Beginning in 1962 with a shocking loss, Shining Sea quickly pulls us into the lives of 43-year-old Michael Gannon's widow and offspring. Brilliantly described and utterly alive, the Gannon clan find themselves charting paths they never anticipated for decades to come.

Three sisters reunite on Sullivan’s Island off the coast of South Carolina after years of separation in this heartwarming first novel in a new trilogy from a beloved author. 80-year-old Marietta Muir is a dowager of Charleston society who has retired to her historic summer home on Sullivan’s Island. At the onset of summer, Marietta - "Mamaw" - seeks to gather her three granddaughters - Carson, Eudora, and Harper - with the intent to reunite them after years apart.

These 11 masterful stories - the first collection from acclaimed author Jennifer Egan - deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan's characters, models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls, are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations.

Morning Glory native Jess Culpepper is desperate to get out of town after divorcing the only man she's ever dated. She takes a temporary nursing job in Florida and, thanks to the bequest of her late friend, Lacy, has the funds to rent a condo right on the beach. She's not prepared to literally trip over her old high school lab partner - and definitely not prepared for how deliciously hot he is now.

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, Betty, he was 78 years old and she was 75. The Weissmann sisters, Miranda, a successful literary agent, and Annie, a library director, unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly 50 years and exiled from their elegant New York apartment, Betty moves to a small, run-down Westport beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister.

For Julie Holt, travelling to the beautiful but ravaged coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, is a journey into a secret past, and a life she never expected.... Julie first knew loss at the age of 12, when her sister disappeared, never to be found. As her once close-knit family grew apart, Julie's mother obsessively searched for the girl, and when her mother died, Julie took up the search, never letting go of the hope. Then, at an art exhibition in New York, she meets Monica....

Attending a New England summer camp, young Eric Schroder - a first-generation East German immigrant - adopts the last name Kennedy to more easily fit in, a fateful white lie that will set him on an improbable and ultimately tragic course. Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is.

What if you looked exactly like a famous movie star, and one day decided that along with their beautiful face, you wanted the life that came with it?

Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina. But when an employer stiffs her, and her checks bounce, she goes on the lam, hiding out as a maid for a wealthy family at their summer home. That plan goes awry when there's a murder and Blanche becomes the prime suspect. So she's forced to use her savvy, her sharp wit, and her old-girl network of domestic workers to discover the truth and save her own skin.

Closeted teenager Jeremy is sent to live with wealthy relatives after his mother enters rehab. Struggling to fit into the posh world of Ballena Beach, Jeremy joins the high school swim team, dates a popular girl, and begins to think he may have landed in paradise - until his great aunt Katharine starts to dictate his every move…and a late-night phone call insinuates that his father’s accidental death was not so accidental after all. As Jeremy grows accustomed to the veneer of a fabulous life, so grows his need for answers - as well as the danger of immeasurable harm.

Fifteen years ago, Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at elite Fayer Academy. By living on campus, on an island off the New England coast, Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the outside world and from an inside secret. For years, she has lived largely through the books she teaches, but when she accepts the impulsive marriage proposal of ardent widower Tom Belou, the prescribed life Vida has constructed is swiftly dismantled.

Since opening up their day spa, The Haven, the wonderful women of the Hot Flash Club have been busy indulging the beleaguered, nerve-frazzled throngs. Now, in Nancy Thayer's hilarious new Hot Flash novel, it's the friends' turn to grab some soothing, and much-deserved R&R.

The Condition tells the story of the McKotches, a proper New England family that comes apart during one fateful summer. One day on the beach, Frank McKotch is struck by an image he cannot forget: his 13-year-old daughter, Gwen, strangely infantile in her child-sized bikini, standing a full head shorter than her younger cousin Charlotte. At that moment, he knows a truth that he can never again unknow: something is terribly wrong with his only daughter.

Here is the spellbinding story of Abby Mason - photographer, fiancée, soon-to-be stepmother - and the consequences of her greatest error. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, it is a riveting tale of how life can change in an instant, of the search for the truth behind a child's disappearance, and of one woman's unwavering faith in the redemptive power of love.

The Van Meters have gathered at their family retreat on the New England island of Waskeke to celebrate the marriage of daughter Daphne to an impeccably appropriate young man. The weekend is full of lobster and champagne, salt air and practiced bonhomie, but long-buried discontent and simmering lust seep through the cracks in the revelry.