Love stories that begin with a place
Fall for the place first.
A lemon grove in Sicily. A mountain town with a bakery line out the door. The wide, dry country of northern Kenya. Emma Hines writes love stories where the place arrives before the person does.
Three places, three love stories
Where would you like to go?
The Lemons Saga
Five novels, one Sicilian estate, and a village that treats newcomers as family who simply haven’t eaten with them yet.
Coming to Kindle
Hollis Valley
Every book is a complete story with a new face at the center, and the town introduces itself.
Coming to Kindle
Archer’s Post
A widow follows her husband’s last note to northern Kenya to find out what he left her there.
Coming to KindleThe Lemons Saga · Sicily
Five novels. One Sicilian estate.
The saga moves around in time. One book reaches back decades; another ends at the doorstep where the first one begins. Read them in this order, because the order is where the reveals live.
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01
For The Love Of Lemons
Isla Harper is a Chicago forensic accountant who has spent four years being extremely good at being alone. Then a great-aunt she barely remembers leaves her a Sicilian estate—a villa, a lemon grove, a herd of opinionated goats, and a taverna that seems to belong to the entire village—on one condition: live there for a full year.
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02
Growing Lemons?
Decades before Isla, the estate belonged to her great-aunt Agatha, and the taverna was a locked door nobody had opened in a lifetime. This is the story of the woman who unlocked it.
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03
Making Lemonade
The year after Book One ends. The family that found each other learns what it is actually building, and the estate quietly makes room for what comes next.
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04
A Lemon Twist
A new generation. A daughter of the estate comes home after a year away, and the village, which has been waiting patiently, hands her its next love story.
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05
Preserving Lemons
Where did Valentina come from? The life she had before the island, the day she walked away from it, and the long road south: dead trains, strangers, and one advertisement that changed everything.
Where to start? Book One. Always Book One.
The whole saga is coming to Kindle.
Tell me when it landsHollis Valley · Book One
The Three-Legged Race
A wounded Marine sergeant meets an airline pilot on a train home. He sits down when everyone else keeps walking. She doesn’t know what to do with that.
Book Two · Coming soon to Kindle
In Too Deep
It opens with a woman standing above a flooded river, two miles from a town she’s never seen, about to end her marriage. Everything she owns fits in a canoe bag. What she doesn’t know yet: Hollis Valley doesn’t let go of the people it needs.
Every Hollis Valley book is a complete story with a new face at the center. You don’t need Book One to read this one—the town will introduce itself.
Start reading on Substack
Archer’s Post · Northern Kenya, 1998
Archer’s Post
Three months a widow, Claire Ellery still keeps the note her husband left her. She is a dentist from coastal Maine, and she means to be gone two weeks.
Coming soon to Kindle. Chapter One is free to read now on Substack.
Read Chapter One free
About Emma
The place arrives first.
Emma Hines writes love stories for readers who believe in love, in all its forms. Every one of them starts with a place and lets you arrive there slowly: the food on the table, the weather doing its work, the way a village or a valley town decides who belongs.
The place arrives before the person, and it stays with you after the last page. Emma’s readers like to come away knowing something true about where they’ve been, so the details are real.