First line: Birth and death are the two occurrences in a person’s life that seem to say one thing: we are not the ones calling the shots. From the back cover: Every summer, Samantha Wheland joins her childhood friends – Isabel, Kendra, and Mina – on a vacation somewhere exotic and fabulous. Together with their mixed bag of parents, they’ve created a lifetime of memories. This year it’s a beach…

First line: “We have an idea,” Laila Riley announced when she and Connie Collins turned up in Jess O’Brien’s office at The Inn at Eagle Point on a Saturday night. From the back cover: Jess O’Brien has overcome a lot – the challenges of attention deficit disorder, the near bankruptcy of her beloved Inn at Eagle Point and her self-perception as a screw-up in a family of overachievers. Now she’s…

First line: “I think Dad wants to get back together,” Bethanne’s daughter, Annie spoke with studied nonchalance. From the inside cover: In the middle of the year, in the middle of her life, Bethanne Hamlin takes a road trip with her daughter, Annie, and her former mother-in-law, Ruth. They’re driving to Florida for Ruth’s 50th high-school reunion. A longtime widow, Ruth would like to reconnect with Royce, the love of…

First line: Heather Donovan propped open the front door and stood just inside the brightly lit storefront in Chesapeake Shores so she could inhale the scent of sea air from the bay across Shore Road. From the back cover: Single mom Heather Donovan’s dreams of home and family are tantalizingly within reach when she settles in Chesapeake Shores. The welcoming arms of the boisterous, loving O’Brien clan embrace her and…

First line: Though she was careful not to show it, Madeline Singer did not fall apart when her youngest child let for college. From the back cover: On the brink of ruin, three very different women discover themselves where they least expect it…at Ten Beach Road. Madeline, Avery, and Nikki are strangers to one another, but they have one thing in common. They each wake up one morning to discover…

First line: I wasn’t thinking about the man who’d blown himself up. From the back cover: Her life is devoted to justice – for those she never even knew. In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Tempe detects an alarming…

First line: Dan says I should quit reading all those homemaker magazines. From the back cover: Linda Davis’s local fabric shop is a place where women gather to share their creations: wedding quilts, baby quilts, memorial quilts, each bound tight with dreams, hopes and yearnings. Now, as her only child readies for college, Linda is torn between excitement for Molly and heartache for herself. Who will she be when she…

First line: “I’ve got the backbone of a worm,” Lacey Lancaster muttered as she let herself into her apartment. From the inside cover: Lacey Lancaster has always longed to be a wife and mother. However, after a painful divorce, she decides it’s time to lay low for a while in her charming San Francisco apartment with her beautiful Abyssinian cat, Cleo. Everything would be wonderful, except for her utterly impossible…

First line: “He reads Mario Puzzo,” Suzanne murmured, focusing on a couple that was eyeing each other warily. From the back cover: After losing their husbands, Suzanne, Toni, and Petra bonded, gaining a newfound independence as well as a wealth of support, inspiration, home baked goods, and their own business. but who would have dreamed that when the Cackleberry Club cafe opened its doors, the three women would be serving…

First line: “What do you think?” Jenna Stevens asked, doing her best to sound confident. From the back cover: After nearly a decade as a sous chef in a trendy eatery, Jenna is desperate for a change. She’s supported her ex-husband’s dreams for so long that she can’t even remember her own. Until she sees a for-lease sign near her parents’ home and envisions her very own cooking store. Her…

First line: I am not a sentimental guy. Synopsis from Barnes & Noble: On the anniversary of his beloved wife’s death, Dr. Michael Everett receives a letter Hannah had written him. In it she reminds him of her love and makes one final request. An impossible request. I want you to marry again. She tells him he shouldn’t spend the years he has left grieving—and she’s chosen three women she…

First line: Some people lived in the real world and others lived in Brooklyn. From the inside cover: It’s the summer of 1978, and Samantha Bonti is fifteen years old, half Jewish and half Italian, whose dreams of something more are bigger than the neighborhood girls’ teased hair. She lives in Bensonhurst with her mother, Joan, a woman abandoned and scarred in a ruinous marriage, poisoned with cynicism, and shackled…

First line: Dora had a rhythm going, or if not a rhythm, a pattern, and it went something like downshift, wipe tears away with back of hand, sob, upshift, scrub running nose with horrible crumpled fastfood napkin, stab at the buttons on the radio, and then downshift again. From the back cover: Do the clothes make the woman? Dora has always taken the path of least resistance. She went to…