Skip to main content

Featured Guide

Amy Neff, author of The Days I Loved You Most

In the summer of 1941, on the New England shores where they were raised, Evelyn and Joseph fell in love. Now, more than 60 years later, with a lifetime between them, they have gathered their three grown children to share the staggering news: she has received a tragic diagnosis, and he cannot live without her. So in one year’s time, they will end their lives on their own terms. As the couple comes to grips with their fate, they retrace their past --- the joys and regrets, the laughter and the sorrow --- that brought them to this moment. They embark on a journey to live out their greatest dreams and to comfort and connect with each of their children before they're gone. But as their final days draw closer, they must confront the stark reality of what they are about to do, and make peace with the legacy they will leave behind for their family.

Read more »

Rainbow Rowell, author of Slow Dance

Shiloh and Carey were best friends. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha --- Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change. Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed. Now Shiloh is 33, and it’s been 14 years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house in which she grew up. When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is if Cary will be there --- and if she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything? The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Read more »

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Long Island Compromise

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, and the family moves on with their lives. But now, nearly 40 years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Read more »

Alison Espach, author of The Wedding People

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband. But she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield…except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan --- which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

Read more »

Jodi Picoult, author of By Any Other Name

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor, Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym. In 1581, Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling. But she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theater productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage --- by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Read more »

Jamie Day, author of One Big Happy Family

The Precipice is a legendary, family-owned hotel on the rocky coast of Maine. With the recent passing of their father, the Bishop sisters --- Iris, Vicki and Faith --- have come for the weekend to claim it. But with a hurricane looming and each of the Bishop sisters harboring dangerous secrets, there's murder in the air --- and not everyone who checks into the Precipice will be checking out. Each sister wants what is rightfully hers, and in the mix is the Precipe’s 19-year-old chambermaid, Charley Kelley, who is smart, resilient, older than her years and in desperate straits. The arrival of the Bishop sisters could spell disaster for Charley. Will they close the hotel? Fire her? Discover her habit of pilfering from guests? Or, even worse, learn that she's using a guest room to hide a woman on the run?

Read more »

Liv Constantine, author of The Next Mrs. Parrish

Hard work and immaculate planning turned Amber Patterson Parrish from invisible wallflower to prominent socialite. Less than a year after her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber reigns supreme over the Bishops Harbor community. But with Jackson being released from prison, Amber’s free time --- and money --- is vanishing. Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer for their daughters’ sake. When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, these three figures find unlikely allies in one another. But who is playing who?

Read more »

Emily Giffin, author of The Summer Pact

Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and an aspiring lawyer from Washington, D.C.; Summer, an ambitious, recruited athlete from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner. Soon after arriving on campus, they strike up a conversation in their shared dorm. As their college years fly by, the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. They make a pact, promising to always be there for one another. Ten years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are all facing their own crossroads.

Read more »

Beatriz Williams, author of Husbands & Lovers

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne’s 10-year-old son, Sam, suffered acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom. Now, searching for a donor kidney, Mallory is forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption and her romance with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams, which was cut short by a devastating betrayal. Cairo, 1951. Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has married a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men --- and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Read more »

J. Courtney Sullivan, author of The Cliffs

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, Jane returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career as an archivist and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, has gutted it and is convinced that it’s haunted. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers is even older than Maine itself.

Read more »