The Christmas Cat on Quarry Road

She empties the houses of the dead. This one had something in it that was not hers to know.Ruthann Bisson is the third generation of her family to clear and sell the contents of houses in Hazen Mills, Vermont - four hundred and six of them, in a village of nine hundred people who need her twice in a lifetime and cross the road in between.On the first of December she lets herself into a cold house on Quarry Road and finds a cat asleep on the good tablecloth. A cat that the man across the field has been feeding for six years under a different name, in a house he has no reason to have a key to.The crèche on the village green was carved by one man in the winter of 1938 and has been kept in nine private kitchens ever since. Nothing about Christmas in Hazen Mills belongs to Hazen Mills. And this year the crèche is short a shepherd.Four days before the auction, on a shelf in a closet, Ruthann finds a hat box - and everything in it belongs to somebody else, and every choice she has left is a decision about a life that is not hers.A warm, snowbound novel about what belongs to whom, a village that says nothing, and a cat who belongs to two houses.Small-town Christmas fiction - a heroine in her forties - later-in-life romance - closed-door - family secrets - a complete standalone - a happy endingFrom the author of The Christmas Cat on Maple Street and The Christmas Cat on Ridge Road.