The Toast Maker The Toast Maker: Volume 1: A Little Darlow Novel, Book 1, (Paperback)

<b>The rain had been falling all afternoon when the knock came at Elder Cottage.</b> <p>Iris Harland came to Little Darlow looking for quiet. After years of a life that had grown too loud, she wanted a small cottage, a kettle, a cat, and the kind of solitude that didn't need explaining. What she found instead was a village that had decided - gently, without consultation - that she belonged to them. </p><p>There is Arthur Pritchard, her elderly neighbour, who returns a misdelivered envelope and stays for toast and stories of his late wife Mary. There is Tom Avery, the local handyman with paint in his hair and a plaster on his thumb, who comes to mend her leaning back fence and stays for breakfast. There is Moss the cat, judging everyone from the windowsill, and a chicken-decorated tin full of Mrs Halloway's marmalade recipes - a kitchen inheritance from the woman who lived in the cottage before. </p><p>Over one slow autumn of fence posts and power cuts, November pansies and harvest festivals, Iris finds her quiet life filling with people. A jar of plum jam from Lorna at the post office. A WhatsApp group called fence watch. A first kiss on the old railway path. And, when Tom's roof finally gives in beneath the winter rain, a question she never imagined herself asking: would he like to stay in the spare room? </p><p><i>The Toast Maker</i> is a tender, slow-burning novel about the small mercies of village life - about marmalade and umbrellas and leaning gates, and the way a house, given time and a little buttered bread, learns to call you home.</p>

• The Toast Maker The Toast Maker: Volume 1: A Little Darlow Novel, Book 1, (Paperback)
• Author: Ian McLaren
• ISBN: 9798199030656
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-05-29
• Page Count: 178