Island Fiction

Thirty-four-year-old Ruby Bridge is a not-too-successful comedienne who uses her mother, a nationally-syndicated "moral and spiritual counselor" as the main fodder for her cynical, rather bitter humor. Her mother Nora, long divorced from Ruby's father, is a woman whose past is just about to catch up with her - in the form of blackmail by a former lover.

From the outside looking in, Lauren Delaney has a life to envy - a successful career, a solid marriage to a prominent surgeon, and two beautiful daughters who are off to good colleges. But on her 24th wedding anniversary, Lauren makes a decision that will change everything. Lauren won’t pretend things are perfect anymore. She defies the controlling husband who has privately mistreated her throughout their marriage and files for divorce. And as she starts her new life, she meets a kindred spirit - a man who is also struggling with the decision to end his unhappy marriage.

April Raines is facing the end of her long-term marriage after her husband begins another family. Eager for a fresh start, she returns home with her grown daughters to Crown Island, just off the coast of Southern California. When Ryan Kingston acquires the historical Majestic Hotel, he is determined to bring the vintage Victorian beach resort back to life. But it could come at a steep cost to him and his carefully guarded privacy. Especially when April Raines, head of the new Crown Island Historical Society, captures his attention. Will they both get a second chance at life?

When Meg Whitaker's father decides to sell the family's lobster-fishing business to her high school nemesis, she sets out to prove she should inherit it instead. Though she's never had any interest in running the small fleet - or even getting on a boat due to her persistent seasickness - she can't stand to see Oliver Ross take over. Not when he ruined her dreams for a science scholarship and an Ivy League education 10 years ago.

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous, physical work, and the men take care of the children.

The very moment that Raina Wingate learns her husband of sixteen years wants to separate, she gets a call that her father has suffered a stroke. Racing to her family’s home on Amelia Island, Florida, Raina hopes the time apart will heal her cracked marriage and that she can step into her father’s real estate business and keep it running. Her sister, Tori, a divorcee who owns a catering business in Boston, also flies in to join the others at the hospital. But an unexpected run-in with their father’s rather attractive neurologist adds a new dimension to the days and weeks ahead.

If you happen to find a map in a dead buccaneer's sea trunk, you can't very well ignore it, not if you are Jim Hawkins and his friends Dr. Livesey, Captain Smollett, and Squire Trelawney! But even with a map, buried treasures are not easy things to come by.

In his final novel - which he considered his most important - Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and - to his amazement - give him hope.

Nim lives on an island in the middle of the wide blue sea, shared by only her father, Jack, a marine iguana called Fred, a sea lion called Selkie, a turtle called Chica, and a satellite dish for her e-mail. No one else in the world lives quite like Nim, and she wouldn't swap places with anyone.

With Mrs. Hudson gone from their lives and domestic chaos building, the last thing Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, need is to help an old friend with her mad and missing aunt. Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, since the loss of her brother and father in the Great War. And although her mental state seemed to be improving, she’s now disappeared after an outing from Bethlem Royal Hospital...better known as Bedlam.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

Jack's prize money has set the household accounts aright, but if he continues frittering it on naive extravagances, it will be gone in a fortnight. Fortunately he gets a commission aboard the Leopard, bound for Australia to rescue the hated and captive Captain Bligh.

Ellis Island, 1902. Francesca arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life than the one she left in Italy. That same day, aspiring linguist Alma reports to her first day of work at the immigrant processing center. Ellis, though, is not the refuge it first appears thanks to President Roosevelt's attempts to deter crime. Francesca and Alma will have to rely on each other to escape its corruption and claim the American dreams they were promised.

Five former sorority sisters, all in their 50s, undertake the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious invite reunites them at an exclusive resort set on a private island.

Ninety years ago, Millie Sullivan's great-grandmother was a guest at oil tycoon Howard Dawkins' palatial estate on the shore of St. Simons Island, Georgia. Now, Millie plays a 1920s-era guest during tours of the same manor. But when her grandmother suggests there is a lost diary containing the location of a hidden treasure on the estate, along with the true identity of Millie's great-grandfather, Millie sets out to find the truth of her heritage - and the fortune that might be hers.

"Excellent book, great characters absolutely nothing like I'd imagined." "A true page turner, transporting you across time and space." Joah Maroon, an ex-military, club bouncer passes out in a Mexican hospital, then wakes up on a paradise island surrounded by beautiful women. Despite this apparent turn of luck, he is a prisoner. And part time circus monkey. Forced to compete in deadly games and entertain unseen viewers, Joah plots escape as he draws his new female friends closer. The tropical island home is deceptively enticing but unforgiving. As his world changes, new reality alters his ...

Lovers Rock stars Jamaica: its language, its landscape, its vibe, its humor, its edge and its persistent, dogged beauty. These seven stories imagine strange, quirky, familiar and delicious encounters between people in search of romantic love in the twenty-first century. Featuring characters from of all walks of life, each story is connected by the unique vibe of Jamaican desire.

Willow Shorts has told herself the same thing for years – she doesn’t want a divorce. But deep down, she knows there’s more to life than laundry and loneliness. Her husband, Charlie, had promised to give up his workaholic ways this summer. But it’s been months, and nothing has changed. In an act of desperation, Willow leaves her husband a note, drives south through the night, to stay at her best friend’s summer cottage on Sanibel Island. The first few days are filled with sandy streets, sunshine and crystal blue water, just as she imagined. It’s only after 4 days have passed ...

Are you a Walking Temple? Join bestselling author Christine Lemmon on a soulful journey through Sanibel Island in this Christian fiction tale. Rediscover faith, purpose, and the beauty of God's creation, crafted especially for women of all ages. "Set on beautiful Sanibel Island, this enchanting tale will have you wishing for your own slice of paradise here on earth."— Kathleen Y'Barbo Publishers Weekly bestselling author of The Black Midnight "Explore one woman's search for what's missing in her life ... a reminder that sometimes what we are looking for in life isn't what we need the most...

After a painful divorce, Maisey Lazarow returns to Fairham, the small island off the North Carolina coast where she grew up. She goes there to heal - and to help her brother, Keith, a deeply troubled man who's asked her to come home. But she refuses to stay in the family house. The last person she wants to see is her wealthy, controlling mother. Instead she finds herself living next door to someone else she'd prefer to avoid - Rafe Romero, the wild, reckless boy to whom she lost her virginity at 16.