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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.)

Fiona Davis Event Signup

Daria Lavelle, author of Aftertaste

Konstantin Duhovny’s father died when he was 10, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. He discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones --- at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.

Kristina McMorris, author of The Girls of Good Fortune

Oregon, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland's notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival --- being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment --- she fears that far more than her own fate hangs in the balance. As she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove deadlier than the dark recesses of Chinatown.

Meg Mitchell Moore, author of Mansion Beach

It’s the beginning of the summer, and Nicola Carr has just arrived on Block Island, RI, eager for a fresh start and some R&R. But her plans for a tranquil summer are derailed as the extravagant parties from the grand home next door pique her curiosity. She soon discovers that the home belongs to Juliana George, an enigmatic entrepreneur with a past shrouded in mystery. Juliana George, CEO and founder of a hot fashion-tech company, is at the top of her game. She’s spending the summer on Block Island preparing for a major IPO. But she’s chasing her dreams in more ways than one. This summer she hopes to rekindle a flame with a man from her past --- a man who has a surprising connection to her neighbor, Nicola.

Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world. But gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic working-class staff is taking in the news that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city. As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job. Tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone is aware of.