Trama

Scottish local key businessman Sam Howard's interests include the hotel recently installed in Countess Lucinda Rhives's Scottish coastal family castle and confided the management to his lover, Carrie Marchmont. The latter supports the annual amateur Shakespeare performance being mounted by her theatrical friend Elfrida Phibbs and her lover, church cantor and organist Oscar Blundell, who mentors keyboard-gifted rascal Brody but still wrestles with his daughter's tragic death. Sam also owns the local paper "Langmore and Highland Gazette", which may ruin him as it risks a huge damage claim for publishing an unsubstantiated article ascribing plagiarism to US bestseller-author Alexia White, whom he may persuade to consider alternatives. Carrie is pregnant, yet protests as Sam engages an external hotel manager, consultant Leo Berger, who pleads seeking proper profits by aiming at a richer clientele, even canceling the merely regional theater festival. Charming Italian hotel guest Lorenzo Calpeni gets on exceptionally well with countess Lucinda, who hates her bumbling title heir cousin and mistrusts the intentions of Australian Scott Allen, who gets engaged as reporter by Sam but has a special interest in the Rhives castle and family history.—KGF Vissers

It is summer three years on and we return to wild Scottish Highlands and the residents of Cregean that we came to know and love in Rosamunde Pilcher's Winter Solstice. Former actress, Elfrida Phipps, has settled into a quiet life along side choir master Oscar Blundell and their dog Horace. Sam Howard, owner of the local paper, has found the peace and happiness he never knew was possible in the arms of the independent and beautiful Carrie. Lucinda, the countess, enjoys a new found lease of life away from the burden of the castle, her ancestral home recently transformed into a hotel. Vicar's son, Rory, and Carrie's sister, Lucy, enjoy the long warm days of summer, away from university, rekindling the spark they have always held for one and other. It is not long before unforeseen events conspire to upset this peace and tranquillity though - A libel case brought against the newspaper sends shockwaves through the local community and brings Sam into contact with the seductively intelligent authoress Alexia. Carrie, meanwhile, struggles with the smooth running of the newly formed hotel and how a not fully committed Sam will deal with her recently discovered 'condition'. Oscar, with help from the loving and supportive Elfrida, is forced to face the demons that have plagued him since the death of his daughter, Francesca, when a young boy, Brodie, finds his way into their lives. The seemingly unbreakable bond between Rory and Lucy is threatened, by the arrival of Todd, a young, mysterious and attractive backpacker. He holds a secret set to change the countess' life even more dramatically than the devilishly handsome gentleman staying at the castle hotel. Summer Solstice is a collection of love stories about, and for, people of all different ages and generations. Each character's tale connects, weaving in and out of the others, mirroring and countering them so that, as the long hot summer draws to its close, each is forced to examine their lives and decide to whom their loyalties lie or else risk loosing everything they hold so dear.—kevvy