First in the series - I enjoyed it very much.

A delightful rom-com reminiscent of Pretty Woman. Dolly is from a working class family, visiting home in Rhode Island for the summer. Stewart is from a rich family in the town that's named for his family. They meet, he asks her to be his fake date, there's an arrangement. Do they end up having feelings for each other?

Colette Marceau is a young teen living in World War II era France at the start of the novel THE STOLEN LIFE OF COLETTE MARCEAU by Kristen Harmel. She lives with her mother, father and younger sister and is managing to live as well as can be expected in troubling times. One terrible night everything changes. The story follows Colette through the next eight decades of her life with many flashbacks and an equal number of secrets hidden and revealed. With a large cast of characters in both the United States and France, both upstanding and criminal, the plot is somewhat unbelievable, but readable non the less. The background and atmosphere were truly interesting.

Although this story is historical fiction, it could have been pure fiction because it was unbelievable that Eunice Carter, a black women was able to break down the racial and sex barriers to achieve the life and career that is portrayed in this book. She is remarkable and could be a role model in the current day. Polly Adler was also a women to admire because she was able to survive a difficult situation of arriving in New York City from Russia alone. The fact that she was able to survive and strive is quite remarkable. The business in question, prostitution is quite disturbing and this make it a difficult read. All this said, I do recommend this book.

I enjoyed this suspense/romance novel by one of my favorite authors. The protagonist, Arden, is an aspiring novelist at the beginning of her career. She attracts the attention of a fan who turns out to be a stalker. Moving to a small town in Oregon, Arden begins a new life with family and new friends. But in the background her stalker is there. When will he strike again?

The Island House takes place on Nantucket with many twists and turns. The story revolves around a typical Summer family, the Vickeries, with ties to Boston but enjoy living on the Island. During the Summer each of the children invite friends to stay with them. Susanna Vickery affectionately refers to the friends as her ‘Summer children.’ Nancy Thayer paints Nantucket with positive images. It is a great Summer Beach read.

A historical fiction novel propelled by a mystery. A young bookbinder is on a hunt for the truth of the story after she finds a written confession of a murder hidden in the binding of a burned book. This letter hints at a story of forbidden love, a lost fortune and murder. Lillian Delaney , apprentice to a bookbinder in Oxford in 1901, feels trapped between the oppressiveness of her father's failing bookshop and still being an apprentice in a man's profession. When she is given this burned book during a visit to a collector, she finds hidden beneath the binding, a fifty year old letter speaking of love, fortune and murder. She is pulled into the mystery of young lovers, a story of forbidden love, and discovers there are more books and more hidden pages telling their story.

A delightful, very entertaining novel set in 1965 when Helen Gurley Brown took over as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine and made it wildly successful. We learn about Helen's background and also the stories about the "girls" she hires as her editors.

This year's summer reading program guest speaker at the end of the summer party is the author John Searles. Searles, known for his mystery books, has tried his hand in another genre - the fictionalized account of a well-known person. In SINGLE GIRLS the life and times of the the writer, editor, and personality of Cosmopolitan fame Helen Gurley Brown is the star. The story was enjoyable and heartbreaking in turn. I wish I had paid more attention to all Brown said and did when I would have been able to benefit from it! Oh to be a single girl again ...

Frida and Gabriel grew up together in a cult that they escaped together. In this dual timeline story you get a glimpse into that time. In the present they reconnect at a luxury resort but a murder occurs... The book does have some flaws but I totally enjoyed it.