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The Kitchen Garden: The Hearthkeeper
Paperback
Series: The Hearthkeeper, Book 2
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Oct 23 2026
Pages: 502
Weight: 1.32
Height: 1.25 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Spring has opened the bridge road, and for the first time in thirty years the Longmere's coaches are stopping at the crossroads instead of going past it. The wing is aired. The long table is full most evenings. And Odie Fenwick is breaking ground on the kitchen garden the old inn lost when the road went away, with a drover ruling on beans from the corner, a carpenter who has opinions about fence posts, and an apprentice worth binding to the house in ink.
She has a deep larder and a village that eats at her table. She also has a letter in the drawer signed by an army auditor, a man of business in a grey coat buying up every debt in the valley for a widow with patient money, and an old drover whose cottage stands one missed quarter from the auction block.
Down the hill, the keeper of the Gilded Sparrow has started a chalk war on the boards at the green's two ends, and means to win the midsummer fair with a goose. Up the beck, somebody has been at the mill's sluice in the dark. And a potboy nobody notices is carrying messages in a pie dish between two houses that are not supposed to be speaking.
The fair is coming. So is the man with the boxes. The garden has to come up, the brew-house has to stop tasting of church pews, and a house that has always fed strangers first has to learn to let the village stand in the yard beside it when the trouble arrives.
This time the keeper of the crossroads will not stand alone. She has not decided yet whether she likes that.
The house and its people: Lark Kettle, bound to the house in her own hand at fifteen, keeping the slate and the register and a column nobody asked her for. Tam in the corner, ruling on beans, fords and the price of the Anchor's pint. Bram with a fence post and a view. Hask at the good chair with three husbands' worth of opinions. Marten Weck the miller, whose sluice somebody wants broken. Sim Petch, the Sparrow's potboy, whose whole professional asset is that nobody notices him. Garrick and his dog on the night watch. And Cassia Merrow, who sends up a jar of walnuts with no note and would like it entered that she is not sentimental.
Inside this book
- A full turning year of garden, brewing, fair days and a long winter's snap
- The rival keeper's first grudging step from war to treaty
- A village that answers debt with pie dishes, watch rotas and a learned pig
- Slow-burn warmth, no cliffhangers, and a whole story between the covers
- Book two of a finished five-book cozy fantasy series
The Hearthkeeper is a series about a woman who fed an army learning to feed one village, and to let it feed her back. Each book is a season of the house and a complete story. Start with The Cold Hearth, or sit down here; the table has room.
Reading order: The Cold Hearth, The Kitchen Garden, The Auditor at the Door, A Rift by the Fire, A Named House.
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