A short excerpt from Christmas in Dover's Corners:

(The setup: Ten years after Hannah Hardy trash-talked her hometown of Dover’s Corners and scandalized its residents in her first novel, she’s back in town to write a follow-up story.)

A steady stream of people strolled past the inn on their way to the homecoming game, a scene that took Hannah back to her own high school days when everyone in town went to the football and basketball games and then out for pizza afterward. The seventeen-year-old version of herself had been in the midst of those cheering crowds and pizza-eating teens, but a few years later, in an interview on morning television shortly after her book had received a rave review in the Times, she turned up her nose at her hometown’s “unsophisticated, bourgeois population and the unmistakable reality that high school sports had long ago taken the place of anything that might pass for culture.” That quote still appeared as a banner on the landing page of the Hannah Hardy Haters website.

Hannah shivered as her own words came back to her. “No wonder they hate me,” she thought .

By the time she made the turn down the long sidewalk to the high school, her special cocoa was long gone. The temperature had dropped under ten degrees and the snow squeaked loudly under her feet. The combination of the hot drink and the down coat she’d borrowed from Emma kept most of her warm, but she wished that she had worn her slightly less fashionable (but much warmer) boots, as her toes were completely numb.

At a table in the hallway outside the gymnasium doors, a freshman cheerleader wearing a nametag identifying her as Jenni (the i dotted with a heart, naturally) asked Hannah for her ticket.

“Oh, you’re an alum!” Jenni exclaimed. “Welcome to homecoming! We’re asking all the classes to sit together, okay? Don’t worry, when you get over there, you’ll see. Just follow the gold ribbon.” She pushed a nametag and a black marker across the table. “Oh, and you have to wear a nametag.”

Hannah picked up the marker and stared at the paper for a few seconds before finally printing JAMIE POSTE and peeling the backing from the sticker. Jenni watched her closely to make certain that Hannah attached the sticker to her top before waving her inside, where she was greeted by the familiar scents of a rural high school gym: popcorn and sweat, with a good measure of damp wool and cow manure. Meanwhile, the crowd jumped to its feet cheering the introduction of the Dover’s Corners starting five.

She kept her head down as much as possible as she searched for the gold ribbon marking off the alumni seating. Of course. The alumni section was right smack in the middle of the bleachers. She climbed the steps, dropped into a seat at the end of a row near the top, and buried her nose in the program, not daring to look up any more than absolutely necessary.

Once the game was underway, Hannah relaxed and enjoyed herself, joining in the cheers and singing the school fight song along with everyone else. It was an exciting game, and the sights and sounds (and smells!) of the gym took her back to her high school years. How many times had she sat in this same section of the bleachers in four years of games and assemblies? It had all been such an important part of her life. She’d had good friends—great friends, actually—and years of good memories, and then, after graduation . . . poof! . . . It was as if it had never happened.

Why, she wondered, had she pushed all of the good memories aside? In her mind, had Dover’s Corners become indistinguishable from the fictional Stover’s Corners of her novel? Or was it because she felt guilty, and was able to make herself feel better by pretending that none of it was real?

When the halftime buzzer sounded, Dover’s Corners led 38-36, and the players ran off the court to the cheers of the crowd. On the stage, the band played a setlist of pop songs from the sixties to the present, and on the gym floor, the cheerleaders danced and stomped up a storm. All around her, people were smiling, happy, and for the first time since leaving her agent’s office, Hannah thought seriously about the story she had been sent to write. What if there was no story? What if nothing had changed in Dover’s Corners over the past ten years? What would she write then?

And that’s when it hit her. Rose knew all along. In all likelihood, Dover’s Corners hadn’t changed much. But Hannah had. A lot.

Suddenly the story was much more complicated.

Excerpt #2 : (from Chapter 4, so no spoilers, I promise!)

(The setup: Ten years after Hannah Hardy trash-talked her hometown of Dover's Corners in her first novel, she back in town to write up a follow-up story. This excerpt is a flashback to Hannah's high school years.)

LEWIS GIBBS, GREAT-GREAT-GRANDSON of the man who built the house that would become the Speckled Hound Inn, was Hannah’s oldest friend. They grew up outside of town, in two nearly identical houses right on Pimmington Lake, where together they learned to swim and sail and fish for bluegills in a nearby cove. They played on the same soccer and Little League teams, read the same books, saw the same movies, and went to the same parties. For the better part of ten years, it was rare to see one without the other.

And then came the homecoming dance, in October of their sophomore year.

Since neither of them was seeing anyone at the time, they went to school dances together, because that’s what you did in Dover’s Corners, but it was always with the mutual understanding that it was strictly as friends. They would arrive together, hang out with a group of friends, occasionally dance together, and at the end of the night, leave together. But the next day, life would go on exactly as it had before: drama- and romance-free.

Later, they acknowledged that the seeds for the change in their relationship status were planted in Ruth Daehl’s American Literature class where they were reading Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town the week before the homecoming dance. On the day the class was discussing the pivotal scene where the characters George and Emily realize they have become more than friends, it was Lewis and Hannah in the front of the room reading those parts. Their classmates looked on, grinning at each other because it was obvious to everyone—everyone except Lewis and Hannah, that is—that they liked each other more than they were willing to admit.

Two nights later, they were on the dance floor with a group of friends, laughing and shouting above the music, when the DJ announced that it was time for the last dance. As the first notes of Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You” filled the air, Lewis and Hannah were separated by a dozen other couples swaying slowly to the music, but they finally reached each other in the exact center of the gym. Normally, they would have been chatting, gossiping about who had ended up with whom, or quietly mocking the music choices, but on that night, something was different, and they both felt it. Neither said a word, eyes locked on one another, faces inches apart while their feet barely moved on the varnished floor.

And then, as Avril did her best to figure out this life, their eyes closed and their lips came together.

When the kiss finally happened, Hannah couldn’t tell if her feet were still touching the ground; she felt as if she was going to float away. Lewis opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he admitted.

“What took you so long?” Hannah asked.

“I don’t know. I guess . . . I wasn’t sure that you—”

Hannah kissed him again. “Does that answer your question?”