In Cathy Holton’s winning novels, the popular author sketches insightful portraits of women even as she displays a rare talent for balancing humor and heartache. Beach Trip finds four middle-aged friends convening at a beautifully appointed beach house - and reexamining their lives.

1964: Eleven-year-old Fin and his glamorous, worldly, older half sister, Lady, have just been orphaned, and Lady, whom Fin hasn’t seen in six years, is now his legal guardian and his only hope. That means Fin is uprooted from a small dairy farm in rural Connecticut to Greenwich Village, smack in the middle of the swinging ’60s. He soon learns that Lady - giddy, careless, urgent, and obsessed with being free - is as much his responsibility as he is hers. So begins Fin & Lady, the lively, spirited new novel by Cathleen Schine, the author of the best-selling The Three Weissmanns of Westport.

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.

Being a good mother is never simple: each day brings new choices and challenges. For Diane Robbins, being a devoted single mother has resulted in her greatest joy and darkest sorrow. Weeks before her daughter was born, she and her husband, Tim McIntosh, received the news that every parent fears. Tim had not reckoned on their child being anything less than perfect, and abruptly fled to a solitary existence on the sea. Diane was left with a newborn - almost alone.

In the heart of the Sonoma Valley, on the edge of a sun-drenched meadow, lies the idyllic community of Greengage - where the residents wear simple clothes and lead quiet lives and whose manners could almost seem to be of another time. Into this world stumbles single mother Lux Lysander, trying to lose herself in the peaceful beauty of the Californian countryside while her young son visits his grandparents. It's a world far away from the unpaid bills piling up and the overwhelming sense of struggle to make ends meet.

Babe, Grace, and Millie have been best friends since kindergarten. Despite their differences, they’ve played together, grown up together, and shared each other’s secrets. And when World War Two becomes a reality for America, each quickly marries her first true love. With the men away, life is difficult for these women. But when no fewer than 16 telegrams arrive on a single morning in 1944 - all bearing news of the worst kind from the War Department - the girls know that nothing will ever be the same again.

For Naomi Ash, growing up the daughter of a clairvoyant medium exposed her to the chicanery of a business where telling people what they want to hear is the only currency. And the sleepy hamlet of Train Line, New York, nestled against a frigid lake in the westernmost fringes of the state, was founded on, built, and is still sustained by it. Now a young woman and a practicing medium herself, Naomi still lives in the place that nourished and raised her - the place where she fell in love. Love, however, can be deadly....

In 1960s rural America two siblings grow up in a place of love and turmoil. Rene is the apple of her father’s eye: an overachiever, athletic, clever, the best brain in class and the best dancer in school. Her older brother, Leon, doted on by his mother, is shy, a stutterer, but also a brilliant dancer. Rene and Leon share a talent, but it is a gift their father adores in his daughter and loathes in his son, and that could make all the difference. These two children may be best friends, but life promises to take them down very different paths.... 

It's 1951, and Miranda's mother has just married into one of the wealthiest families on Winthrop Island, a glamorous haven set off the New England coast. But beneath the surface, the island is a delicate balance of tension between the wealthy summer families who holiday there and the Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who keep the island going. As Miranda begins to fall for Joseph, the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, the tension rises inexorably to the surface, and an explosive end to the summer will change everyone forever....

When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as "Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue." This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom - with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism - would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting.

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.

Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people’s stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes listeners into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger, these tales reveal not only the precarious balance maintained between grief and happiness in our lives but also how the echoes of personal tragedy can shape us for the better. 

Michael Kind is raised in the Jewish cauldron of 1920s New York, familiar with the stresses and materialism of metropolitan life. Turning to the ancient set of ethics of his Orthodox grandfather, with a modern twist, he becomes a Reform rabbi. As insecure and sexually needy as any other young male, he serves as a circuit-rider rabbi in the Ozarks, and then as a temple rabbi in the racially ugly South, in a San Francisco suburb, in a Pennsylvania college town, and, finally, in a New England community west of Boston.

A captivating exploration of human love, marriage, and the illusions upon which it is founded, Mrs. Kimble presents a fascinating psychological portrait of a mesmerizing opportunist and the women who believe in him. Beautifully wrought, stunningly original, Jennifer Haigh's sparkling debut marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.

In this sensuous, funny, and heartbreaking new book, Amy Bloom explores the unexpected patterns that all forms of love and loss weave into our lives. With her dazzling prose, strong voice, and unmistakable and generous wit, this award-winning author takes us to the margins and centers of real people's lives, introducing us to some of her most unforgettable characters yet.