The St Clair sisters have never been close to each other or to their remote mother Ginny. As adults they live very different and separate lives, until their mother invites them to the house she has bought on the coast. Here they begin to understand each other and to discover their mother's secret.

Returning to Ogunquit, Maine, for an extended visit, successful businesswoman Maggie Weldon reunites with her best friend growing up, native Mainer Delphine Crandall, and together they reflect on their choices and compromises, the girls they were and the women they've become.

Louise, owner of a bed and breakfast, must deal with the trappings and paparazzi that accompany the celebrity wedding taking place in her establishment as her daughter deals with her father's neglect and the attractions of a local boy.

"Louisa has come to her parents' house in Maine this summer with all three of her kids, a barely written book, and a trunkful of resentment. Left behind in Brooklyn is her husband, who has promised that after this final round of fundraising at his startup he will once again pick up his share of the household responsibilities. Louisa is hoping that the crisp breeze off Penobscot Bay will blow away the irritation she is feeling with her life choices...

"A picturesque Maine beach town is the setting for Holly Chamberlin s touching and thought-provoking new novel, as a mother struggles to reconnect with her long lost daughter ... Every year on March 26th, Verity Peterson visits Ogunquit Beach, where she puts a handwritten message into a bottle and launches it into the waves. It's a ritual of remembrance for the daughter she hasn't seen in sixteen years--not since her baby's father, Alan, took two-month-old...

Rosa Fleming motors her way to Bennett's Island in the dark of the night, fleeing her divorce, her philandering husband and the gossipmongers of her hometown. On the Island she discovers not only a refuge to heal her emotional wounds, but also a community that nurtures her battered confidence and a man who teaches her to love and be loved as an equal. When a fight breaks out between the island's lobstermen and the invading fishermen who disregard...

It isn't easy for sweet young Maude Gascoigne, from a moldering plantation near Charleston, to fit in when her new husband, sterling-silver Peter Chambliss takes her to the summer place. For the first few decades Maude battles it out with her insufferable, hypercritical mother-in-law, the drunken and lecherous husband of her best friend, Amy Potter, and even Peter himself--a depressive, hermetic man who just sails away whenever things get rough. Gradually,...

Philippa Marshall arrives on isolated Bennett's Island as a young war widow eager to provide for her son. The insular island community initially welcomes her as the teacher in their one-room schoolhouse, but when she champions a clutch of neglected children, she finds herself thrust in the midst of a smoldering conflict between two prominent families. The prospect of a lobster war between the Bennetts and Campions threatens the livelihoods of everyone...

Ford Maddox was running from his past when he came back to Blueberry Cove, Maine. With feisty Delia O'Reilly there to cheer him on, he couldn't have picked a better place to start over-- even if he's determined to do it alone in his island tree house, working to save endangered seabirds... and himself. But when he finds Delia fighting to hold on to her local diner, and all that's best about their little seaside town, Ford has to lend a hand. Suddenly...

After her only child, eighteen-year-old Luke, dies in a fall, Maine B&B owner Abby Stone must cope with her grief as she plans a memorial, the boy's biological father comes back into her life, and Luke's pregnant girlfriend shows up.