doesn't say what he's left behind. Alf doesn't ask. The village, which has always understood that some people need time before they can say why they've come, simply gets on with things. Meanwhile, Dimity is spending long hours at Pippin's Nook with Rowan, the production's script writer — hours that are entirely professional and entirely necessary, and that Vivian is finding, quietly and without saying so, increasingly difficult. At the bookshop, Joanna and Hugh are planning a September wedding. And Charlotte is beginning to notice that something has shifted in the village — something that has less to do with the film crew and more to do with Harvey himself. The village has always known what people need. This summer, it has a great deal of work to do. Harvest Magic is the eighth novel in The Enchanted Village series