Stack as many of these in your beach bag as you want. They don’t weigh much. Lightly filled with Southern family secrets, a couple of real skeletons in the closet, summer romance and a dollop of murder and mayhem, and just in time for summer vacation:
“Gone With a Handsomer Man” — Michael Lee West (Minotaur)
Meet poor Teeny, the wonderfully flawed heroine of West’s hilarious new cat-and-mouse. Her life was finally on track — she was about to get married, leaving her troubled past behind, and her loving fiancé even paid for a baking course, so she could make their wedding cake herself. Too bad her first lesson was canceled, and she got back home in time to catch her future hubby’s naked badminton game with a couple of local girls. Needless to say, the wedding is off, and when her fiancé is found dead a few days later, all evidence points to Teeny. Thanks to an old boyfriend-turned-lawyer and his annoying-but-likable sidekick, Red Butler, Teeny may live to frost another red velvet cake after all. She might even find true love. But not if Old Boyfriend’s wife has anything to do with it.
“The Peach Keeper” — Sarah Addison Allen (Bantam Books)
Whimsy, mystery and magic are the ingredients in this latest helping of literary comfort food from Allen (“The Girl Who Chased the Moon”) set in Walls of Water, N.C., a town so foggy they bottle it up to sell to tourists. For former adventure lover Willa Jackson, who returned home to run a sporting goods store, life couldn’t get any more predictable: work, visits to her grandma Georgie, vacuuming every Friday night and the occasional drive-by to watch the restoration of the mansion that once belonged to Willa’s great-grandfather. Wouldn’t you know, a skeleton pops up during a routine excavation. Who it is, and how it got there, is a secret Georgie and her ex-best friend, Agatha, have been keeping for the past 75 years.
“Bogmeadow’s Wish” — Terry Kay (Mercer University Press)
“Them that leave, they always send somebody back in their place. It’s the only thing that’s really Irish. You can’t let go if you’ve been born to it,” said an old Irishwoman in Kay’s newest novel. Cooper Finn Coghlan accordingly makes his way from Atlanta to Ireland to find out more about the pact his grandfather, Finn, made with a leprechaun named Bogmeadow. Guided by forces he doesn’t understand, Cooper meets Kathleen O’Reilly, who holds the key to the childhood stories Finn told Cooper about the prettiest lass in Ireland — and why his grandfather left her there. The bad news: Terry Kay has not a drop of Irish blood. The good news: His mother raised him with an eternal love for the Emerald Isle, and he returns the favor with this romantic and charming tribute to his honorary kinfolk.
“The Beach Trees” — Karen White (NAL Accent)
In this tightly plotted story of a Southern family whose secrets have stayed buried for several generations, a young woman finds she has more in common with a close friend than she ever dreamed. When Monica dies, Julie Holt inherits her minivan, her beloved beach house, a painting of a beautiful woman and Monica’s 5-year-old son. With the child in tow, Julie finds the house in ruins and a mysterious neighbor who sends her to New Orleans. There, Monica’s grandmother will tell Julie the story of the woman in the portrait and how it ended up in Monica’s possession, a tangled history as steamy and full of mysteries as the Big Easy itself.
“Exposure” — Therese Fowler (Ballantine)
No beach houses or sunshine here; just a gripping story based on Fowler’s personal experience. Texting leads to big trouble when teenagers date on the sly, nude pictures surface, influential and angry fathers go on the warpath, and a greedy DA decides to make an example of the kids to bolster his career. Fowler writes with sensitivity about this hot-button issue, delivering a suspenseful, no-frills account of the lives of two A-student teens — and their parents — whose actions have unexpected and out-of-control repercussions.
“Ten Beach Road” — Wendy Wax (Berkley)
Atlanta author Wendy Wax grew up on Florida’s Pass-a-Grille beach, where she sets up her latest. When three women lose their life savings to a Ponzi scheme, all that’s left is their co-ownership of Bella Flora, a 1920s Mediterranean Revival that’s pink outside and a wreck inside. Luckily, one of the new owners had a past life as a remodeling expert, her mother is an interior designer, and an irritating-but-hunky contractor agrees to take the job on and pay all costs up front for a share of the eventual sale prices. It’s a summer of self-discovery and rebuilding — in more ways than one.
“Summer Rental” — Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin’s Press)
Ahhhh, summer in the Outer Banks. Just what the doctor ordered — three lifelong friends, a rambling old beach house, a month of R&R, a woman on the run whose husband wants to kill her ... oh well, two out of three isn’t bad. After losing her job, Ellis Sullivan heads for Nag’s Head, the beach vacation of her dreams. The last thing she expects to find there is a half-naked man on the balcony of the house she’s rented — even if he is hot — or a brand-new friend on the lam with several hundred thousand dollars hidden in her purse. When the full cast assembles at “Ebbtide,” what follows is a chance for everyone to start over. But not before all their the secrets come out. Best lines: “So that’s it? He’s gay and you’re getting divorced? End of story?”
“Just Wanna Testify” — Pearl Cleage (Ballantine Books)
If the vampires in Cleage’s newest can live off tomato juice, they can bloody well survive a sunny day at the beach. In the Atlanta novelist and playwright’s eighth novel, five supermodels, beautiful and bone thin, arrive in Atlanta for a fashion shoot. Soon after, five nervous Morehouse College graduates approach Blue Hamilton, West End’s unofficial mayor and neighborhood peace-broker, begging for help. Seems they signed a pact with the visiting vamps at one time, and now it’s payback time. The idea of vampires descending on Cleage’s coterie of artists, activists and civil rights-era veterans may be too hard to swallow for some fans, but as Hamilton explains, “It was only a matter of time before one of them strolled into the West End News, looking for a cappuccino.” Simple. Now, how to get rid of them?
Also recommended:
● “The Dry Grass of August,” Anna Jean Mayhew (Kensington Books) ● “The Orchard,” Jeffrey Stepakoff (July, Thomas Dunne Books) ● “Burnt Mountain,” Anne Rivers Siddons (July, Grand Central) ● “Folly Beach,” Dorothea Benton Frank (June, HarperCollins)
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