The books, in order
Each book finishes its own story, so you can start anywhere. But the Calloways’ secret comes out a piece at a time, and it’s best heard in order.
- 1 The Cottage Off the Books Coming soon to Kindle
- 2 Nothing to Spare Coming soon to Kindle
- 3 All Accounted For Coming soon to Kindle
- 4 Title to come Being written
- 5 Title to come Being written
A visitor’s guide
- The ferry
- About two and a half hours across Pamlico Sound, fifteen dollars a car, and you’ll want a reservation. Halfway over, your phone gives up. On summer Sundays the last boat leaves the mainland at nine.
- Carol
- Meets every boat, in a sun visor. She’ll know who you are before you’ve parked, and so will everyone else by supper.
- Ruth’s bakery
- A low building painted school-bus yellow, second right past the post office, with a line out the door. The cinnamon rolls come in a white box tied with red and white string.
- The Slack Tide
- The bar on the dock: a long screened porch on pilings, fried shrimp and hush puppies, the Braves on the radio. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. On late-summer nights the comb jellies light up the harbor.
- The fire hall
- At the crossroads, with a red bay door and a fish fry every Wednesday for about two hundred. A brass plaque by the door thanks “an anonymous friend” for rebuilding it after the hurricane. Nobody knows who that was.
- Walt’s boatyard
- Where the Miss Ida sits up on blocks, four coats of paint deep: white over blue over green over red. Walt brings Diane flounder. Nobody has asked him why.
- 14 Shell Lane
- A low gray cottage under live oaks, with a fig tree leaning on it and a roof that leaks over the bathtub. Nobody has lived there since the hurricane. It’s the one thing Diane Calloway has asked for in the divorce.
- Shell Lane’s lookouts
- The Harrell sisters, across the road, in lawn chairs under their house, with binoculars on the cooler between them.
The Calloways
One family from Charlotte, as the first book finds them: the summer Diane leaves Richard, and their daughters learn what their father is worth.
- Diane, 61
- Has given money away all her life. After thirty-eight years of marriage she has come to the island with one suitcase, and she’s living over the bakery.
- Richard, 64
- Drives a fifteen-year-old Buick, files every receipt and keeps the thermostat at eighty all summer. He is worth forty point eight million dollars, which is news to his daughters.
- Kate, 37
- An accountant who reads every page from the bottom up, because the bottom is where people hide things. Her father’s daughter, until now. Book 1 is hers.
- Molly, 35
- Two children, a minivan and a long memory. The island calls her “the loud one” before it has met her. Book 2 is hers.
- Tess, 31
- Teaching at a girls’ school in the Guatemalan highlands, broke and happy, with a goat called Gerald who once ate a bra. Book 3 is hers.