Dakota Home, by Debbie Macomber

The story picks up not long after the ending of the Dakota Born story. Lindsay & Gage are now married. Maddy, Lindsay's best friend, buys the Buffalo Valley grocery store & moves to town. She meets Jeb, a quiet, reclusive-type with a prosthetic leg, who she delivers groceries to. One night during a snowstorm she goes off the road and after running out of gas & nearly freezing to death, Jeb comes to her rescue. They end up spending several days together at Jeb's home during the snowstorm. After Maddy's return to her home in town, Jeb seems to want nothing to do with her, and Maddy is heartbroken, as well as pregnant. Lindsay & Gage are also expecting a baby. There's also Buffalo Bob, owner of 3 Of A Kind Bar, finally getting married to his on-again off-again waitress, Merrily. Merrily has kidnapped a severely abused child. She & Buffalo Bob plan to raise him as their own, until missing child flyers with his picture begin to circulate. What happens with that will most likely be answered in the third book, Always Dakota. There are a couple other weddings & engagements in the book as well.

Dakota Born, by Debbie Macomber

Buffalo Valley, North Dakota is a small (fictional) town that is slowly dying out. Then Lindsay Snyder arrives from Savannah, Georgia to visit her late grandmother's old home. She is offered a fill-in teaching position at the high school, which would've been closed down had she not taken the job. She is well liked by the high school kids & the rest of the town, including Gage Sinclair, a local farmer. Although there is much friction between them, they are helplessly falling for each other. Things start to brighten around the town as Lindsay's students put on a play at the old theater, have a Valentine's dance, and local business people are invited to the school to tell the kids about their careers. What I like most about this book is that it's a simpler kind of life, less crowded with technology, the kids are content with their one-room school, and the characters living in this town are warm and friendly. This book is the first of a trilogy, and I am reading the second book, Dakota Home, next.

One Fifth Avenue, by Candace Bushnell

Not my typical pick for a read, but this turned out to be entertaining. It's all about the residents of the One Fifth Avenue apartment building in Manhattan, the day-to-day 'struggles' of the filthy-rich and those around them. A lot of the characters were annoyingly self-centered and created plenty of drama, one standing out the most was Lola, a 22-year-old trying to stay in One Fifth no matter what she had to do or who she was involved with. There's also a famous actress, a screenplay writer, a book author, a hedge-fund manager, etc. I read through this pretty quickly, and while it passed the time nicely, there's not a whole lot of it that will likely stick with me for long.