My Love Affair With An Island

This book tells the history of the famous Jefferson Islands Club, called the "Playground of Presidents," which was the private island retreat for Presidents including Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as well as many Senators and Congressmen. Stories about events at the Club are told by historian Jefferson Glassie, who grew up spending weekends at the Club on St. Catherine's Island in the Potomac River near Washington, DC, and later worked there as manager and has served on the Board for nearly thirty years. With many humorous anecdotes and comments, Glassie recounts the history of both Poplar Islands where the Club was initially located and St. Catherine's Island, mixing in tales of politicians and watermen, along with the hamr caused by erosion and the gradual degradation of the health of the Bay. With photographs.

“This is Us” meets “The Wedding Date”…Latinx style! When social media influencer Sara Vance is stranded sans her flaky boyfriend just before a Key West family vacation, a meet-cute with Cuban-American firefighter Luis Navarro in the parking lot of the airport is the answer to her prayers. With Luis as her fake fiancée for the week, Sara can maintain her “perfect” image IRL. But what happens when the fake starts feeling so real? Gorgeously repackaged in mass-market, Island Affair from USA Today bestselling author Priscilla Oliveras is the ultimate beach read! Sought-after social media influencer Sara Vance, in recovery from an eating disorder, is coming into her own, with a potential career expansion on the horizon. Despite the good news, her successful siblings (and their perfect spouses) have a way of making her feel like the odd one out. So, when her unreliable boyfriend is a no-show for a Florida family vacation, Sara recruits Luis Navarro—a firefighter paramedic and dive captain willing to play the part of her smitten fiancé . . . Luis’s big Cuban familia has been in Key West for generations, and his quiet strength feeds off the island’s laidback style. Though guarded after a deep betrayal, he’ll always help someone in need—especially a spunky beauty with a surprising knowledge of Spanish curse words. Soon, he and Sara have memorized their “how we met” story and are immersed in family dinners, bike tours, private snorkeling trips . . . sharing secrets, and slow, melting kisses. But when it’s time for Sara to return home, will their fake relationship fade like the stunning sunset . . . or blossom into something beautiful?

Her travel book captures the allure of Italy's Amalfi Coast, as Margie Miklas takes us on a journey of personal experiences through storytelling. An award-winning author and travel blogger, Margie has traveled to the Amalfi Coast more than any other area of Italy and has fallen in love with the beauty of its rugged landscape and rocky coastline. Through real-life stories, humor, travel advice, and practical information, she'll entice you to plan your next trip and maybe even experience your own love affair. Discover: Various transportation options and how to get around Less touristy towns and other hidden gems Local people who are happy to share their passion The cities that make the best hubs for day excursions The location that provided the inspiration to write The Amalfi Coast is waiting for you. All you have to do is make it happen. The helpful hints in this book will get you started.

“The Summer Wives is an exquisitely rendered novel that tackles two of my favorite topics: love and money. The glorious setting and drama are enriched by Williams’s signature vintage touch. It’s at the top of my picks for the beach this summer.” —Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season—an electrifying postwar fable of love, class, power, and redemption set among the inhabitants of an island off the New England coast . . . In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister—all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion—is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society. But beneath the island’s patrician surface, there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses. Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he’s determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph’s enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, Miranda’s caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the island for nearly two decades. Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned Shakespearean actress hiding a terrible heartbreak. On its surface, the Island remains the same—determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the formerly powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for the murder of Miranda’s stepfather eighteen years earlier. What’s more, Miranda herself is no longer a naïve teenager, and she begins a fierce, inexorable quest for justice for the man she once loved . . . even if it means uncovering every last one of the secrets that bind together the families of Winthrop Island.

Journalist and memoirist Susan Allen Toth brings her special England vivdly to life as she recalls her many trips there over the years, where she explored the countryside, traveled both second-class and in luxury, theatre-hopped, hunted for ghosts, and honeymooned. Humorous, bittersweet, and wonderfully eccentric, this is a delightful remembrance to be savored by those who love to travel or just dream of it. "I love MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ENGLAND. It is written clearly and with a understanding that far supasses any feeling of condescension or superiority or general quaintness among the natives, all of which I detect in books about other countries." M.F.K. Fisher

In this touching and delightful memoir, Norman Podhoretz charts the ups and downs of his lifelong love affair with his native land, and warns that to turn against America, from the Right no less than from the Left, is to fall into the rankest ingratitude. While telling the story of how he himself grew up to be a fervent patriot, one of this country's leading conservative thinkers urges his fellow conservatives to rediscover and reclaim their faith in America. A superb storyteller, Podhoretz takes us from his childhood as a working-class kid in Brooklyn during the Great Depression -- the son of Jewish immigrants singing Catholic hymns in a public school staffed by Irish spinsters and duking it out on the streets with his black and Italian classmates -- to his later education, his shifting political alliances, and his arrival at a happy personal and intellectual resolution. My Love Affair with America shows us a gentler and funnier Podhoretz than readers have seen before. At the same time, it presents a picture of someone eager to proclaim, against all comers, that America represents one of the high points in the history of human civilizations. In this powerful, elegantly written, and poignant cautionary tale, Podhoretz pleads with his fellow conservatives not to fall, as some have lately done, into their own special brand of anti-Americanism, as he reminds them of the disastrous consequences that followed the assault by the New Left against the United States in decades gone by. Warm in feeling and brilliantly perceptive, My Love Affair with America points the way back to a thoroughly unabashed love of country -- the kind of patriotism that has rarely been encountered in recent years and that is as invigorating as it is inspiring.

From the first human settlements to the latest marine explorations, The Golden Shore tells the tale of the history, culture, and changing nature of California’s coasts and ocean. David Helvarg takes the reader on both a geographic and literary journey along the state’s 1,100-mile Pacific coastline, from the Oregon border to the San Diego–Tijuana international border fence and out into its whale-, seal-, and shark-rich offshore seamounts, rock isles, and kelp forests. Part history, part travelogue, part love letter, The Golden Shore captures the spirit of the California coast and its mythic place in American culture.

When Andrew Furman left the rolling hills of Pennsylvania behind for a new job in Florida, he feared the worst. While he’d heard much of the fabled “southern charm,” he wondered what could possibly be charming about fist-sized mosquitoes, oppressive humidity, and ever-lurking alligators. It wasn’t long before he began to notice that the real Florida right outside his office window was very different from the stereotypes portrayed in movies, television, and even state-promoted tourism advertisements. In Bitten, Furman shares his amazement at the beautiful and the bizarre of his adopted state. Over seventeen years, he and his family have shed their Yankee sensibilities and awakened to the terra incognita of their new home. As he learns to fish for snook—a wily fish that inhabits, among other areas, the concrete-lined canals that crisscross the state—and seeks out the state’s oldest live oak, a behemoth that pre-dates Columbus, Furman realizes that falling in love with Florida is a fun and sometimes humbling process of discovery. Each chapter highlights a fascinating aspect of his journey into the natural environment he once avoided, from snail kites to lizards and cassia to coontie. Sharing his attempts at night fishing, growing native plants, birding, and hiking the Everglades, Furman will inspire you to explore the real Florida. And, if you aren’t lucky enough to reside in the Sunshine State, he’ll at least convince you to unplug for an hour or two and enjoy the natural beauty of wherever it is you call home.

'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020* On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.

In the aftermath of the tragedy that struck Bali on 12 October 2002 comes an inspiring memoir which shows that Bali is still very much an island of warmth and hope. When Janet De Neefe stepped off the plane in Bali in 1984, she felt an immediate connection to the island paradise. Curious though she was about Bali's culture, its warm people and its mouth-watering cuisine, she didn't expect to fall in love with a Balinese man and make a new life there. Now, almost twenty years later, Janet and her husband, Ketut, have four children and run two of the most successful restaurants in Bali. Casa Luna is famous not only for being the first restaurant to fuse Balinese and Western food, but because of Janet's cooking school, which attracts visitors from all around the world. Janet's experiences in the magical world of Bali give her a unique perspective. In this delightful lifestyle book with a difference, Janet shares many entertaining stories as well as delicious recipes handed down through generations of her husband's family, as she learns to adapt to another culture and way of life. With additional information about the book and the author in Fragrant Rice's new PS section, this title pays tribute to Bali's thriving spirit and unconquerable strength, as the island continues on the path toward healing.