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 was 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, the...

When her twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. But the road to a wedding day usually comes with a few bumps. Veronica ends up facing unexpected news, thanks to her meddling sister, and must revisit the choices...

None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder? Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court, and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single...

Cara Rutledge inherited her mother Lovie's beach house on Isle of Palms. She rents the house for the summer to Heather, who suffers from extreme social anxiety. Heather plans to spend the summer painting shore birds, for a postage stamps commission. When Cara suffers a life changing tragedy, she wishes only to return to the beach house that had once been her port amid life's storms. The two start out as strangers, but together they rediscover their...

The summer after her first year of college, Isobel "Belly" Conklin is faced with a choice between Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher, brothers she has always loved, when Jeremiah proposes marriage and Conrad confesses that he still loves her.

Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of The Beach House! The most fulfilling journey is one that leads back home...
"Mary Alice Monroe is helping to redefine the beauty and magic of the Carolina Lowcountry. Every book she has written has felt like a homecoming to me."
—Pat Conroy
Twenty years ago, Caretta Rutledge left her Southern roots far behind for a successful career as a businesswoman in Chicago. But an unusual...

Belly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are very different.

Traumatized by a near-fatal attack by a mugger, journalist Kendra Taylor leaves Washington, D.C., for the rustic cabin in Toms Brook, Va., that once belonged to husband Isaac's grandmother. There, she seeks recovery from her ordeal and refuge from what she sees as a troubled marriage. An unusual lover's knot quilt, also left to her husband, piques Kendra's curiosity, and she investigates the story behind the heirloom"knowing that the answers she finds...

"Do you believe Will took his own life?' The question echoed off the white tiles in the hospital's cold, cavernous morgue, and I studied my husband in peaceful repose. I leaned down and put my forehead against his. Silent tears ran down my cheeks. They felt hot, and he felt so cold. It was five days since his death, and my grief felt heavy, like a vast, dark mass pushing down on me. When Maggie's husband, Will, is shot dead in their London home, she...