Editorial Content for The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club
Teaser
Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events.
Promo
Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events.
About the Book
Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events, from the New York Times bestselling author of LILAC GIRLS.
2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.
1942: The Smith girls --- 19-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and 16-year-old war-obsessed Briar --- are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true.
But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore --- and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war...before it’s too late?
Editorial Content for Sleep
Book
Teaser
From a dazzling new talent comes the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
Promo
From a dazzling new talent comes the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
About the Book
From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously --- the one she was born into, and the one she has made.
Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood slip away.
Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She’s newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone.
Warm and generous, unflinchingly human, and ultimately joyful and empowering, SLEEP is about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets and the burden of love, and what’s on the other side of silence: the world, rich in possibility.
July 2025 Bookaccino Live Signup
Beatriz Williams Book Group Event
May 31, 2025
This year has been such a great one for reading. I know that I can barely keep up, let alone get ahead. I feel like every week there is another book that I want to discuss with my group.
We will be reading SALTWATER by Katy Hays for our next discussion. Then, for the following month, we already have decided that we will be talking about THE MARTHA’S VINEYARD BEACH AND BOOK CLUB by Martha Hall Kelly. A few of us met Martha a couple of years ago at an event that took place at the Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden, so selecting her book, which is just out this week, was an easy decision. (See the guide later in this newsletter.)