Summer On The Bluffs

New York Times Bestseller! The View cohost and New York Times bestselling author Sunny Hostin dazzles with this brilliant novel about a life-changing summer along the beaches of Martha's Vineyard. Welcome to Oak Bluffs, the most exclusive Black beach community in the country. Known for its gingerbread Victorian-style houses and modern architectural marvels, this picturesque town hugging the sea is a mecca for the crème de la crème of Black society—where Michelle and Barack Obama vacation and Meghan Markle has shopped for a house for her mom. Black people have lived in this pretty slip of the Vineyard since the 1600s and began buying property in the 1800s, making this posh town the embodiment of “old money.” Thirty years ago, Amelia Vaux Tanner and her husband built a house high on the bluffs, a cottage they named Chateau Laveau. For decades, “Ama” played host to American presidents, Wall Street titans, and cultural icons. But her favorite guests have always been her three “goddaughters:” Esperanza “Perry” Soto, a beautiful, talented Afro-Latina lawyer with Ama’s strong, yet guarded personality; Olivia Jones, a gifted Wall Street analyst with Ama’s brilliant, logical mind; and Billie Hayden, a gifted marine biologist and rule-breaker with Ama’s courageous free spirit. Growing up, these three goddaughters from different backgrounds came together each summer at Chateau Laveau. As adults, the cottage is a place this trio of successful yet very different women go to escape, to slow down from their hectic lives, share private time with Ama, and enjoy the gorgeous weather, cool water, and stunning views Oak Bluffs offers. This summer on the Bluffs, however, will be different. An era is ending: Ama, now nearing seventy-one, is moving to the south of France to reunite with her college sweetheart. She has invited Perry, Olivia, and Billie to spend one last golden summer together with her the way they did when they were kids. And when fall comes, she is going to give the house to one of them. Each of the women wants the house desperately. Each is grappling with a secret she fears will hurt her and her chances. By the end of summer, old ties will fray, new bonds will be created, and these three found sisters will discover they aren’t the only ones with something to hide. Ama has a few secrets of her own. What she has to give them is far more than property. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, she will tell these surrogate daughters she fiercely loves and protects everything they never knew they needed to know.

The Emmy Award-winning legal journalist and co-host of The View Sunny Hostin chronicles her journey from growing up in a South Bronx housing project to becoming an assistant U.S. attorney and journalist in this powerful memoir that offers an intimate and unique look at identity, intolerance, and injustice. “What are you?” has followed Sunny Hostin from the beginning of her story, as she grew up half Puerto Rican and half African-American raised by teenage parents in the South Bronx. Escaping poverty and the turbulence of her early life through hard work, a bit of luck and earning academic scholarships to college and law school, Sunny immersed herself in the workings of the criminal justice system. In Washington, D.C., Sunny became a federal prosecutor, soon parlaying her wealth of knowledge of the legal system into a successful career as a legal journalist. She was one of the first national reporters to cover Trayvon Martin’s death—which her producers erroneously labeled “just a local story.” Today, an inescapable voice from the top echelons of news and entertainment, Sunny uses her platform to advocate for social justice and give a voice to the marginalized. In her signature no-holds-barred, straight-up style, Sunny opens up and shares her intimate struggles with fertility and personal turmoil, and reflects on the high-stakes cases and stories she worked on as a prosecutor and during her time at CNN, Fox News, ABC and The View. Timely, poignant, and moving, I Am These Truths is the story of a woman living between two worlds, and learning to bridge them together to fight for what’s right.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The View cohost and three-time Emmy Award winner Sunny Hostin spirits readers away to the warm beaches of Sag Harbor in this instant New York Times bestseller, the second novel in her acclaimed Summer series. In a hidden enclave in Sag Harbor, affectionately known as SANS—Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Nineveh—there’s a close-knit community of African American elites who escape the city and enjoy the beautiful warm weather and beaches at their vacation homes. Since the 1930s, very few have known about this Historically Black Beachfront Community in this part of the Hamptons on Long Island, and the residents like it that way. That is, until real estate developers discover the hidden gem. And now, the residents must fight for the soul of this HBBC. Against the odds, Olivia Jones has blazed her own enviable career path and built her name in the finance world. But hidden behind the veneer of her success, there is a gaping hole. Mourning both the loss and the betrayal of Omar, a surrogate father to her and her two godsisters, Olivia is driven to solve the mystery of what happened to her biological father, a police officer unjustly killed when she was a little girl. Untethered from her life in New York City, Olivia moves to a summer home in Sag Harbor and begins forging a new community out in this HBBC. Friendships blossom with Kara, an ambitious art curator; and Whitney, the wife of an ex-basketball player and current president of the Sag Harbor Homeowners Association; and a sexy new neighbor and single father, Garrett, who makes her reconsider her engagement with Anderson. She also takes to a kind, older gentleman named Mr. Whittingham, but soon discovers he too is not without his own troubles. As the summer stretches on, each relationship teaches her more about who she really is. Though not without cost, Olivia’s search for her authentic identity in the secret history of her family of origin and her fight to preserve her new Black utopia, will lead her to redefine the meaning of love, friendship, community, and family—and restore her faith in herself, her relationships, and her chosen path.

In her final novel, “a beautiful and devastating examination of family, society and race” (The New York Times), Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's Black bourgeoisie on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1950s. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community. With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

“Michelle Gable has moved in on [Elin] Hilderbrand’s home turf with a humorous and smartly written story of two generations of love and vacations.” —Wall Street Journal From New York Times bestselling author of A Paris Apartment comes a novel about summer in Nantucket and a guestbook that reveals family secrets. The ocean, the wild roses on the dunes and the stunning Cliff House, perched atop a bluff in Sconset, Nantucket. Inside the faded pages of the Cliff House guest book live the spellbinding stories of its female inhabitants: from Ruby, a bright-eyed newlywed on the eve of World War II to her granddaughter Bess, who returns to the beautiful summer estate. For the first time in four years, physician Bess Codman visits the compound her great-grandparents built almost a century before, but due to erosion, the once-grand home will soon fall into the sea. Bess must now put aside her complicated memories in order to pack up the house and deal with her mother, a notorious town rabble-rouser, who refuses to leave. It’s not just memories of her family home Bess must face though, but also an old love that might hold new possibilities. In the midst of packing Bess rediscovers the forgotten family guest book. Bess’s grandmother and primary keeper of the book, Ruby, always said Cliff House was a house of women, and by the very last day of the very last summer at Cliff House, Bess will understand the truth of her grandmother’s words in ways she never imagined.

Standing on a high dune overlooking the sandy beach and Atlantic Ocean, The Bluffs of Bay Head, New Jersey was one of the last great, old Jersey Shore resort hotels. For more than a century, this Victorian landmark was the summer destination for the affluent from Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey as well as the year-round meeting place for the ?locals.? Francine LaVance Robertshaw began summering in Bay Head as a child in the mid-1950s, eventually moving there in 1967. She worked at The Bluffs from 1979 through 1986, first as a desk clerk and then as assistant to Kathleen Johnson Spies, manager and daughter of owners Alfred E. (Sonny) and Martha Johnson. This is Francine Robertshaw's inside story of The Bluffs. Through her research, interviews, experiences, photographs, and documents, you will meet the owners as well as many of the employees, hotel guests, and bar patrons who made The Bluffs unique and charming over the decades. You?ll meet the ?regulars? and the ?eccentrics? a

“Beautiful. ... A lyrical companion to his father’s classic, A River Runs through It, chronicling their family’s history and bond with Montana’s Blackfoot River.” —Washington Post A "poetic" and "captivating" (Publishers Weekly) memoir about the power of place to shape generations, Home Waters is John N. Maclean's remarkable chronicle of his family's century-long love affair with Montana's majestic Blackfoot River, the setting for his father's classic novella, A River Runs through It. Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the trout of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell. A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a landscape, Home Waters is a portrait of a family who claimed a river, from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the 20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters fictionalized in A River Runs through It, including the Reverend Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert Redford’s film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the family and led John to investigate his uncle’s murder and reveal new details in these pages. A universal story about nature, family, and the art of fly fishing, Maclean’s memoir beautifully captures the inextricable ways our personal histories are linked to the places we come from—our home waters. Featuring twelve wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates and a map of the Blackfoot River region.

For three generations of women, a summer on Martha’s Vineyard brings family drama, new beginnings, and a second chance at love in this heartwarming novel. Lauren has the perfect life . . . if she ignores the fact that it’s a fragile house of cards, and that her daughter Mack has just turned into a teenage stranger. Jenna is desperate to start a family with her husband, but it’s . . . Just. Not. Happening. While her heart is breaking inside, she’s determined to keep her trademark smile on her face. Nancy knows she hasn’t been the best mother, but how can she ever tell Lauren and Jenna the reason why? Then life changes in an instant, and Lauren, Mack, Jenna and Nancy are thrown together for a summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Somehow, these very different women must relearn how to be a family. And while unraveling their secrets might be their biggest challenge, the rewards could be infinite.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A novel to cure your Downton Abbey withdrawal . . . a delightful story about nontraditional romantic relationships, class snobbery and the everybody-knows-everybody complications of living in a small community.”—The Washington Post The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love on the eve of World War I that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND NPR East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking—and attractive—than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war. Praise for The Summer Before the War “What begins as a study of a small-town society becomes a compelling account of war and its aftermath.”—Woman’s Day “This witty character study of how a small English town reacts to the 1914 arrival of its first female teacher offers gentle humor wrapped in a hauntingly detailed story.”—Good Housekeeping “Perfect for readers in a post–Downton Abbey slump . . . The gently teasing banter between two kindred spirits edging slowly into love is as delicately crafted as a bone-china teacup. . . . More than a high-toned romantic reverie for Anglophiles—though it serves the latter purpose, too.”—The Seattle Times

A “perfectly executed suspense tale very much in the mode of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca” (The Washington Post) from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, and The Turn of the Key. On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She realizes very quickly that the letter was sent to the wrong person—but also that the cold-reading skills she’s honed as a tarot card reader might help her claim the money. Soon, Hal finds herself at the funeral of the deceased…where it dawns on her that there is something very, very wrong about this strange situation and the inheritance at the center of it. Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, this is a “captivating and eerie page-turner” (The Wall Street Journal) from the Agatha Christie of our time.