Mary Alice Monroe

The Beach House

Linnea and the Rutledge family continue to face their challenges with the strength, faith, and commitment. Love in the time of the coronavirus proves challenging, at times humorous, and ever changing. Relationships are redefined, friendships made and broken, and marriages tested. As the weeks turn to months, and another sea turtle season comes to a close, Linnea learns there are more meaningful lessons learned during this summer than opportunities lost, that summer is a time of wonder, and that the exotic lives in our own back yards. Print run 125,000.

The Summer of Lost and Found

Summoned by their Charleston society grandmother to a historic family home on Sullivan's Island, estranged sisters Carson, Eudora and Harper share a summer of healing and forgiveness while exploring the tenacious complexities of sisterhood and friendship. By the award-winning author of Beach House Memories. Original. 75,000 first printing.

The Summer Girls

Instant New York Times Bestseller The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Guests returns at long last to her beloved Isle of Palms in this breathtaking novel about one family’s summer of forging new beginnings against the enduring beauty and resilience of the natural world. It’s been sixteen years since Caretta “Cara” Rutledge has returned home to the beautiful shores of Charleston, South Carolina. Over those years, she has weathered the tides of deaths and births, struggles and joys. And now, as Cara prepares for her second wedding, her life is about to change yet again. Meanwhile, the rest of the storied Rutledge family is also in flux. Cara’s niece Linnea returns to Sullivan’s Island to begin a new career and an unexpected relationship. Linnea’s parents, having survived bankruptcy, pin their hopes and futures on the construction of a new home on Ocean Boulevard. But as excitement over the house and wedding builds, a devastating illness strikes the family and brings plans to a screeching halt. It is under these trying circumstances that the Rutledge family must come together yet again to discover the enduring strength in love, tradition, and legacy from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Like the sea turtles that come ashore annually on these windswept islands, three generations of the Rutledge family experience a season of return, rebirth, and growth. “Authentic, generous, and heartfelt” (Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author), On Ocean Boulevard is Mary Alice Monroe at her very best.

On Ocean Boulevard

Elin Hilderbrand

Adriana Trigiani

Patti Callahan Henry

Nathalie Dupree

Cassandra King

Marjory Wentworth

Inspired by the title Dorothea Benton Frank had planned for her next book - Reunion Beach - close friends and colleagues pay tribute in stories and poems that celebrate Frank, a prolific author who had a love for the Lowcountry of her native South Carolina.

Stories Inspired by Dorothea Benton Frank

Reunion Beach

New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe returns to her beloved Isle of Palms to tell the poignant, charming story of two women, one summer, and one very special beach house. When Cara Rutledge rents out her quaint beach house on Isle of Palms to Heather Wyatt for the entire summer, it’s a win-win by any standard: Cara’s generating income necessary to keep husband Brett’s ecotourism boat business afloat, and anxiety-prone Heather, an young artist who’s been given a commission to paint birds on postage stamps, has a quiet space in which to work and tend to her pet canaries uninterrupted. It isn’t long, however, before both women’s idyllic summers are altered irrevocably: the alluring shorebirds—and the man who rescues them—begin to draw Heather out of the shell she’s cultivated toward a world of adventure, and maybe even love; at the same time, Cara’s life reels with sudden tragedy, and she wishes only to return to the beach house that had once been her port amidst life’s storms. When Heather refuses to budge from her newfound sanctuary, so begins the unlikeliest of rooming situations. While they start out as strangers, as everything around the women falls apart they learn that the only thing they can really rely on is each other. And, like the migrating shorebirds that come to the island for the summer, these two women of different generations must rediscover their unique strengths so by summer’s end they, too, can take flight in ways they never imagined possible.

Beach House for Rent

Spending the summer with his grandmother on South Carolina's Dewees Island, eleven-year-old Jake finds two friends who are also struggling with family issues and together they try to save a sea turtle nest from predators.

The Islanders

Sometimes fairy tales do come true! As a single mother of two, Faye O'Neill has no time for fairy tales. She's not even certain she believes in luck. Practical, smart and desperate to escape a shadowy past, Faye takes a job at a top advertising firm in London where she hopes she and her children can find a fresh start. When she finds the beautiful two-story flat for rent in a stately old Victorian complete with a neglected but tumbling English garden, she can scarcely believe her good fortune. But it's not long before Faye realizes everything in the old home may not be as peaceful as it seems. A strange light begins to appear in her children's rooms at night, and then there's the reclusive elderly tenant her landlady warned her to steer clear of, the woman who spends her evenings spying on Faye's children from her garret-room window. To make matters worse, Faye, who has sworn off men, discovers her downstairs neighbor Jack is a disturbingly handsome professor with a talent for charming women and children alike. Before she knows it, Faye has embarked upon a whole new adventure into a world where anything might be possible, where broken hearts can be healed by a kiss, and where Neverland may not be a place of fables, but a forgotten land one can still find if they are only brave enough to follow the second star to the right.

Second Star to the Right

For five women whose lives are in transition, their regular book club meeting provides them a place of comfort, support, and sanctuary.

The Book Club

Summer of Lost and Found

"It is summer's end and Sea Breeze, the family's beloved estate on Sullivan's Island, must be sold. It is an emotional time of transition as Mamaw and the three sisters each must face loss and find a new place in the world. Harper, the youngest sister, arrived at Sea Breeze intending to stay only a weekend, but a rift with her wealthy, influential mother left her without direction or a home. During this remarkable summer, free from her mother's tyranny and with the help of her half sisters, Harper discovered her talents and independent spirit. But summer is ending, and the fate of Sea Breeze hinges on Harper's courage to decide the course of her own life. To do so she must release her insecurities and recognize her newfound strengths. She must accept love fully into her life--the love of Mamaw, Carson, and Dora, the love of Sea Breeze and the lowcountry, and most of all, the love of a Wounded Warrior who has claimed her heart" --

The Summer's End

Whisking you back to the shores of her bestselling Beach House series, Mary Alice Monroe weaves together a tale of the struggles and triumphs of the historic Rutledge family of Charleston, South Carolina. Beautifully wrought and rich with keen insight, this is an illuminating tale of new beginnings, resilience, and one family’s enduring love. Cara Rutledge returns to her Southern home on the idyllic Isle of Palms. Everything is comfortingly the same, yet each detail is rife with painful memories. Only through reconnecting with family, friends, and the rhythms of the lowcountry can Cara release the hold of the past and open herself to the possibility of a new love, career, and hope for the future. Meanwhile, her niece Linnea, a recent college graduate who doesn’t know where her life will take her, leaves her historic home in Charleston, with all its entitlement and expectations, and heads to her aunt’s beach house. On the island, she is part of the freer, natural ocean lifestyle she loves, rejoining the turtle team, learning to surf, and falling in love. Remembering the lessons of her beloved grandmother, Lovie, the original “turtle lady,” Linnea rediscovers a meaningful purpose to her life and finds the courage she needs to break from tradition. In this heartwarming novel, three generations of the Rutledge family gather together to find the strength, love, and commitment to break destructive family patterns and to forge new bonds that will endure long beyond one summer reunion.

Beach House Reunion

While recovering from breast cancer in a remote cabin in North Carolina, Mia Landan finds the journal of Kate Watkins, a 1920s fly fisher, and, inspired by Kate's example, learns to fish and uncovers many secrets around her.

Time Is a River

Angela May

Search for Treasure

Four very different women embark on a transformational journey that follows the migrating monarchs across the United States to Mexico. The story begins when Luz Avila's grandmother, the local butterfly lady, purchases an old, orange VW bug for a road trip home to Mexico. When she unexpectedly dies, Luz is inspired to take her grandmother's ashes home. In the manner of the Aztec myth of the goddess who brings light to the world, Luz attracts a collection of lost women, each seeking change in their lives. The Mexican people believe the monarchs are the spirits of the recently departed and Luz taps into ancient rituals and myths as she follows the spectacular, glittering river of orange monarchs in the sky to home.

The Butterfly's Daughter

A tale exploring themes of class, women's rights and domestic abuse in the 1970s American South shares the story of The Beach House's Lovie Rutledge, who reflects on a summer during which a beach vacation to escape her unfaithful, disdainful husband culminates in a fateful romance with a handsome biologist. 75,000 first printing.

Beach House Memories

The Long Road Home (Harper Monogram)

Skyward

Rediscover this moving tale of second chances and self-reinvention by New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe. Her husband’s suicide left Nora MacKenzie alone, and his shady Wall Street dealings left the Manhattan socialite penniless. By a miracle she’s held on to their mountainside farm—and she’ll keep holding on, no matter what. The property is Nora’s one chance to wring some dignity out of the sham she’s been living. The Vermont locals think she’s a city girl on a nature kick, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. Nora’s serious about learning the farming business…if she can figure out where to begin. Against the locals’ skepticism, she has only one ally: Charles "C.W." Walker. C.W. is hardworking, gentle with the animals and a patient teacher of the hundreds of chores Nora needs to learn. Slowly she starts to believe she’ll survive in her new life, even flourish. She might even be willing to open her heart again. But she won’t return to a life of lies…and the truth about C.W. may be more than Nora’s fragile heart can bear. Originally published in 2010

Mary Alice Monroe

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