Summer State of Mind

A heartfelt Southern romance, infused with an air of mystery, that begs the questions: “Who are we?” and “Where do we belong?”

Kristy Woodson Harvey returns readers to the coziness of small-town Southern charm in Summer State of Mind, a simmering, heartfelt story that gently explores family dynamics and the challenges of new beginnings.

 

The story starts when Daisy Stevens of Charlotte, North Carolina--a single, deeply dedicated, yet burned out nurse--decides she needs a change. After working for ten years as a Neo-Natal Intensive Unit (NICU) nurse in a Charlotte, North Carolina hospital, she packs up and takes what she believes will be a “simpler” job in Cape Carolina, a “sleepy seaside town” she had idealized since she was a child.

 

On Daisy’s first day on the job, a baby is found--cast off in a garbage dumpster--and is brought to the hospital by Mason Thaysden, the high school baseball coach. Mason was once a Major League prospect whose dreams were sidelined by an injury that forced him to stay put in his own hometown.

 

The abandoned newborn becomes the talk-of-the-town and forges a bond between Daisy and Mason. As the couples’ affection and love deepens, they are both forced to examine their hearts, hopes, and dreams. Along the way, Mason’s quirky Aunt Tilley also plays a part in reconciling her own mysterious past—a past that has the power to send ripples through the community. 

 

Readers have come to relish and take comfort in Woodson Harvey's (Beach House Rules) firm grasp on the perks--and drawbacks--of small-town living, the deep-seated complexities of love, and how “family” can often be defined beyond a mere bloodline.

 

Summer State of Mind by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), Hardcover $29.00, 9781668074886, 384 pages

Publication Date: May 5, 2026

To order this book via Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

Learn more about author Kristy Woodson Harvey HERE

 

Beach House Rules

Bonds of family, friendship, and community bind an engaging story about how a mother and daughter put their lives back together after a scandal rocks their family.

Beach House Rules by Kristy Woodson Harvey sensitively traces how a mother and daughter scramble to steady and rebuild their lives. 

The story takes place in Juniper Shores, a charming, “beautiful Southern coastal town” where the New York-based Sitterly family--Bill, Charlotte, and teenager, Iris--took refuge during the Covid-19 pandemic. For three years, the Sitterlys called idyllic Juniper Shores home. Bill worked remotely. But when Bill is accused of securities fraud--serving jail time while maintaining his innocence--Charlotte and Iris are left homeless and destitute, unable to even access family finances. This leaves Charlotte to suffer a meltdown at the bank, where she is calmed by a local woman, 45-year-old widow, Alice Bailey, who befriends Charlotte and Iris. 

Alice--whom local gossip sites claim might’ve killed her three previous husbands--invites them to come and live with her, as she shares her big beach house, a former B&B, with other women who face troubles of their own. This includes Julie, Alice’s niece, a journalist and single mom. And Grace, a divorced mom who is also a social media sensation. This small tribe of strangers keep house and support each other. The shared living arrangement--deemed a “mommune,” like a commune, something of a “lost ladies’ hostel"--offers stability for Charlotte and Iris. But complications ensue when the past resurrects and comes calling again. 

Woodson Harvey (A Happier Life) plots exciting turns via many story threads. Alternate points of view, along with elements of mystery and romance, make for a greatly entertaining story that will appeal to a wide audience.

Beach House Rules by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), $28.99 hardcover, 9781668074800, 368 pages

Publication Date: May 27, 2025

To order this book on Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

Link HERE to learn more about Kristy Woodson Harvey

Sharing Too Much

Bestselling, popular author Richard Paul Evans delivers a collection of inspiring essays, sharing insights and sage advice culled from his life experiences. 

Richard Paul Evans is an author, father, and husband. In Sharing Too Much, he unpacks memorable personal stories and life lessons experienced over half a century. This broad-ranging collection of entertaining, concisely short essays offers thought-provoking insights and sage advice.

Over seven sections, Evans is incredibly open in sharing details about his life. He was a "lonely little boy" and "a poor kid from a large family" who suffered "years of teasing and torment" because of Tourette's syndrome, which was only diagnosed when he was 41 years old. Because his mother endured serious depression that manifested into suicidal tendencies, the family was forced to move from Arcadia, California to a rather dilapidated, inherited house in Salt Lake City, Utah. This move only exacerbated Evan's feelings of displacement. 

Evans mines the past and the foundations that led him to become a writer. Several essays probe his immensely popular first novel, The Christmas Box—how it was conceived via real-life experiences, the ingenious back-door path it traveled to publication, and how that novel paved the way for Evans’s extraordinary success. Other sections offer inventive moral-themed remembrances and fables, stories that delve into Evans’s enduring marriage, parenthood, the unexpected teachers of life, and even otherworldly, spiritual experiences.

 

Evans (A Christmas Memory) is a remarkably relentless optimist whose moving, hopeful--easy to absorb--essays will offer great appeal and inspiration to a wide-range of readers.

Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life by Richard Paul Evans

Gallery Books, $22.99 hardcover, 978198177461, 272 pages

Publishing Date: February 27, 2024

 
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 (March 8, 2024), link HERE 

 

A Happier Life

The renovation of an old family house in North Carolina reveals discoveries about the past and encourages a young woman at a crossroads in the present to make a fresh start in life. 

Author Kristy Woodson Harvey has built a brand writing tender, heartfelt stories that showcase Southern flair, smalltown life, and the bonds of family and friendship. In A Happier Life, she adds to her growing body of work, offering readers a poignant story about one contemporary woman and one woman from the past, both facing change in their lives.

 

The book launches with 30-something, Keaton Smith. She is Southern woman transplanted to a high-powered job working for a New York City “lifestyle brand” company. On the same day Keaton gets dumped from her job and by her beau, she’s asked by her mother to clear out the house her mother grew up in--a home Keaton didn’t know was still in the family--in Beaufort, North Carolina.

 

Keaton is reluctant. However, being at a crossroads and with time on her hands, she takes on the task. When she steps into the 254-year-old house, she finds it has been left eerily untouched--complete with rotary telephone--since the night her grandparents died unexpectedly in a tragic car accident in August 1976.

 

As Keaton settles in and begins to assess the home, she starts to assemble pieces, like a puzzle, of her grandparents’ lives. Did they really die by accident? Or could there be more to the story? Keaton becomes more greatly intrigued when she starts to read her grandmother’s journal. It further encourages Keaton in her determination to find answers. She mingles with the locals and even strikes up a relationship with a young father who lives with his son next door.

 

What ensues is a captivating, heartwarming story that combines a long-lost family saga with elements of mystery and romance. Readers will be riveted and wowed by Woodsen’s (The Summer of Songbirds, The Wedding Veil) 12^th winning novel.

 

 

A Happier Life by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), $28.99 hardcover, 9781668012192, 384 pages

Publication Date: June 25, 2024

To order this book on Bookshop/INDIEBOUND, link HERE

The Way I Heard It

Mike Rowe, of ‘Dirty Jobs’ fame, has written a book…and it’s a good one! It's both clever and greatly entertaining. Rowe blends the story of his own life with his exploration of the lives of other notables. This is the perfect read to take with you on the go—short chapters for when you’ve got only a few minutes to escape into a good book!

Popular personality Mike Rowe cleverly spins and unravels mysteries about notable public figures, while sharing stories of his own life.

Television host, narrator, actor, producer and product pitchman, Mike Rowe presents 35 cleverly written short mysteries about public figures and notables that are culled from his podcast, The Way I Heard It. Between the mysteries, Rowe, with his signature humor and dry wit, ties in entertaining anecdotes about his own life--childhood adventures while growing up in a tight-knit Baltimore family; his mentors and his girlfriends; his penchant for Travis McGee novels; and his many comical experiences on the winding, bumpy road to success.

Rowe has hosted several offbeat shows on networks such as QVC, the Science Channel, CNN and National Geographic. He's most known for Dirty Jobs, where he performed 300 messy occupational duties alongside regular, hardworking employees. Rowe's affinity for the programs of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey served as inspiration for his creation of the mysteries of the book--what he pitches as "some true stories you probably don't know about some famous people you probably do." This includes obscure facts about presidents, musicians, writers, sports figures and more--the living and the dead--as well as places and events.

Readers will be greatly amused and intrigued by Rowe's presentation of each story. He offers just enough information and clues to keep readers engrossed--and guessing--about the who or what of each subject before he delivers surprising twists and reveals the mysterious identity at each story's conclusion. For all the jobs Mike Rowe has held in his storied career, writing might just prove to be his forte.

The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe

Gallery Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9781982130855, 272 pages

Publication Date: October 15, 2019

To order this book on 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 (October 25, 2019), link HERE

The Tumbling Turner Sisters

Four sisters launch a vaudeville act to rescue their working-class family when it falls on hard times.  

The vaudeville era is authentically brought back to life in The Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay (The Shortest Way Home). The story follows the plight of a hardworking, near-poverty-level family in Johnson City, N.Y., in 1919 after the patriarch, Frank, a lowly shoemaker, has his hand crushed when he tries to break up a barroom brawl. With Frank unable to work and bills piling up, determined mother Ethel, who'd always craved stardom, seeks to remedy the family's misfortune by recruiting her four daughters (ages 13 to 22) into forming a sister act of vaudeville tumblers.

The story is told from the perspectives of the middle sisters: Winnie, who wants to go to college and become a doctor, and Gert, no-nonsense and curvy-figured, who longs for a better life than her mother's. Rounding out the quartet are Kit, the youngest and tallest of the bunch, and Nell, the oldest, a young mother and recent widow. It doesn't take long for the sisters to attract the attention of an agent, who launches them on a tour through upstate New York, where they encounter a host of colorful performers including a Yiddish comedy duo, an African American tap dancer, Italian immigrant musicians and temperamental animal handlers. 

As the girls and their mother become immersed in the grueling vaudeville circuit, their mettle is tested. They are forced to discover who they are and the realities of life amid romantic attractions, con men and issues of women's rights and racial discrimination. Fay's historical novel probes the personal lives and questions of the era with adventure and aplomb.

The Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay

Gallery Books, $24.00 Hardcover, 9781501134470, 352 pages

Publication Date: June 14, 2016

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, click 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 (June 24, 2016 ), link HERE

Photographer Brian Nice and "The B Nice Project"

I discovered the photography of Brian Nice in 2009, when he published Rescue Tails: Portraits of Dogs and Their Celebrities, a project that was inspired by his own dog, a Pug named Buster, who was losing his eyesight. Buster was later helped by the Humane Society and proceeds from the sale of Nice's book continue to benefit the organization.

Nice has been a photographer for thirty years. His career was originally launched in advertising and fashion photography. Nice was at the top of his craft when he suffered a series of severe, life-threatening traumatic brain injuries. After numerous surgeries, vigorous therapy and a life now spent in a wheelchair, Nice has remained undaunted in reinventing himself—personally and professionally. With great courage, inner strength and the support of a loving family, Nice is continuing to pursue his photography as a fine art, now with a completely new focus.

On September 27, 2013, Brian Nice and his team embarked on an exciting cross-country road trip to photograph the American landscape. Brian hopes his journey and the images he captures will inspire others, especially TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) survivors, to see past their own limitations and do what they love. The project will include the production and promotion of a gallery exhibit of photographs, a full-color coffee table book and a documentary film about Brian and the journey.

Link HERE to learn more.

Follow Brian's cross-country journey and see the world from his unique perspective.

Read a feature about Brian Nice in The New York Times

Follow Team Brian Nice on Twitter: @TheBNiceProject

To make a donation to "My Point of View/The B Nice Project" link HERE

Photograph by Brian Nice - TheBNiceProject

 Enjoy the journey, Brian! 
You're an inspiration to us all!

Rescue Tails: Portraits of Dogs and Their Celebrities by Brian Nice, Beth O Stern (Introduction)

Gallery Books,  $19.95, Paper, 9781439152768 , 176 pp

Publication Date: November 3 2009

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Three Graves Full

"The world was short one human being because of Jason Getty," a lonely widower and "crackerjack wallflower" who, on a moonlit October night, was pushed too far and killed a man who had it coming. Jason may have hidden the body, burying the corpse in his suburban backyard, but he can't live with himself. For seventeen months, he goes through the motions of living his life, most nights "watching through the dining-room window for the unavoidable squad car to turn down the street and ruin his life." 

When landscapers come to do a routine clean-up of Jason's property, they discover not one body, but two, that of a man and a woman, buried in the flower bed in the front of Jason's house. (Uh-oh!) The guilt-ridden nightmare of Jason's life suddenly flares. He is thrust into a harrowing investigation to identify the two corpses--how and why they got there--and he is forced to shed his isolated existence. Will the authorities find the third body?

Jason's destiny becomes intertwined with a jilted woman looking for the missing pieces of her own life, an upstanding small-town detective and his astute police dog and a mysterious loner whose own actions and past may very well dictate the fates of all involved.

In Three Graves Full, Jamie Mason has crafted an off-beat, menacing tale about a criminal with a conscience. Irony and dark humor propel the plot in ways that reinvigorate the crime novel, revealing sharp insights into the complexities of the human heart and mind.

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

Gallery Books, $24.99, Hardcover, 9781451685039, 320 pp

Publication Date: February 13, 2013

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 (2/15/13), click HERE.