All Books Considered

Summer After Summer by Lauren Bailey Blurb from Goodreads : A woman returns to her family's Hamptons beach house for a final time—and a final chance at the love she's lost before, in this contemporary retelling of Persuasion , perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Rebecca Serle. Olivia Elliot’s marriage is in a death spiral when she agrees to come home to the Hamptons to help her father and sisters pack up the family estate. If it looks like she’s running away from her soon-to-be-ex Wes and New York City, well, she is. But someone has to take care of things and that’s always been Olivia’s role in the family. After years of financial trouble, someone’s finally bailing them out with a huge offer to buy their beachfront property, which is a good thing, although it means losing the home she grew up in, where her mother died, and where she first met Fred, the love of her life. It’s been five years since the last time...

The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen Blurb from Goodreads : Dead men don’t send texts… On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty's phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it's been several years since she learned he died. Seeing Drew’s name pop up is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to. Nobody shows. But the text upends everything she thought she knew about the day he left her. The more questions she asks, the more sinister the answers get. Only two things are clear: everything she was told five years ago is wrong, and someone is still lying to her. The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard hersel...

Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin Blurb from Goodreads : Frankie O’Neill and Anne Ryan would seem to have nothing in common. Frankie is a lonely ornithologist struggling to salvage her dissertation on the spotted owl following a rift with her advisor. Anne is an Irish musician far from home and family, raising her five-year-old, Aiden, who refuses to speak. At Beauty Bay, a community of summer homes nestled on the shores of June Lake, in the remote foothills of Mount Adams, it’s off-season with most houses shuttered for the fall. But Frankie, adrift, returns to the rundown caretaker’s cottage that has been in the hardworking O'Neill family for generations—a beloved place and a constant reminder of the family she has lost. And Anne, in the wake of a tragedy that has disrupted her career and silenced her music, has fled to the neighboring house, a showy summer home owned by her husband's wealthy family. When Frankie fi...

Under the Paper Moon by Shaina Steinberg Blurb from Goodreads : Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets The Thin Man’ s Nick and Nora Charles in this intrigue-filled debut from film and television writer Shaina Steinberg, as two former spies who shared more than just missions during WWII reunite in 1948 Los Angeles. Can they let go of heartbreak long enough to team up for one last operation? A tightly-plotted, emotionally rich postwar mystery for fans of The Rose Code by Kate Quinn and The Lost Letter by Jillian Cantor, as well as readers of mysteries by Ashley Weaver, Allison Montclair, and Jacqueline Winspear. It’s 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic ...

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl Blurb from Goodreads : Bestselling author Ruth Reichl takes readers on an adventure of food, art, and fashion in 1980s Paris in this dazzling, heartfelt novel Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life? When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual gift: a one-way plane ticket, and a note reading ‘Go to Paris’. But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes. Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The...

The Summer We Started Over by Nancy Thayer Blurb from Goodreads : Two sisters reconnect and pursue their dreams on the beautiful island of Nantucket, overcoming life’s challenges and finding new love, in this heartwarming and hopeful novel by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Thayer.Eddie Grant is happy with her life and her work as a personal assistant to Dinah Lavender, one of the most famous and renowned romance authors in the business. But being a spectator to notoriety and glamour isn’t as fulfilling as she once thought. Thankfully, Eddie has the perfect excuse for a Her hardworking younger sister, Barrett, is opening her gift shop on Memorial Day weekend, and could use all the help she can get.  But going home to the beautiful island of Nantucket means facing the family’s difficult past. Shortly after the death of Eddie and Barrett’...

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth,  Narrated by Jessica Clarke Blurb from Goodreads : For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the sp...

Not How I Pictured It by Robin Lefler Blurb from Goodreads : A sharply hilarious and ultimately heartfelt novel about a former teen superstar who grudgingly agrees to a reboot of the show that made her (in)famous, from the author of Reasonable Adults. Twenty years after Turning Tides went off the air, the beloved TV show about teenage romance and angst is back. No one is more surprised than its former star, Agnes “Ness” Larkin, that she’s agreed to step back into the role of Hailey Grant. After her father/manager took off with her earnings, Ness ran away from the spotlight in shame. But maybe it’s time to stare her past, and her castmates, in their discreetly Botoxed faces. That enthusiasm lasts until the first table read, which, in co-star Coco’s words, is “like a high school reunion without the dim lighting or booze.” Ness assumed her old fling Ha...

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by  Asako Yuzuki, Translated by Polly Barton Blurb from Goodreads : Journalist Rika Machida is facing an unusual she is tapped to investigate serial killer Manako Kajii, notorious for drawing rich men in with her pricey cooking classes, only to murder them and move on to the next. Kajii refuses to cooperate with the press until Rika writes her a letter asking for her beef stew recipe, a correspondence and ongoing series of conversations between the two women that sees Rika transforming as she becomes closer to Kajii, taking on some of her confidence and strength but also some of her deadly intention. Game on.  Set in 2011, when dairy product shortages across Japan made butter a hot commodity, Butter depicts a vivid, panoramic view of contemporary Japan as seen through a diverse cast of Japanese women. An endlessly entertaining and sharply insightful look at the relationships ...