Seasons' End

The Beach at Painter's Cove

Shelley Noble · 421 pages

The Whitaker family Connecticut mansion, Muses by the Sea, has always been a haven for artists, a hotbed of creativity, extravagances, and the occasional scandal. Art patrons for generations, the Whitaker's supported strangers but drained the life out of each other. Now, after being estranged for years, four generations of Whitaker women find themselves once again at The Muses. Leo, the Whitaker m

The Vacationers

Emma Straub · 372 pages

Celebrating their thirty-fifth anniversary and their daughter's high-school graduation during a two-week vacation in Mallorca, Franny and Jim Post confront old secrets, hurts, and rivalries that reveal sides of themselves they try to conceal.

Summer People

Elin Hilderbrand · 344 pages

Every summer the Newton family retreats to their beloved home on Nantucket for three months of sunshine, cookouts, and bonfires on the beach. But this summer will not be like any other. When Arch Newton, a prominent New York attorney, dies in a plane crash on his way home from a business trip, his beautiful widow Beth can barely keep things together. Above all, though, she decides that she must co

The Summer That Made Us

Robyn Carr · 336 pages

For the Hempsteads, two sisters who married two brothers and had three daughters each, summers were idyllic. The women would escape the city the moment school was out to gather at the family house on Lake Waseka. The lake was a magical place, a haven where they were happy and carefree. All of their problems drifted away as the days passed in sun-dappled contentment. Until the summer that changed e

The Summer House

Hannah McKinnon · 406 pages

"When Flossy Merrill summons her children to the beloved family beach house to celebrate their father's eightieth birthday, both cherished memories and long-kept secrets come to light in this charming and lyrical novel from the author of The Lake Season and Mystic Summer. Flossy Merrill has managed to--somewhat begrudgingly--gather her three ungrateful grown children from their dysfunctional lives

My Life Next Door

Huntley Fitzpatrick · 432 pages

When Samantha, the seventeen-year-old daugher of a wealthy, perfectionistic, Republican state senator, falls in love with the boy next door, whose family is large, boisterous, and just making ends meet, she discovers a different way to live, but when her mother is involved in a hit-and-run accident Sam must make some difficult choices.

The Shadow Sister

Lucinda Riley · 498 pages

Star D'Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father--the elusive billionaire, affectionately called Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted from across the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to her true heritage, and Star nervously decides to follow hers, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole

Tigers in Red Weather

Liza Klaussmann

"Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha's Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Ni

Prayers and Lies

Sherri Wood Emmons · 312 pages

When seven-year-old Bethany first meets six-year-old cousin Reana Mae during a yearly family trip to West Virginia's Coal River Valley, it's the beginning of a kinship of misfits that saves both from a bone-deep loneliness. But as Bethany grows older, secrets in the small, close-knit community start coming to light with devastating effect.

Maine

J. Courtney Sullivan · 394 pages

Three generations of women converge on the family beach house in this wickedly funny, emotionally resonant story of love and dysfunction.

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns

Elizabeth Kelly · 383 pages

Rules of Summer

Joanna Philbin · 352 pages

Spending the summer working as an errand girl for the Rule family in the Hamptons, seventeen-year-old Rory befriends the family's teenaged daughter and develops feelings for their older son, but she finds that societal rules can be hard to break.

Summer House

Nancy Thayer · 367 pages

After years of wandering from whim to whim, thirty-year-old Charlotte Wheelwright seems to have at last found her niche. The free spirit enjoys running an organic gardening business on the island of Nantucket, thanks in large part to her spry grandmother Nona, who donated a portion of land on the family's seaside compound to get Charlotte started. Though Charlotte's skill with plants is bringing h

Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng · 384 pages

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in thi

The Book of Summers

Emylia Hall · 400 pages

Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel. Inside is a letter telling her that Marika, her long-estranged mother, has died. There is also a scrapbook Beth has never seen before. Entitled The Book of Summers, it is full of photos and mementos recording the seven glorious childhood summers that Beth spent in rural Hungary. Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel. Inside is a letter informing her that her long-estr

The Past

Tessa Hadley · 361 pages

Over five novels and two collections of stories Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction writer of remarkable gifts, and been compared with Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Munro. In her new novel three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past - their mother took them there whe

A Sweethaven Summer

Courtney Walsh · 316 pages

We Were Liars

E. Lockhart · 240 pages

A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends -- the Liars -- whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth. Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged

The Color of Light

Karen White · 267 pages

The Bookshop at Water's End

Patti Callahan Henry · 417 pages

"Bonny Blankenship's most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Lainey's mother

The Holiday Home

Fern Britton

Set on a Cornish cliff, Atlantic House has been the jewel in the Carew family crown for centuries. Each year, the Carew sisters embark on their summer holiday, but they are as different as vinegar and honey. Prudence, hard-nosed businesswoman married to the meek and mild Francis, is about to get a shock reminder that you should never take anything for granted. Constance, loving wife to philanderin

Fallen Too Far

Abbi Glines · 254 pages

"The last thing Blaire Wynn wants is to move in with her father's new family in Rosemary Beach, Florida. She has no choice. Blaire's mother has passed away after a long illness, leaving behind a mountain of medical debts and no way for Blaire to keep their small Alabama farmhouse. Driving into the wealthy resort town in a pickup truck with a pistol under her seat, Blaire knows she'll never fit in.

Wild Swans

Jessica Spotswood · 295 pages

Some say the Milbourn women are crazy. Others say they're cursed. But without a doubt, they are extraordinary. In Ivy's family, generations of women lead dazzling lives and die young. Ivy's mom abandoned her as a child, so Ivy sees it as a responsibility to break the cycle.

40 Love

Madeleine Wickham · 276 pages

A weekend tennis party becomes study of modern marriage for four very different couples of varying economic, social, and interest levels as together they encounter two days of anger, shock, revelations, and romance.