Just in time for summer comes the perfect beach read! Humor and romance abound in this fresh, fun take on summer love. Nikki may spend the school year on the New England mainland at the ritzy Richfield Academy (on scholarship), but during the summer, she returns home to the decidedly less-posh Pelican Island. Despite an invite from her rich friend Blair, Nikki has to spend the summer working at her parents' sandwich shop. During one of her deliveries to the mainland, she meets Daniel Babcock, and they begin a whirlwind summer romance. But when Blair invites Nikki to spend the weekend, Nikki sees her walking hand in hand...with Daniel! Can summer love survive?
There are two kinds of people on the island -- those who leave at summer's end...and those who are left behind. For seventeen-year-old Winnie, summer can't arrive fast enough -- anything to get out of the house and escape the cold war brewing between her parents. With her older sister, Shelby, spending the summer in Boston, Winnie's left to deal with the situation all by herself. Which is why she's happy to spend all day away from home at a cushy job -- camp counselor at the prestigious Oceanview Inn. And when the Barclays, a wealthy summer family, offer Winnie an additional babysitting job in the evenings after work, she jumps at the opportunity. Little Cassie Barclay is fun to take care of, and hanging out in the gorgeous Barclay summer house overlooking the harbor is far more pleasant than being on the front lines of the battle between her parents. Then Cassie's older and devastatingly attractive stepbrother Jay arrives on the island after a disastrous first year at college, and he seems to want nothing more than to wreak havoc for his stepmother and the rest of his family. Winnie soon discovers that life in the Barclay summer house isn't so perfect after all, and what was supposed to be a carefree summer escapade is quickly becoming more complicated than she ever thought possible....
Celebrating 50 years of Tove Jansson's classic, bestselling novel Featured in the BBC 2 Between the Covers Bookclub Special (Eurovision series 2023) 'Distils the essence of summer' Robert Macfarlane 'Magical, life-affirming' Elizabeth Gilbert The Worldwide Classic about a tiny island and larger love. An elderly artist and her six-year-old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. With a foreword by Esther Freud and an afterword by Sophia Jansson (on whom the child 'Sophia' is based) who returns to the island during the pandemic at the point of becoming a grandmother herself. Includes a 15pp epilogue by Tove's niece Sophia Jansson - the inspiration for 'Sophia' - on a personal and moving return to the island. 'Eccentric, funny, wise, full of joys and small adventures. This is a book for life.' Esther Freud 'Tove Jansson was a genius. This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.' Philip Pullman
Talk-show host Nora Bridge insists that her estranged daughter Ruby, a struggling comedienne, come to her childhood home in the San Juan islands while Nora convalesces. Ruby has her own agenda, including writing a tell-all biography of her famous mother.
"Welcome spring with the newest treat from Brenda Novak. This is the book her fans, old and new, have been waiting for. A big, tantalizing read!"--Susan Elizabeth Phillips, New York Times bestselling author A summer of healing, friendship, love...and a secret that could change everything. After the death of her US senator father, Marlow Madsen travels to the small island off the coast of Florida where she spent summers growing up to help her mother settle the family estate. For Marlow, the trip is a chance to reconnect after too long apart. It's also the perfect escape to help her feel grounded again--one she's happy to share with friends Aida and Claire, who are hoping to hit reset on their lives, too. A leisurely beachfront summer promises the trio of women the opportunity to take deep healing breaths and explore new paths. But when her father's will reveals an earth-shattering secret that tarnishes his impeccable reputation and everything she thought she knew about her family, Marlow finds herself questioning her entire childhood--and aspects of her future. Fortunately, her friends, and the most unlikely love interest she could imagine, prove that happiness can be found no matter what--as long as the right people are by your side"--
Lizzie Howard is a big-city trauma doctor who has always put her career before everything else. When one careless mistake brings her planned future to a halt, she temporarily takes over a friend's practice in the small Maine town of Jewell Cove. Widowed doctor Joshua Collins comes back home to Jewell Cover to recover from his wife's death. The two of them spark a flame that crackles higher and brighter every day and makes them wonder if a seasonal fling can turn into the love of a lifetime.
“The Summer Wives is an exquisitely rendered novel that tackles two of my favorite topics: love and money. The glorious setting and drama are enriched by Williams’s signature vintage touch. It’s at the top of my picks for the beach this summer.” —Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season—an electrifying postwar fable of love, class, power, and redemption set among the inhabitants of an island off the New England coast . . . In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister—all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion—is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society. But beneath the island’s patrician surface, there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses. Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he’s determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph’s enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, Miranda’s caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the island for nearly two decades. Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned Shakespearean actress hiding a terrible heartbreak. On its surface, the Island remains the same—determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the formerly powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for the murder of Miranda’s stepfather eighteen years earlier. What’s more, Miranda herself is no longer a naïve teenager, and she begins a fierce, inexorable quest for justice for the man she once loved . . . even if it means uncovering every last one of the secrets that bind together the families of Winthrop Island.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of the cherished bestseller On Mystic Lake returns with a poignant, funny, luminous novel about a mother and daughter--the complex ties that bind them, the past that separates them, and the healing that comes with forgiveness. “[Kristin] Hannah is superb at delving into the characters' psyches and delineating nuances of feeling.”—Washington Post Book World Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since become a famous radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humor. When the tabloids unearth a scandalous secret from Nora's past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic: Nora is injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Under false pretenses, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she hasn't spoken to for almost a decade. Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island in the San Juans, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone's hearts had been broken. . . . What began as an expose evolves, as Ruby writes, into an exploration of her family's past. Nora is not the woman Ruby has hated all these years. Witty, wise, and vulnerable, she is desperate to reconcile with her daughter. As the magazine deadline draws near and Ruby finishes what has begun to seem to her an act of brutal betrayal, she is forced to grow up and at last to look at her mother--and herself--through the eyes of a woman. And she must, finally, allow herself to love. Summer Island is a beautiful novel, funny, tender, sad, and ultimately triumphant.
Sometimes love hurts--and sometimes it can heal in the most unexpected way. Camden Grayson loves her challenging career, but the rest of her life could use some improvement. "Moving on" is Cam's mantra. But there's a difference, her two sisters insist, between one who moves on . . . and one who keeps moving. Cam's full-throttle life skids to a stop when her father buys a remote island off the coast of Maine. Paul Grayson has a dream to breathe new life into the island--a dream that includes reuniting his estranged daughters. Certain Dad has lost his mind, the three sisters rush to the island. To Cam's surprise, the slow pace of island life appeals to her, along with the locals--and one in particular. Seth Walker, the scruffy island schoolteacher harbors more than a few surprises. With On a Summer Tide, bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher begins a brand-new contemporary romance series that is sure to delight her fans and draw new ones.
