Friends & Neighbors

Ava Miles, author of the #1 National Bestseller The Chocolate Garden, brings you another feel-good romance about hope, the will to start over, and the power of friendship.

From the time she was a little girl, Alice Bailey dreamed of opening a chocolate shop. After all, chocolate heals everything, from heartache to woes. She’s certainly had plenty of those lately, drilling home the whole “life is precious” motto. It’s now or never—carpe diem time.

Only opening up a chocolate shop in this close-knit Hudson Valley community proves harder than she imagined, especially when other neighborhood businesses are experiencing hard times. She's not only an outsider, but resentment over her circumstances breeds mistrust among some business owners.

Except for Hank O’Connor, the sexy owner of the Irish pub in town. Even though he’s experiencing his own share of troubles, he’s looking for hope. Maybe it’s their instant attraction, but they end up bonding over more than just chocolate as the difficult currents in town swell.

As she struggles to rebuild, she shows her new friends and neighbors that life offers more richness than they realize. Only she discovers it’s her hope that creates her very own happily ever after.

The House of Hope & Chocolate by Ava Miles, Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Ava Miles shares another romantic, feel-good blockbuster about following your dreams no matter how impossible the odds—with the power of friends and neighbors to help.

Since childhood, spending those cherished days with her father in his greenhouse, Rose Fiorni always understood the power of flowers to comfort and uplift a human heart.

And now as adult, she needs uplifting bad. Single and unemployed, she’s back living at home with her parents in the old neighborhood along New York’s Hudson River Valley. Her dream airline career is more than grounded. It’s gone for good. 

At least by moving home she has Vinnie Scorsese, the boy she used to dream of marrying. Her long-time crush on Vinnie is stronger than ever. He’s been the perfect friend since they were kids, and now that she’s home, she wonders if maybe they can be more. 

And she has her father’s greenhouse, where dreams bloom. The more flowers she cultivates, the more her friends and neighbors want to buy. As it becomes less therapy and more a business, Rose decides to go for it. 

Only with nothing in her bank account, it seems impossible. Until Vinnie suggests they get married to make it happen. How can she say no when she sees deep down that this is his way of telling her what’s in his heart?

Read by Cassandra Campbell...

Cassandra Campbell is a prolific audiobook narrator with more than 700 titles to date like Where the Crawdads Sing and The Help. Winner of four Audie Awards and nominated for a dozen more, she was a 2018 inductee in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame as well as a 2021 inductee as a Golden Voice, AudioFile magazine's lifetime achievement honor. She has consistently been an AudioFile Best Narrator as well as a Publisher’s Weekly Best Narrator of the Year. As an acting teacher, she spent five years as a faculty member of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and has performed in and directed dozens of plays at theaters across the country.