The man wanders off after a short while, and Chicky is thrown onto her own devices ('she's got guts altogether,' one character says of her), working and saving money, and gradually being forgiven by her family back home (she can't bear how smug they'd be at learning the truth she tells them he died in a tragic accident). Stone House is in Stoneybridge, a small village on the coast of Ireland, a place fled in short order by Geraldine 'Chicky' Ryan in order to follow a charismatic man to America, much to the mortification of her relatives. And yet even in that sadness there's a flicker of charm: to write a book as your health fails you, to finish it and hand it in to your publisher with a smile of work well done, and then to be off and let it come so neatly after you - no unfinished work, no untidy manuscripts covered in bread crumbs, nothing left to the wondering about.And no posthumous disappointments either: if it weren't so wistful to say it, calling A Week in Winter 'vintage Binchy' wouldn't be inaccurate at all.It's the story of Stone House, the old home of the three beautiful Sheedy sisters, Beatrice, Jessica, and Miss Queenie. And sad because there will be no more: Binchy died in the summer. Happy because her latest book, A Week in Winter, is every bit as warm and inviting as everything else she ever wrote. ( From the publisher.A Week in Winter by Maeve BinchyKnopf, 2013The utterly charmed writing life of Irish author Maeve Binchy has one last spell in its grimoire, sad and happy by equal measures. Once again, she embraces us with her grand storytelling. Sharing a week with this unlikely cast of characters is pure joy, full of Maeve’s trademark warmth and humor. John, the American movie star, thinks he has arrived incognito Winnie and Lillian are forced into taking a holiday together Nicola and Henry, husband and wife, have been shaken by seeing too much death practicing medicine Anders hates his father’s business, but has a real talent for music Miss Nell Howe, a retired schoolteacher, criticizes everything and leaves a day early, much to everyone’s relief the Walls are disappointed to have won this second-prize holiday in a contest where first prize was Paris and Freda, the librarian, is afraid of her own psychic visions. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy.

Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another.

A week in winter binchy