Summer Books

"In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world's in meltdown--and the real meltdown hasn't even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: Where does family begin? And...

When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah's mother, Veronica, about having the wedding at the family's beach house in Cape Cod. Sarah might be worried, but Veronica is thrilled to be bringing the family together one last time before putting...

When four strangers rent bargain-basement rooms in an old hotel near the beach, they embark on the summer of their lives. First there's Ariel Spencer, who has big dreams of becoming a writer and is looking for inspiration in Nantucket's high society. Her new friend Sheila Murphy is a good Catholic girl from Ohio whose desire for adventure is often shadowed by her apprehension. Then there's small-town Missourian Wyatt Smith--who's immediately taken...

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...

New York Times bestselling author imagines the affair between John F. Kennedy and Alicia Corning Clark - and the child they may have had. Based on a real story - in 1950, a young, beautiful Polish refugee arrives in Hyannisport, Massachusetts to work as a maid for one of the wealthiest families in America. Alicia is at once dazzled by the large and charismatic family, in particular the oldest son, a rising politician named Jack. Alicia and Jack are...

Twenty-seven-year-old screenwriter Elle has the chance of a lifetime to write a big-budget movie set in New York City. The only problem? She's had writer's block for months, and her screenplay is due at the end of the summer. In a desperate attempt to get inspiration, Elle ends up back in the city she swore she would never return to, in an apartment she could never afford (floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, and a new coffee shop to haunt included)....

Morag McIntyre is a third-generation pilot, running a tiny plane service with her grandfather. Scotland's northernmost islands - dots of windswept land that reach almost to Norway - rely on their prop plane to deliver mail, tourists, medicine, and the occasional sheep. Morag is used to landing on pale golden beaches and tiny grass airstrips, during great storms or on bright endless summer nights. Up in the blue sky, she feels at one with the elements....

"Jewel Stone has it all--the perfect marriage, a bestselling author career, her dream home--or so she likes everyone to believe. But between her writer's block and her husband losing his job, her picture-perfect life is in shambles ... until she receives a call she never expected: her former best friend needs her help. When Shelby Andrews wakes up in the hospital after a biking accident, she can't remember the last twelve years ... There's only one...

The Summer We Fell Apart by newcomer Robin Antalek is a poignant, funny, and totally engrossing novel of family disasters and sibling rivalry-and it marks the debut of a pitch-perfect new voice in contemporary American fiction. Antalek's tale of the trials and many tribulations of the hapless and more than a little dysfunctional Haas family recalls the work of Sue Miller and Ann Beattie-and is a wonderful introduction to a superb writer whose short...

Victoria Leonard and Caitlin Somers, two girls from very different backgrounds, form a friendship that blooms over the summers spent in Caitlin's privileged world, until heartbreak and betrayal tear them apart.