Island Fiction

All her life Barrie Watson has been a virtual prisoner in the house where she lived with her shut-in mother. When her mother dies, Barrie promises to put some mileage on her stiletto heels. But she finds a new kind of prison at her aunt's South Carolina plantation instead - a prison guarded by an ancient spirit who long ago cursed one of the three founding families of Watson Island and gave the others magical gifts that became compulsions.

1940: When the island of Guernsey is invaded by the Nazis, two sisters are determined to rebel in any way they can. But when forced to take in a German soldier, they are shocked to find a familiar face on their doorstep. 2016: Two generations later, Lucy returns to Guernsey after the death of a distant cousin. As she prepares the old family house for sale, Lucy discovers a box of handwritten notes, one word standing out: resistance. Lucy’s search for the author will uncover the story of a forgotten sister who vanished from the island one night, never to be seen again.

Sasha Rubinstein is not on her game. Parenting with an absent (and objectively douchey) ex has never been easy, but, lately, the judgmental side-eye from people at school pick-up feels extra. It doesn’t help that some entitled dad—with his perfect t-shirts and perfectly punchable (yet adorable) face—keeps stealing the last after-school spots and school hoodies out from under her.

Told in Ruskin Bond's simple yet poignant style, the stories and poems in No Man Is an Island thoughtfully explore the many shades of friendship and camaraderie. Featuring classic tales such as 'The Woman on Platform No. 8', in which a mysterious stranger befriends a young boy, and 'The Crooked Tree', in which a writer and a hawker form an unlikely bond, this heartwarming collection is a must-listen.

The Islands Investigations International team is back! This time, Kyra Rachel and Noel Franklin are sleuthing around Quadra Island in the employ of Noel's old high school buddy, Jason Cooper. In a quiet wooded area of the island, Jason, his wife and two younger boys are worried for the oldest son in the family. Derek was discovered badly beaten in the woods by Campbell River and has remained in a deep coma for three weeks. Desperate to find out what happened to his son and why, Jason hires Noel and Kyra.

Jesse McDermitt is back, just as he promised. This time, he is thrust into the heart of the Florida Panhandle's Tate's Hell State Forest, where the tranquil surroundings belie a dangerous secret—a network of clandestine meth labs hidden against the backdrop of the Forgotten Coast’s natural beauty. Jesse, a retired Marine turned charter boat captain, has brought his family to Apalachicola “for the oysters.” But being who he is, the leisurely cruise soon spins into a gripping quest to unravel the truth behind the illicit operations threatening the region.

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin.

In her gripping debut novel, Lucy Atkins takes us on one woman's journey to the beautiful and rugged Pacific Northwest to discover the dark secrets of her family's past so she can understand and accept herself. Kal McKenzie was never close to her mother, Elena, whose coldness toward her spoiled any chance of a good relationship. When Elena dies of cancer, Kal feels forlorn: How do you mourn a mother who, inexplicably, just didn't seem to love you?

On Prince Edward Island, aging siblings Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help with chores around the farm. But when Mathew arrives at the train platform, the only living creature in sight, legs dangling from the piles of shingles where she sits, is a freckled, green-eyed, redheaded little girl. Mathew senses immediately that life at Green Gables is going to be very different. And how right he is.

Natalie Barnes isn't sweet on the idea of commercial interests souring their cozy oasis, but the single innkeeper has other problems on her plate: a withering relationship with her best friend Charlene, the sudden appearance of her ex-fiancé with a tempting proposal, and eerie bumps in the night suggesting the Gray Whale Inn is haunted. Worst of all, there's a killer on the loose, picking off people like ripe fruit.

Una banda de ladrones consigue robar algo que, pese a no tener precio, está asegurado en veinticinco millones de dólares: los cinco manuscritos originales de las novelas de Francis Scott Fitzgerald, que hasta hacía poco yacían en una cámara acorazada bajo la biblioteca de la Universidad de Princeton. Un botín imposible de resistir.

Anne Shirley, the mischievous, carrot-topped waif of Anne of Green Gables, has grown into a lovely young woman who leaves the security of Prince Edward Island to enroll at Redmond College. There, she discovers a professor who believes education is wasted on women, ponders the security offered in marriage proposals, and a host of other questions of young adulthood.

Wild and restless, Kyle Donovan has freed himself from the constraints of his family's high-powered gem-trading empire to rove the world as a treasure hunter. Now the president of Donovan International has given Kyle an assignment with explosive ramifications. When one of China's legendary cultural treasures is stolen, Lianne Blakely, a mysterious and beautiful jade expert, is accused of the theft. It's Kyle's job to get to the bottom of what could be a potential disaster for the Donovans.

Beekeeper Holly McNee Kensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivan’s Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother "The Queen Bee" because she’s a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware she’s quite ill, but that doesn’t stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly’s sister, Leslie, married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly’s escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys next door and their widowed father, Archie.

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside when she’s forced to confront the evidence of her husband’s guilt. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Jesse McDermitt lives in the backcountry and very little happens near him that he's not fully aware of. During a quiet moment, he watches a slow-moving shrimp trawler as it serenely cruises by, barely visible on the horizon at the edge of the three-mile limit. The tranquility of the moment is shattered when the trawler is suddenly demolished in an enormous explosion. What caused the explosion? And why was a woman from Jesse's past on board?

As a book editor, Julia Morse lived and breathed stories. Whether with her pen to a manuscript or curled up with a book while at her beloved Fire Island cottage, her imagination alight with a good tale, she could anticipate practically any ending. The ending she’d never imagined was her own. To be fair, no one expects to die at thirty-seven. So when the unthinkable happens to Julia, rather than following the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, she chooses to spend one last summer near those she loves most.

Small-town police detective Hanna Duncker has a past. Her deceased father was convicted of murder and arson long ago, and she has taken up residence and resumed her police career in her hometown after his death. She and her partner Erik Lindgren are called to investigate the disappearance of a father and his infant son from their home while his wife was away on a weekend trip. As the investigation unfolds, Hanna makes a breakthrough in her ongoing private investigation of her father’s crimes: a discovery that could change everything she thought she'd learned so far.

Jim Wekle's first day as a trooper on an island in Alaska could have gone better. It was raining, the coffee was bad, and within hours of stepping off the seaplane, he found a bikini-clad girl floating in a kelp bed. As Jim investigates who might have put the bullet in her back, he stumbles across a uniquely diverse and extraordinarily hilarious batch of island inhabitants. Puffing on his imported cigars, Jim soon learns that no one on the island is more unique, diverse, or hilarious than his unlikely counterpart: a man simply known as Kram.

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarit - known as Tt - is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tt finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.