So far a whopping 600+ readers have entered our Books of Summer giveaway. In lieu of a June book club selection, we rounded up six of the best novels releasing this summer and are giving all of them to one lucky reader today. Rules are simple: leave a comment on this post and you will be entered to win. We’ll choose the winner at the end of this week.

And here they are, The Books of Summer:

A little about about these wonderful novels:

The Wishing Tree by Marybeth Whalen:

Savvy, determined Ivy Marshall discovers that her husband has cheated on her on the very same day her sister’s perfect boyfriend proposes on national television. When Ivy’s mother asks her to return to her family’s beach home to plan her sister’s upcoming wedding, she decides to use the excuse to escape from the pain of her broken heart. When her return to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, brings Ivy face to face with her former fiance, old feelings are rekindled and she wonders if there is a future for them. However, when Ivy refuses to talk to her husband, he resorts to tweeting to her, expressing his remorse and making it clear he doesn’t want to give up on their marriage. As she helps prepare the wishing tree for her sister’s wedding, she must examine her dreams for her own future and what true love should be.

The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan:

Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband. When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust. More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams:

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak.

That is, until Greenwalds decide to take up residence in Seaview.

Nick and Budgie Greenwald are an unwelcome specter from Lily’s past: her former best friend and her former fiancé, now recently married—an event that set off a wildfire of gossip among the elite of Seaview, who have summered together for generations. Budgie’s arrival to restore her family’s old house puts her once more in the center of the community’s social scene, and she insinuates herself back into Lily’s friendship with an overpowering talent for seduction…and an alluring acquaintance from their college days, Yankees pitcher Graham Pendleton. But the ties that bind Lily to Nick are too strong and intricate to ignore, and the two are drawn back into long-buried dreams, despite their uneasy secrets and many emotional obligations.

Under the scorching summer sun, the unexpected truth of Budgie and Nick’s marriage bubbles to the surface, and as a cataclysmic hurricane barrels unseen up the Atlantic and into New England, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional cyclone of their own, which will change their worlds forever.

All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue:

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiancé the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa finds herself obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the wild child and aspiring writer who can’t seem to put down a book—or a cocktail—long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired… again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women begin to realize just how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier—and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

Market Street by Anita Hughes:

From Anita Hughes, author of Monarch Beach, comes Market Street, a delicious story of a department store heiress, her messy marriage, and her passion for food

Cassie Blake seems to lead a charmed life as the heiress to Fenton’s, San Francisco’s most exclusive department store. But when she discovers her husband, Aidan, a handsome UC Berkeley professor, has had an affair with a student, she flees to the comfort of her best friend Alexis’s Presidio Heights mansion, where she wonders if she should give their marriage one more chance.

Whether or not she can forgive Aidan is not the only choice Cassie has to make. Cassie’s mother is eager to have her oversee the opening of Fenton’s new Food Emporium, which Fenton’s hopes will become San Francisco’s hottest gourmet shopping destination. Cassie’s true passion has always been food, not fashion, and Cassie suspects her mother might be trying to lure her into the Fenton’s fold by entrusting her with such an exciting opportunity. And then there is James, the architect designing the Emporium, who is quietly falling in love with her…

The Guest House by Erika Marks:

For generations, the natives of Harrisport have watched wealthy summer families descend on their Cape Cod town, inhabiting the massive cottages along the town’s best stretches of beachfront. But when rich Southerner Tucker Moss breaks the heart of local girl Edie Wright in the summer of 1966, an enduring war starts between the two families that lasts for generations….

Edie’s youngest child, Lexi, should know better than to fall in love with a Moss, but at eighteen, she falls hard for Tucker’s son, Hudson—only to find herself jilted when Hudson breaks off their engagement.

Eleven years later, Lexi returns home after two years away studying architectural photography, just in time for yet another summer on the Cape. When Hudson’s younger brother, Cooper, arrives unexpectedly to sell the seaside estate after the death of his father and hires Lexi to photograph it, an unlikely attraction forms, and Lexi finds herself torn once again between passion and family loyalty.

Then renovations at the Moss guest house reveal a forty-six-year-old declaration of love carved into a piece of framing—and a startling truth that will force two women and the men who love them to confront the treacherous waters of their pasts.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by author Meg Donohue | @MegDonohue

We continue our summer profile series today with Meg Donohue, author of ALL THE SUMMER GIRLS. If you haven’t yet entered to win Meg’s novel, and the other five books we’re featuring this summer, you can do so here. And if you miss this chance? You’ll have two more. We’re giving a set of the books to one lucky winner every week during the month of June. You can read the other profiles we’ve done in this series here, here, and here.

Meg Donohue

The summer of 1996 was a pivotal one for me. I’d just graduated from high school, and planned to attend Dartmouth College in the fall. I’d been saving all year to rent a summer house in the beach town of Avalon, New Jersey with my best friends. To this day, I don’t know how we convinced our parents to sign off on this idea. I suppose they realized that in a few short months we’d be on our own anyway, heading off to colleges near and far. And it wouldn’t just be sunbathing and parties—we’d each secured a job on the seven-mile-long barrier island. We understood that if we were living on our own, we’d have to support ourselves. It all felt very mature and exciting—a hint of the adventurous, adult lives that we were sure awaited us on the other side of college.

The house that we rented turned out to be more of a shack. It was small and dingy, with no air conditioning, no dishwasher, and—most devastating to a group of eighteen-year-old girls—not a single closet. There were three cell-like bedrooms in a row, each just big enough to hold a bunk bed. We ended up hooking hangers together and hanging them on the walls because there was no space for a bureau. It felt sort of like camping, except in a beach town. You could smell the funk of low tide in every room. If you stood on the roof at sunset, which we often did, you could watch the bay turn pink. We rode our bikes everywhere and fell in love with brand new boys we hadn’t grown up with and sold lots of t-shirts to sunburned tourists and somehow thrived despite very little sleep.

The protagonists of All the Summer Girls also spend a pivotal summer in Avalon, New Jersey. The women are not based on my friends, or me, and the plot is not autobiographical—I have only happy memories from my time in Avalon, while the protagonists of the novel are haunted by a tragedy that occurred that summer. But the love that the protagonists feel for the island is as real as the love that I feel for that special place, and the house where they lived during that fateful summer is based on the one that I lived in with my best friends from childhood. Just as in the novel, that house was torn down to make way for one of the bigger, fancier homes that have changed the look of the island over recent decades. It lives on only in the golden-hued memories that my friends and I cherish—and now, too, in All the Summer Girls.

* * *

All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue:

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiancé the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa finds herself obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the wild child and aspiring writer who can’t seem to put down a book—or a cocktail—long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired… again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women begin to realize just how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier—and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

A quick note to let you know that Marybeth Whalen’s novel, THE WISHING TREE, is only $3.99 across all ebook platforms this week. It’s one of the six books we have featured in our Book of Summer series this month. So if you’ve been on the fence about picking up a copy, now’s your chance!

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Today’s post by author Beatriz Williams | @bcwilliamsbooks

We continue our series of “The Books of Summer” author profiles with Beatriz Williams and a true glimpse into the real story of her second novel, A HUNDRED SUMMERS. (You can read Marybeth Whalen’s profile here and Amy Sue Nathan’s here.) Make sure to stop back by on Wednesday when we give away our second set of all six summer novels!

Beatriz Williams

I’d heard the Aunt Julie stories for years, from the early budding days of my relationship with my husband. “She was a flapper,” my mother-in-law said fondly of her mother’s sister. “A 1920s party girl. She used to sneak out of the house at night for dates with Ty Cobb.” (The “house”, by the way, was a double fronted mansion on East 69th Street in Manhattan, long since sold, with a Gatsbyesque glass-domed six story central stairway that trapped your breath in your chest.) The New York Post called her by her first name alone. JULIE WEDS! screeched the society page headline on the day after her marriage, and her long-suffering parents probably heaved a deep sigh of relief. (Premature, as it turned out.)

She smoked and drank, like everybody did back then. Marriage and motherhood couldn’t slow down Julie; off she went for glossy nights among the fashionable, leaving her young daughter to the nanny. She tilted her nose at mannered convention even as she lived and dined on its privileges. “Better over the table than under the table,” went her philosophy, whenever someone let slip an indiscreet burp.

I never knew Aunt Julie, but I loved the idea of her and her restless charisma, prowling the perimeter of her gilded cage almost as if she wanted to escape it, though she never did. When I began to write the early chapters of A Hundred Summers, Aunt Julie surprised me by landing in the sand right next to Lily: an outspoken counterweight to my main character’s reserve, prodding and advising and serving up vintage snark with a splash of gin and tonic. “Pass me another deviled egg, will you?” she says, at a somnolent Fourth of July picnic. “At least those have a little paprika.”

She wasn’t Julie Dommerich resurrected, of course. She couldn’t be, when I’d never met the original. My Aunt Julie was divorced and childless, a sleek-skinned force of nature who spoke with her own voice, and anyway, you can never really re-create a human being out of wayward fictional clay. But I like to think that the real Julie would have lifted her cocktail glass to the imagined Julie, or at least––as my mother-in-law did, when she read the epilogue––clap those manicured hands with delight at her confident parting advice: Better over the table than under the table.

* * *

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams:

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak.

That is, until Greenwalds decide to take up residence in Seaview.

Nick and Budgie Greenwald are an unwelcome specter from Lily’s past: her former best friend and her former fiancé, now recently married—an event that set off a wildfire of gossip among the elite of Seaview, who have summered together for generations. Budgie’s arrival to restore her family’s old house puts her once more in the center of the community’s social scene, and she insinuates herself back into Lily’s friendship with an overpowering talent for seduction…and an alluring acquaintance from their college days, Yankees pitcher Graham Pendleton. But the ties that bind Lily to Nick are too strong and intricate to ignore, and the two are drawn back into long-buried dreams, despite their uneasy secrets and many emotional obligations.

Under the scorching summer sun, the unexpected truth of Budgie and Nick’s marriage bubbles to the surface, and as a cataclysmic hurricane barrels unseen up the Atlantic and into New England, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional cyclone of their own, which will change their worlds forever.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

We’re doing something different this June. Instead of featuring one book club selection for this month we’re going to highlight six novels that you really need to read this summer. Whether you spend the next two months on the beach, by the pool, or buckled in for a road trip, we highly encourage you to pick up one or more of these novels and get whisked away.

Each of these authors will be stopping in for a visit during the next few weeks. And because we love you–our wonderful readers–we will be giving away all six of these books EVERY week during the month of June to a lucky winner. Just leave a comment on this post to be entered in this weeks’s drawing.

These are the She Reads Books of Summer:

A little about about these wonderful novels:

The Wishing Tree by Marybeth Whalen:

Savvy, determined Ivy Marshall discovers that her husband has cheated on her on the very same day her sister’s perfect boyfriend proposes on national television. When Ivy’s mother asks her to return to her family’s beach home to plan her sister’s upcoming wedding, she decides to use the excuse to escape from the pain of her broken heart. When her return to Sunset Beach, North Carolina, brings Ivy face to face with her former fiance, old feelings are rekindled and she wonders if there is a future for them. However, when Ivy refuses to talk to her husband, he resorts to tweeting to her, expressing his remorse and making it clear he doesn’t want to give up on their marriage. As she helps prepare the wishing tree for her sister’s wedding, she must examine her dreams for her own future and what true love should be.

The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan:

Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband. When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust. More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams:

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak.

That is, until Greenwalds decide to take up residence in Seaview.

Nick and Budgie Greenwald are an unwelcome specter from Lily’s past: her former best friend and her former fiancé, now recently married—an event that set off a wildfire of gossip among the elite of Seaview, who have summered together for generations. Budgie’s arrival to restore her family’s old house puts her once more in the center of the community’s social scene, and she insinuates herself back into Lily’s friendship with an overpowering talent for seduction…and an alluring acquaintance from their college days, Yankees pitcher Graham Pendleton. But the ties that bind Lily to Nick are too strong and intricate to ignore, and the two are drawn back into long-buried dreams, despite their uneasy secrets and many emotional obligations.

Under the scorching summer sun, the unexpected truth of Budgie and Nick’s marriage bubbles to the surface, and as a cataclysmic hurricane barrels unseen up the Atlantic and into New England, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional cyclone of their own, which will change their worlds forever.

All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue:

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiancé the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa finds herself obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the wild child and aspiring writer who can’t seem to put down a book—or a cocktail—long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired… again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women begin to realize just how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier—and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

Market Street by Anita Hughes:

From Anita Hughes, author of Monarch Beach, comes Market Street, a delicious story of a department store heiress, her messy marriage, and her passion for food

Cassie Blake seems to lead a charmed life as the heiress to Fenton’s, San Francisco’s most exclusive department store. But when she discovers her husband, Aidan, a handsome UC Berkeley professor, has had an affair with a student, she flees to the comfort of her best friend Alexis’s Presidio Heights mansion, where she wonders if she should give their marriage one more chance.

Whether or not she can forgive Aidan is not the only choice Cassie has to make. Cassie’s mother is eager to have her oversee the opening of Fenton’s new Food Emporium, which Fenton’s hopes will become San Francisco’s hottest gourmet shopping destination. Cassie’s true passion has always been food, not fashion, and Cassie suspects her mother might be trying to lure her into the Fenton’s fold by entrusting her with such an exciting opportunity. And then there is James, the architect designing the Emporium, who is quietly falling in love with her…

The Guest House by Erika Marks:

For generations, the natives of Harrisport have watched wealthy summer families descend on their Cape Cod town, inhabiting the massive cottages along the town’s best stretches of beachfront. But when rich Southerner Tucker Moss breaks the heart of local girl Edie Wright in the summer of 1966, an enduring war starts between the two families that lasts for generations….

Edie’s youngest child, Lexi, should know better than to fall in love with a Moss, but at eighteen, she falls hard for Tucker’s son, Hudson—only to find herself jilted when Hudson breaks off their engagement.

Eleven years later, Lexi returns home after two years away studying architectural photography, just in time for yet another summer on the Cape. When Hudson’s younger brother, Cooper, arrives unexpectedly to sell the seaside estate after the death of his father and hires Lexi to photograph it, an unlikely attraction forms, and Lexi finds herself torn once again between passion and family loyalty.

Then renovations at the Moss guest house reveal a forty-six-year-old declaration of love carved into a piece of framing—and a startling truth that will force two women and the men who love them to confront the treacherous waters of their pasts.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, storyteller, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•