Mariah Stewart, the New York Times bestselling romance author of The Chesapeake Diaries series, will be celebrating the release of her latest book with an Afternoon with the Author event at the Hockessin Book Shelf on March 31. The Q & A and book signing will take place from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Stewart, who lives in southern Chester County, will be discussing “The Goodbye Café,” which is the third book in the Hudson Sisters series. The series follows a trio of reluctant sisters who set out to fulfill their father’s dying wish and discover a lot about themselves in the process.

In “The Goodbye Cafe,” California girl Allie Hudson Monroe can’t wait for the day when the renovations on the Sugarhouse Theater are complete so she can finally collect the inheritance from her father and leave Pennsylvania. Her life and her fourteen-year-old daughter are in Los Angeles. But Allie’s divorce left her tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, so to keep up on payments for her house and her daughter’s private school tuition, Allie packed up and flew east. But fate has a curve-ball or two to toss in Allie’s direction—she just doesn’t know it yet.

She hadn’t anticipated how her life would change after reuniting with her estranged sister, Des, or meeting her previously unknown half-sister, Cara. And she’d certainly never expected to find small-town living charming. But the biggest surprise was that her long-forgotten artistry would save the day when the theater’s renovation fund dried up.

Stewart published her first book in 1995, and she has steadily been building her following ever since. She has written and published more than 40 novels and novellas during her career, focusing on romantic suspense novels, contemporary romances, and women’s fiction. She's currently juggling not one, but two, different book series.

The Hockessin Book Shelf is located at 7179 Lancaster Pike in Hockessin. To RSVP for the Afternoon with the Author event, call 302-235-7665 or email [email protected].