Set in South Carolina in 1964, [this book] tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters...

"Every August, four women would gather together to spend a week at the beach, renting a new house each year. The ritual began when they were in their twenties and their husbands were in medical school, and became a mainstay of every summer thereafter. Their only criteria were oceanfront and isolation, their only desire to strengthen their far-flung friendships. They called themselves the Girls of August. But when one of the Girls dies tragically,...

"Against all odds, Abby Mitchell has turned her life around. But in her crowning moment of celebration, dark clouds from the past threaten to undo everything she's worked so hard for... For the first time ever, Abby Mitchell feels that the world is her oyster. Her first book has found a publisher, a daring new surgery is on the horizon, and there's a new man in her life, a man who sees beyond any flaws...into her heart. Best of all, though, is that...

Twelve-year-old Emily Parmenter, her young life marked by the disappearance of her mother and the death of a beloved brother, has withdrawn into a world of her own making on the family's faded plantation in South Carolina where her father and brothers raise the legendary Lowcountry Boykin hunting spaniels, but everything changes when troubled debutante Lulu Foxworth comes to stay, hoping to escape her struggles with alcohol and sex addiction.

Newly graduated from college and an aspiring writer, Beth Hayes craves independence and has a world to conquer. But notions of travel, graduate study, and writing the great American novel will have to be postponed. Beth is elected by her elders to house-sit the Island Gamble. Surrounded by the shimmering blue waters of the Atlantic, the white clapboards, silver tin roof, and confessional porch have seen and heard generations of Hamiltons. But will...

Forty-two-year-old Jessie is summoned home to Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina after her obsessively devout mother inexplicably cuts off her own finger, and finds herself oddly exhilarated to be free of her husband, and wildly attracted to Brother Thomas, a monk who has yet to take his final vows.

"Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say...

When an emotional hurricane blows through their lives, testing them in ways they never thought possible, 23-year-old Ashley Anne Waters, her mother Liz and Maisie, the family matriarch, must turn to each for strength and support as the bonds they share are ultimately transformed.

When Jimmy McMullen, a fireman with the NYFD, is killed in the line of duty, his wife, Jackie, and ten-year-old son, Charlie, are devastated. Charlie idolized his dad, and now the outgoing, curious boy has become quiet and reserved. Trusting in the healing power of family, Jackie decides to return to her childhood home on Sullivans Island. Crossing the bridge from the mainland, Jackie and Charlie enter a world full of wonder and magic--lush green...

"It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward's husband Cal, when she receives unexpected news--Cal's family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal's reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt. Charting the course of an uncertain life--and feeling guilt from her husband's tragic death--Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cals unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of...