Abi Carter has finally found happiness. Living in her perfect tin miner?s cottage, she has good friends and a gorgeous boyfriend, Max. Life is good. But all that?s about to change when a new neighbour moves in next door. Cassandra Henley-Pinkerton represents everything Abi thought she?d escaped when she left London. Obnoxious and stuck-up, Cassandra hates living in Cornwall. Worst of all, it looks like she has her sights set on Max. But Cassandra has problems of her own. Not only is her wealthy married lawyer putting off joining her in their Cornish love nest, but now someone seems intent on sabotaging her business. Will Cassandra mellow enough to turn to Abi for help ? or are they destined never to get along?

The moral principles prescribed for friendship, civil society, and democratic public life apply imperfectly to life around home, where we interact day to day without the formal institutions, rules of conduct, and means of enforcement that guide us in other settings. This work explores how encounters among neighbours create a democracy of everyday life, which has been with us since the beginning of American history and is expressed in settler, immigrant, and suburban narratives and in novels, poetry, and popular culture.