In Green’s 12th novel, Callie Perry is a happily married photographer with two wonderful kids, a lovable sister, Steffi, and a best friend, Lila. Problems are minor: Steffi can never settle down, Lila has finally found love but the guy has a nightmare of an ex, and Callie and Steffi’s divorced parents haven’t spoken in 30 years. But then Callie, a breast cancer survivor, is diagnosed with a rare and incurable complication of the disease. Suddenly realizing that she has only months to live, she begins the painful process of saying good-bye. While the subject matter is intense and personal, it’s far from depressing; the characters are warm, funny and realistic. Green (The Beach House) manages to create an authentic tale of a woman who truly loves her life and family and is trying to do the right thing for them before she dies. While Green breaks up her chapters with recipes (presumably because Steffi is a cook), this peculiar modern conceit in women’s literature feels like a misstep. Overall, Green once again delivers an enjoyable emotional story.

From New York Times bestseller Elin Hilderbrand, a new novel set on Tuckernuck, a tiny island off the coast of Nantucket.

Four women-a mother, her sister, two grown daughters-head to Tuckernuck for a retreat, hoping to escape their troubles. Intead, they find only drama, secrets, and life-changing revelations.

Here’s one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Frank’s signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities. In this long-time-coming sequel to Plantation, opinionated and family-centric Caroline Wimbly Levine has just turned 47, but she’s less concerned with advancing middle age than she is with son Eric shacking up with an older single mom. She’s also dealing with a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, Frances Mae; four nieces from hell; grieving brother Tripp; a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart; and a serious crush on the local sheriff. Then there’s Caroline’s dead-but-not-forgotten mother, Miss Lavinia, whose presence both guides and troubles Caroline as she tries to keep her unruly family intact and out of jail. With a sizable cast of minor characters with major attitude, Frank lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries; below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance. When Frank nails it, she really nails it, and she does so here.

Sweetgrass is a historic tract of land in South Carolina that has been home to the Blakely family for eight generations. But Sweetgrass—named for the indigenous grass that grows in the area—is in trouble. Taxes are skyrocketing. Bulldozers are leveling the surrounding properties. And the Blakelys could be forced to sell the one thing that continues to hold their disintegrating family together.

In this poignant novel of hope, acceptance and the powerful gift of forgiveness, Mary Alice Monroe paints an intimate portrait of a family that must learn to unravel old patterns and weave together a new future.

Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother’s warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.

Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie--a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance--and even to some degree, friendships--believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.

In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.

Folly Beach, South Carolina, has survived despite hurricanes and war. But it’s the personal battles of Folly Beach’s residents that have left the most scars, and they are why a young widow has been beckoned there to heal her own. To most people, Folly Beach is simply the last barrier island before reaching the great Atlantic. To some, it’s a sanctuary for lost souls, which is why Emmy Hamilton’s mother encourages her to buy a local bookstore, Folly’s Finds, hoping it will distract Emmy from the loss of her husband. Emmy is at first resistant. So much has already changed. But after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly’s Finds, she decides to take the plunge. But the seller insists on one condition: Emmy must allow Lulu, the late owner’s difficult sister, to continue selling her bottle trees from the store’s backyard. For the most part, Emmy ignores Lulu, and sifts through the love letter. But the more she discovers about the letters, the more she understands Lulu. As details of a possible murder and a mysterious disappearance during World War II are revealed, the two women discover that circumstances beyond their control, sixty years apart, have brought them together. On Folly Beach. And it is here that their war-ravaged hearts can find hope for a second chance.

After her husband leaves her for one of her best friends, middle-aged Marina Warren takes a friend’s advice and retreats to Nantucket, the stomping grounds of her youth. She rents a cottage from handsome local widower Jim Fox, who has recently welcomed back his two older daughters, Emma and Abbie, into the house he shares with his third daughter, Lily. Emma has recently lost her job and been left by her fiancé, while Abbie has decided to start an odd-jobs company servicing the wealthy summer crowd. Lily, meanwhile, earns a living as a society reporter for the local magazine and stews in her resentment toward her sisters (who return the sentiment) and newcomer Marina, who clearly has eyes for her father. As each search for fulfillment (and a man), they encounter vexing villains, class struggle, and good old-fashioned romance. Thayer gives narration duties to each sister and Marina in turn, keeping the proceedings fun and engrossing, if a bit repetitive.

Harbison (Shoe Addicts Anonymous) delivers an enjoyable summer novel that’s heavier on ’80s nostalgia than originality. Twenty years ago, Holly and Nicola were best friends at camp, united in their hatred of the cabin bully, Lexi. Now, Holly, who owns a Washington, D.C., art gallery, is “pre-engaged” to controlling Randy, who will propose if she can drop 20 pounds. Nicola is an actress in L.A., struggling to follow up her one sleeper hit, but being turned down left and right for roles because she doesn’t look right. As Holly sheds the weight, Randy’s unpleasantness becomes impossible to ignore, and Nicola undergoes plastic surgery that leaves her unrecognizable even to her grandmother (and doesn’t get her any work). Meanwhile, Lexi’s father dies and her stepmother cuts her off, leaving her destitute. When Holly runs into Lexi, she realizes that undoing a prank she and Nicola played on her years ago at camp could potentially reverse her fortune. There’s nothing outstanding here, but it does the trick as a beach book.

They’re here for a higher education . . . and you won’t believe how far they’ll go.

Dexter College is a small liberal arts college in the quiet town of Home, Maine. But it won’t stay quiet for long with this group of freshmen. There’s Shipley—blonde and beautiful, the object of envy and more than a little lust. Determined to assert herself and to shed her good-girl image, she buys cigarettes and condoms, because that’s what every self-respecting college girl does. Her edgy roommate, Eliza, came to Dexter to get noticed, and she has the attitude and the mouth to prove it. Then there’s Tom. Handsome, privileged, used to getting his own way, he’s a jock-turned-artist who thinks his paintings will change the world. Sensitive Nick, Tom’s wake-and-bake pot-smoking roommate, wants to follow in the footsteps of his boarding-school hero. And then there are brother and sister Adam and Tragedy Gatz. The freckle-faced farm boy lives at home with his parents and his little sister, who does all she can to stop him from being a wuss.

As Shipley, Eliza, Tom, Nick, and Adam find out, that first year of college is more than credits and cramming. Between the lust and the love, the secrecy and the scandal, they’ll all receive an unexpected education. It’s a time of shifting alliances, unrequited crushes, and coming of age. Find Yourself is Dexter’s motto. And they are determined to do just that.