Island Women

A year ago, Lydia became a widow at 38 when she lost her beloved husband to cancer, and despite the support of her friends and her teenage daughter Holly, she’s had a hard time moving on from the loss. She feels stuck, uncertain of how to carry out her husband’s final wish that she do something that scares her. Angela Collins has what seems like the perfect life - a beautiful little boy, a loving husband, and a good career. But that all comes crumbling down.

A happily married woman's perfect life shatters when her husband turns up dead hundreds of miles away from where he should have been, and she suddenly discovers there was a part of him about which she knew nothing.

Watching her sister Angela pursue her passion has inspired Brooke to follow her own dreams. For years, she’s harbored a secret fantasy of opening up a bakery of her own in Marigold, but maybe it doesn’t have to be just a fantasy. Although starting a new business is a daunting prospect and a lot of work, Brooke finally feels ready to take the leap. Guests at the inn have been raving about her pastries, and her family is behind her all the way, so now she just needs to find the startup capital.

The Beachside Inn is up and running, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. In fact, things are busier than ever! After months of preparation, Angela and Lydia are finally hosting their first guests - including Patrick, who needs a place to stay while he hunts for a new house. It’s a summer of changes and challenges, but with laughter, love, and faith, anything is possible.

Four women from Haiti, St. Thomas, and Guam meet at a college counseling session for first-year students, and learn they have a shared history of abuse. Dubbing themselves the “island sisters,” their unyielding friendship is their touchstone across oceans, through labyrinths of forced marriages and violent men, motherhood, and their dreams of freedom.

Charming ladies’ man Rory Randall dies with one last trick up his sleeve: His will includes a calculating clause mandating a summer-long reunion for his daughters, all from different marriages - that is, if they hope to inherit his posh Nantucket house. Relations among the three sisters are sour thanks to long-festering jealousies, resentments, and misunderstandings. Arden, a successful television host in Boston, hasn’t been back to the island since her teenage years, when accusations of serious misbehavior led to her banishment.

Would you risk your life for total strangers? When she is assaulted while on vacation in Key West, the unforgettable Kate Bowers marshals her skills as a former homicide detective and Army MP. As she hunts down her assailant, she discovers women enslaved in a high-end sex trafficking operation on a luxury super-yacht. That’s only the first complication. The president’s daughter is missing and in mortal danger.

When young nurse Emer loses her beloved sister, she is haunted by grief and desperate to escape her memories. Taking a job in Vinalhaven, a rocky outpost in the wild Atlantic, feels like the refuge she so badly needs. Her patient, Susannah, has lived in isolation for many years, since the tragic death of her sister Kate caused her to withdraw from island life. However, when Emer discovers a bundle of letters in a rainbow quilt in her bedroom and shares the story of her own loss, Susannah opens up.

Oona grew up on the island of Inis: a wind-blasted rock off the coast of Ireland where the men went out on fishing boats and the women tended turf fires; where the only book was the Bible; and where girls stayed at home until they became mothers themselves. The island was a gift for some, a prison for others. Even as a child, Oona knew she wanted to leave, but she never could have anticipated the tumultuous turn of events that would ultimately compel her to flee. Now, after 20 years - after Oona has forged a new, very different life for herself - her daughter vanishes.

Eleanor Blake, distraught after breaking up with her fiancé Will, decides to do what most would scarcely dare: secretly follow him to the island hideaway where he's on holiday with the woman who took her place. But on the shimmering, sun-drenched Sicilian island of Panarea, distractions come in many forms and her fellow hotel guests Lewis and Frannie may not be all they seem either.

When successful songwriter Tabitha Callahan swaps a summer of sadness for pet sitting around the world, she intends to use the time to heal her broken heart. Tabitha can’t believe her luck when she picks up a housesit on the rugged and beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira. The villa is luxurious, the views breath-taking and her charges, a gorgeous but aloof cat and two cute and friendly Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, are perfect companions while she works on some new material and attempts to reconcile her past.

Los Angeles, 1908. Ex-heiress Anna Blanc is precariously employed by the Los Angeles Police Department, reforming delinquent children and minding lady jailbirds. Badly. What she really wants is to trap criminals and be alone with the delicious Detective Joe Singer—both pursuits that could get her fired. If she loses her income, she’ll be on the street. While hunting truants in Griffith Park, Anna and Joe discover the body of a young John Doe. With Anna’s job on the line, Joe warns her away, but Anna can't resist. She's on the case.

Marisal. A villa on a sleepy Spanish island. A place that time had forgotten. A place of long ago summers, sun-kissed memories, and one terrible betrayal....When Charlotte's husband James tragically dies, he leaves her an unexpected gift - her grandmother's beautiful villa, Marisal, on the Spanish island of Formentera. As she begins to explore her new home, and heal her broken heart in the warm golden sunshine, Charlotte discovers that her grandmother Alba has been keeping secrets about her life on the island.

"I found fame and fortune," she explains, "but I lost my home, myself and a sense of belonging. It took many years to find 'me' again." Women of every age, every stage and every face will relate with her "identity crisis." A crisis that is all too common in this post-modern era as women search for authentic validation. Teen girls will be particularly inspired by her struggle to live by the motto: "Beauty is as beauty does."

Lake Winnipesaukee in central New Hampshire is a paradise on earth. A perfect place to unwind—until a ruthless killer starts taking innocent lives. Following a horrific double homicide, the small communities surrounding the lake are wondering who the next victim will be and what the killer wants. Russian-American police officer Vanya Petrova is enraged that someone has shattered paradise on her lake community. She seems to be the central figure in this murderer's bloody rampage. Vanya suspects she's somehow acquainted with the sick man responsible for the bloodshed.

Corfu, Greece, 1943. Though they don’t know it, five-year-old Matilde and three-year-old Anna have kissed their mother for the last time. The Nazis have reached their sun-scorched home, and they are being taken to a place of safety, on the northeastern tip of the rocky island. They are to be hidden, at great risk, by kindly Agata and her husband, until the terrible war is over. Matilde and Anna’s tears are soothed by Agata’s bedtime stories, but she is always alert.

Luke thought he'd left the violence of the high-risk security world behind. But he can't stand by while Maggie's life is threatened. Luke will do anything to keep her safe - even moving Maggie and her sister into his house with its state-of-the-art security features. But with the secrets between them and an unknown threat stalking her heels, Luke will have to think fast to prove to Maggie she can trust him with her life - and with her heart.

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation...until one night her granddaughter rows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept to herself - with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl - unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these.

Opal gets a dirty, old suitcase for her birthday. She's not impressed. Her grandfather tells her she'll need it, because she's going to live with her great aunt in a far-away place where magic is real. The evening Opal arrives, a body is discovered in the woods, not far from where she passed through. A terrifying creature has emerged from the ground, and it hungers for the innocent, whether people believe in it or not.

Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who was abandoned by her family, Jamie Figueroa and her sisters were estranged from their culture, consumed by the whiteness that surrounded them. In Mother Island, Figueroa traces her search for identity as shaped by and against a mother who settled into the safety of assimilation, and presents a cultural coming-of-age story.