Summer of Love

A deeply engrossing, fully realized family saga about three independent women and how personal choices affect their lives. 

Feminist themes embody the soul of Kerri Maher’s novels. She’s fictionally explored the historical lives of fiercely independent public women like Kick Kennedy (The Kennedy Debutante) and Grace Kelly (The Girl in White Gloves). She’s also told the story of a humble woman who changed the world and the literary community of the 1920s in The Paris Bookseller. And in All You Have to Do is Call, she evoked the 1970s, extoling the power of female support systems. 

In Maher’s fifth novel, Summer of Love, she braids together two eras, 1967 and 2015, depicting how the past informs the present for three women of the Hartley family. 

Ambitious and inventive Miranda Hartley, the “first woman vintner” of Napa Valley, is inspired and challenged by overseeing the family-run winery. Miranda grew up with her free-spirited sister, Winnie, a poet, who bailed on the family business and took off to San Francisco in the 1960s. When Miranda’s now adult daughter, Dawn, a freelance set designer--and a closeted alcoholic grappling with sobriety and finding her place in the world--exhumes a family secret, the delicate balance of life comes undone and questions long buried about the sisters must get answered. 

Maher is an evocative storyteller whose literary prowess is on full display. Summer of Love delivers an impactful, surprising story about the bonds shared between sisters, mothers and daughters, and friends—and how hard it is to hold on to those we love and also learn to let go. 

Summer of Love by Kerri Maher

Berkley (Penguin Random House), $30.00 hardcover, 9780593816394, 368 pages

Publishing Date: July 7, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Kerri Maher HERE

Lost in the Summer of '69

The thrill of the 1960s is brought back to life when a rebellious, forgetful 69-year-old goes on a zany cross-country road trip.  

Spry, spunky, independent females are hallmarks of Eliza Knight’s fiction. In Confessions of a Gramma Queen, Knight tackled the story of a feminist copy editor entrenched in the male-dominated publishing world of the 1960s. In Lost in the Summer of ’69, Knight takes readers on another exciting 1960s journey where a former rock singer/guitarist sets out on a zany quest to recapture her glory days before the threat of Alzheimer’s descends and robs her of cherished memories.

In 1969, widowed 69-year-old Eleanor Bell gets a devastating medical diagnosis that propels her to have one last great hurrah. Always a rebel, Eleanor sets off on her own, hellbent on attending every USA music festival she can over the summer. But when her adult daughter Leanne realizes her mother has taken to the road, she and Nora--her own daughter, a Yale undergrad--are forced to chase after Eleanor as she crisscrosses the country. As Eleanor serenades the public and wins their adoration, becoming a wandering celebrity, she remains just shy of the frustrated reach of her daughter and granddaughter.

Music lovers and fans of the 1960s will find great appeal in Eliza Knight’s adventurous multigenerational story that weaves social, political and cultural history into a comic novel that resonates with poignant heart and soul.

 

Lost in the Summer of ’69 by Eliza Knight

Sourcebooks Landmark, $17.99 paperback, 9781464255113, 400 pages

Publishing Date: June 9, 2026

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

Learn more about Eliza Knight HERE

 

The Empress of Cooke County

A sweet and sassy, coming-to-terms mother-daughter saga that sparkles with juicy secrets and scheming, 1960s Southern Gothic flare. 

Scheming Southern flare sparkles in The Empress of Cooke County, a first novel by Elizabeth Bass Parmen.  

Set in 1966 in Spark, Tenn., Cooke County, this split point-of-view narrative centers on a fraught mother-daughter relationship. Posey Jarvis is an outspoken, 38-year-old, wife and mother who idolizes Jackie Kennedy. She and her “sweet,” good-natured husband of twenty years, Vern, appear settled in the folksy small town. However, Posey still carries a secret torch for a man who jilted her years before—swigs of gin from a tucked away flask help her to cope. Posey’s broken heart still colors her life, especially her high-hopes for 18-year-old daughter, Callie Jane. When Callie is blindsided by a public marriage proposal, she suddenly must confront the expectations that have shaped her life. And when her mother inherits a once-glamorous, now delipidated house from a long-lost aunt--and Posey decides to spruce up the house for Callie’s upcoming wedding and Posey’s 20^th high school reunion--the stakes are raised. A lifetime of angst, secrets, and rebellion escalate between overbearing, conniving Posey and Callie Jane, who fights to finally come into her own. 

Escalating drama sharpens brisk plotting that includes story-threads about a renegade, local peeping Tom and changing mores of the social-climbing South. Fans of unfaltering Southern Belles in the vein of authors Fannie Flagg and Kathryn Stockett will bask in the sassy charm of Parmen’s stellar debut.

The Empress of Cooke County by Elizabeth Bass Parmen

Harper Muse, $18.99 paperback, 9781400342594, 304 pages

Publication Date: September 3, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (September 13, 2024), link HERE 

Looking for Me

Theodora Grace Overman, aka "Teddi," always loved restoring old furniture. As a teenager, this farm girl with a big dream rebelled against her mother's push for secretarial school and ran away from her rural Kentucky home, setting off to Charleston, South Carolina where she eventually opens a shop dedicated to the refurbishing of antiques.

"...Old furniture speaks to me," says Teddi. "The older it is, the more it has to say." Such is the case with Teddi's life. In 1993, when the workaholic finds herself successful but still single at the age of 36, she begins to reflect on the lost years while trying to understand the people she left behind: a mother who never understood her daughter's aspirations; a father who returned from war a completely changed man; and an enigmatic younger brother, Josh, whose love of nature and rescuing animals may have led to his mysterious disappearance and a final letter he left behind that read, "Don't come looking for me." 

When Teddi's mother takes ill, Teddi returns to her rural Kentucky home where strange occurrences begin to emerge that indicate Josh might still be alive. Hoffman flashes back to events from Teddi's childhood in the 1960s and 70s, delving into the haunted mysteries of the past in order to shape the contours of these interconnected, yet sadly detached lives. As in Hoffman's debut novel, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Southern wit, charm and down-home characters add levity to this story of loss and broken hearts that are ultimately restored with love, hope and remembering. 

Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

Pamela Dorman Books, $27.95 Hardcover, 9780670025831, 368 pp

Publication Date: May 28, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/4/13), click HERE

Ordinary Grace

Mystery writer William Kent Krueger has taken a break from his award-winning Cork O'Connor mystery series to give readers the gift of ORDINARY GRACE, an atmospheric novel about forty year-old Frank Drum looking back on a fateful summer that changed him and his family - as well as his perceptions of the world and people in it. 

The book details Frank's journey in the summer of 1961, when he was 13 years old and living in New Bremen, Minnesota with his traditional, "All-American" family - his father, a Christian minister; his mother a once-budding musician; his younger brother, a stutterer, who is wise and compassionate;  and his beautiful, musically gifted and much-adored older sister, headed for Julliard. In 1961, the country, and this community, was infused with faith and wholesome innocence, but death paid several visits to New Bremen during a sweltering summer via the accidental death of a teenager (was it really an accident?), the natural death of a stranger, a suicide and a murder that shatters lives and futures.

William Kent Krueger renders a thoughtful portrait of small town life and the inhabitants therein. Via strong, multi-layered characterizations, the author maps the deep-rooted values that once marked the souls of flawed, God-fearing people. Frank narrates this story from the perspective of adulthood, which lends authority to the magnitude of grief and the search for understanding when evil impacts the lives and hearts of an entire community. In the end, the themes that emerge in this moving coming-of-age story become timeless as the Drum family could be any faith-filled family--past or present--forced to confront and come to terms with the vagaries of life, guilt and dark nights of the soul.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Atria Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781451645828, 320 pp

Publication Date: March 26, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This book was provided for review by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster

Never Hug a Nun

Patrick Cantwell is a good kid, however misguided. He's a seven-year-old with a conscience, growing up in the 1960s in Webster Groves, a middle-class suburb of Saint Louis. The nuns at Mary Queen of our Hearts parochial school have done a good work in Patrick - he feels guilty about playing on the train tracks (and lying about it afterward), sneaking orange soda during lent, throwing tomatoes at buses and failing to sell enough raffle tickets for church. Swept up in a quest to help his brother get a drum set, Patrick's level of mischief escalates until he gets caught up in a robbery at the neighborhood convenience store. Amid his antics, Patrick must deal with a secret crush on schoolmate Ebby Hamilton, the impending prospect of his first confession, his 39 year-old mother being pregnant again and how pretty, young Aunt Jenny, who is "almost" a nun, is having second thoughts about her choice of vocation.

Kevin Killeen's novel breathes life and nostalgia into a bygone era. You can almost smell the pomade, see the paperback James Bond novels, S&H Greenstamps, Frank Sinatra 45 records, the family's Ford Falcon and hear the cheers for The Beatles. The story follows young Patrick's life over the course of a few months, from Easter until Christmas. The book is filled with a balanced blend of humor and poignancy, structured in short chapters that are richly woven with period details and a pitch-perfect re-creation of the  Roman Catholic Church of the 1960s (the rituals, tenets and mindsets therein) and how morality and faith were once the cornerstones of American family life.

Never Hug a Nun by Kevin Killeen

Blank Slate Press, $14.99, Trade Paper, 97809850071,  182 pp

Publication Date: December 8, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This book was provided for review by TLC Book Tours

Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

Amy Hill Hearth (Having our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years) takes the reader back to 1962, when Naples, Florida was a "sunbaked southern backwater town" and not what it is today, one of "the richest, swankiest places on earth." The book is told from the perspective of 80 year-old, divorced Dora Witherspoon, who recollects a time when she was a postal worker and was caught, on the job, violating postal regulations by perusing the latest issue of Vogue addressed to a glamorous newcomer in town, a transplant from Boston, Massachusetts , Jackie Hart. When Jackie catches Dora in the act and asks, "What else do you like to read?" the encounter sparks the formation of the Collier County Women's Literary Society, a group that draws an array of local misfits who gather to read and discuss great books - and inadvertently reveal mysteries and secrets about their own lives.

The society grows to include the local librarian; the town's one and only Sears employee; a woman who once did prison time for allegedly killing her husband; a middle-aged poet; a token male member; and a young "colored" girl, a maid, who is secretly whisked to the meetings in the racially segregated town.

In the midst of it all, the KKK is hard at work and Collier County becomes rapt by an anonymous radio show anchored by Miss Dreamsville, whose mysterious identity spices up life in the small town. Inspired by true events, Amy Hill Hearth has written a heart-tugging story about how this band of colorful characters finds liberation--and friendship--amid a time and place where "sameness" was once revered.   

Miss Dreamsville and The Collier County Women's Literary Society by Amy Hill Hearth

Atria Books, $15, Trade paper, 9781451675238, 272 pp

Publication Date: October 2, 2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/12/12), click HERE.

The Last Letter from your Lover

London 1960: Jennifer Stirling wakes in a hospital to learn that she has survived a terrible car accident. She is the wife of a wealthy business magnate who provides Jennifer with a life some women only dream of. The problem is, Jennifer can't recall who she is or who she was - until she discovers a heartfelt love letter signed with the letter "B," asking her for forgiveness and to leave her husband. It proves to be just the jolt Jennifer's memory needs in reconstructing the past and a love-affair she only half-remembers.

Jojo Moyes (Sheltering Rain, The Peacock Emporium) structures this captivating romance in chapters named for the months surrounding the fateful accident in 1960 and weaves a tale that ultimately unravels in 2003. A modern day journalist, Ellie, caught in the throes of a complicated love affair of her own, discovers love letters misfiled in a newspaper archive. Searching for meaning in her own life and a story that might save her career, she sets out to find and reunite the lovers immortalized on the page. But is it too late?

At times, the shifts of chronology might make the reader feel as off-balance as Jennifer in piecing together the facts that resulted in the accident and its tragic aftermath. But Moyes is an intelligent, engaging storyteller who lures the reader through the complexities of the narrative via dramatic twists and turns of missed opportunities, glitches that keep lovers apart and cliff-hangers that build up reader expectation only to deliver the unexpected.

The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 978-0670022809, 400 pp.
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/19/11), click HERE

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“When a chapter of your Life Book is complete, your spirit knows it’s time to turn the page so a new chapter can begin. Even when you’re scared or think you’re not ready, your spirit knows you are.”  (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman)

It's 1967 in Willoughby, Ohio, and Cecelia Rose (CeeCee) Honeycutt is no ordinary 12 year-old. Largely abandoned by her father, CeeCee emerges as her mother's self-imposed caretaker - a woman with mental illness who clings to a shining moment in 1951 when she was crowned Miss Vidalia Onion Queen. When CeeCee's mother is killed by a speeding ice cream truck, it would appear as though things have gone from bad to worse, and CeeCee's world has irrevocably been torn apart. But what underlies the tragedy is a miraculous saving grace in the form of CeeCee's elderly great-aunt, "Tootie" Caldwell, a woman whom CeeCee has never met.

Setting off in her aunt's shiny red Packard convertible, which is as colorful as her personality, CeeCee is whisked away to live with well-to-do Tootie in her historic, Greek-revival style home on Gaston Street in Savannah, Georgia. It seems a magical place, and CeeCee wonders if it is providential that she has arrived in the very city to which her mother had always aspired to return. This coming-of-age story depicts a transitional summer for a wounded, frightened young girl who is anchored back to the world via a cast of strong, Southern women - each a survivor in her own right and each with her own unique blend of eccentricities and challenges in the class-conscious, racially-charged south.

It is through the wit and wisdom of these likeable, well-drawn characters--and the climax of the story that centers around a robbery attempt--that CeeCee is rescued and buoyed by the love that ultimately surrounds her. Hoffman has a real flair for turning out lively metaphors that leap off the page, where tight, concise scenes transform this bittersweet story into one full of comfort and hope.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 9780670021390, 320pp.
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE