A Delirious Summer: A Novel
by Ray Blackston
Neil Rucker has been teaching Spanish to missionaries in Ecuador and has not had a date in seven months. So when one of his old students, Jay Jarvis (from last year's Flabbergasted), offers him a place to stay in South Carolina, Neil heads north for eight weeks of sun, sand, and single, churchgoing women. One by one, he meets the "Ladies of the Quest," an email group of local young women who go from church to church scouting for marriageable men. Blackston brings back some of the same quirky cast of characters from Flabbergasted, including larger-than-life blonde Darcy Yeager and unorthodox Alexis Demoss.

A Summer Sentence
by Carolynn Carey
Megan Marsh was just passing through McCray County, Tennessee on her way to a career in Chicago, but after a run-in with an overzealous deputy involving a bee, a slap, a speeding ticket, and a heap of misunderstanding, she finds herself suddenly immersed in small town life serving a summer sentence.

Admissions: A Novel
by Nancy Lieberman
This sharply observed and bitingly funny novel exposes the over-the-top absurdity of New York City`s elite private school admissions circus. For Manhattan's most affluent parents, the Tuesday after Labor Day marks the beginning of the city's most competitive and vicious blood sport: the start of the private school admissions process. But for Helen Drager, mother of Zoe, it shouldn't be such an ordeal. After all, Helen's best friend Sara is an admissions officer at Zoe's current K-8. But Sara's position becomes precarious, and Helen soon finds herself drawn ever deeper into the mounting lunacy generated by the fierce competition.

Becoming Strangers
by Louise Dean
Travel can broaden the mind, but it can also serve to affirm old habits and prejudices if, as is the case with the Europeans populating this novel, emotional baggage is lugged along with the suitcases. At a Caribbean resort, elderly Britishers Dorothy and George Davis are thrown together with a younger and more urbane Belgian couple, Annemieke and Jan De Groot. Although this is the Davises' first trip abroad (courtesy of their pushy daughter), it may well be the unhappily married De Groots' last, for Jan is slowly dying of cancer. Although he hopes the holiday will help them become better friends, Annemieke spends most of her time in pursuit of extramarital sexual adventure. George and Dorothy, meanwhile, are coming to terms with the fact that Dorothy is in an increasingly advanced stage of Alzheimer's.

Color Her Dead
by Steve Brown
Susan Chase works as a lifeguard on Myrtle Beach's Grand Strand, but she also specializes in finding runaways. When bitchy, penny-pinching Mrs. Rogers wants her 26-year-old daughter found, Susan almost refuses; however, once decided, she struts her attitudinal stuff in the face of jealous lovers, "artistic" temperaments, neighborhood drug sellers, and lecherous art dealers. Along the way she's shoved down stairs, assaulted in her houseboat, and accused of trespass and murder. Brown's (Black Fire) third novel offers local color, a stand-up heroine, and a deceptively simple plot. An outstanding read for the beach or anywhere else.

Heat Wave
by Jill Marie Landis
A lot has gone wrong for Kat Vargas, starting with a cheating boyfriend in her native Hawaii and a car crash that sent her running to the mainland and into constant nightmares. A potential solution to Kat's personal and professional problems may lie in handsome Ty Chandler, who's looking for the 19-year-old daughter he never knew about until his mother's recent death. What might have been a lengthy missing person's case ends all too quickly with a double-click of Kat's mouse on the right Internet sites. Enter Sunny Simone, Ty's streetwise, distrustful child, and her 17-month-old baby, French Fry (née Alice). Ty tries to bond with his newfound family, while Sunny warily seeks a safe haven away from her volatile L.A. world.

Leeway Cottage
by Beth Gutcheon
Annabelle Sydney Brant grows up adored by her father and largely criticized by her mother. The best times of her life are spent in the family summer home, Leeway Cottage, in Dundee, ME. After her father's death, a miserable Sydney moves to New York City to study music in an act of rebellion against her mother's superficial lifestyle. There, she falls in love with Laurus Moss, a Danish pianist whom she eventually marries. When World War II breaks out, Laurus moves to London to help build the Danish Resistance and save Denmark's Jews from Nazi extermination. Meanwhile, Sydney gives birth to a daughter who, sadly, will not meet her father until the war is over. Though Sydney turns into a woman not unlike the mother she despises, her marriage endures.

Seaside: A Novella
by Terri Blackstock
Maggie Downing invites her adult daughters for a week of fun in the Florida sunshine, expecting that they will be able to regain some of the closeness they have lost over the years. But both daughters initially resist: Sarah pleads the excuse of not being able to leave her two young children, while the younger Corinne claims she cannot take a vacation from the three fledgling businesses she is trying to run. They do come, but are armed with cell phones and laptops, ignoring their mother's requests for the three of them to spend quality time together. Then Maggie reveals that she has struggled for a year with ovarian cancer and expects to lose the battle sooner rather than later. As the daughters deal with the shock and try to come to terms with the possibility of losing their mother, old bitterness and rivalry ebb away.

Seven Sunny Days
by Chris Manby
Rachel Buckley and her two best friends, Carrie Ann and Yaslyn, are headed to a resort in Turkey for “hen week” before Rachel ties the knot with Patrick. Carrie Ann has just finalized her divorce from her husband of 15 years. Ruminating on being single at 34, she is not sure about her friends' plan to have her hook up with a Norwegian vacationer. Glamorous Yaslyn, a model whose career is sliding downhill, is dating one of Patrick's good friends but can't help lapping up the male attention she receives at the resort. Marcus and Sally are also on holiday at the resort, hoping to save their failing five-year-old marriage. Axel, 23, is still mooning after the college girl who threw him over in Paris. As one would expect, nothing goes quite as planned for any of the guests.

Summer Breeze
by Catherine Anderson
Rachel survived the massacre that claimed her entire family on a picnic five years ago. But although she physically recovered from the bullet to her head, she is severely agoraphobic and lives barricaded in the kitchen. When Darby, her ranch hand, is shot in the back while out riding fence near where the murderer struck, he extracts a promise from neighbor Joseph Paxton (Ace's half brother in Keegan's Lady, 1996) to guard Rachel from the still-unidentified killer. When Rachel does not respond to his knock, Joseph breaks into the house through a bedroom window. He is greeted with a double-barreled shotgun blast, but remains determined to honor his promise, and in the process discovers how much Rachel has to offer.

Tea and Witchery
by Maire Dees
In Cassadaga, Florida, the paranormal is normal and chats with the dead are an everyday occurrence. Lynn is unaware of the town's psychic connection when she drives into town for a visit with her aunt. But strangeness turns dangerous when the president of the Psychic Society is murdered after being cursed by a coven of witches. Now Lynn has to keep her aunt from being accused of concocting a poisonous brew while discovering who the real murder is. Should she be suspicious of quiet, reserved Alex who doesn't seem to fit in the town or young, gentle, Patrick who is in danger of being restricted from giving his tarot readings? Are the Society member's attempts to solve the murder through psychic methods going to yield results or just more victims?

The Floodmakers
by Mylene Dressler
A wounded sea bird sits helplessly in a box at the Buell family beach house on the Texas Gulf Coast. Harry Buell has come here at his stepmother's request to visit his aging playwright father, Dee, who has lately refused to take his heart medication. Harry's histrionic sister, Sarah, and her husband, Paul, arrive during a freak Southern hailstorm, cameras in tow, intent on finishing a documentary on the life and distinguished writing career of Papa Buell. Under the bright lights of the cameras, terrible family secrets are confronted and relationships tested.

The Summer He Didn't Die
by Jim Harrison
Three very different novellas make up this latest collection by the author of True North. The title piece, set in Harrison's familiar stomping ground of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is also the best, an earthy and exuberant tale of good-hearted ne'er-do-well Brown Dog and his attempt to keep his brain-damaged stepdaughter out of a state boarding school while dallying with whatever women may be available in Escanaba. "Republican Wives" ranges further afield, concerning three former sorority sisters, Martha, Frances, and Shirley, who were all once involved with Daryl, a self-absorbed and abusive artist. Told by each woman in turn, the story is set mostly in Mexico, where the now middle-aged Martha flees after attempting to murder Daryl. The autobiographical "Tracking", a novella is a reminiscence of the writer's life.

The Summer We Got Saved
by Pat Cunningham Devoto
Alabama in the 1960s was still in denial about the civil rights movement. Tab Rutland proudly proclaimed that Cousin John Lester was one of the founding members of the Klu Klux Klan. Her sister, Tina, was too interested in makeup and boys to bother with history or politics. And their father would back the same tired candidate for governor because that's what his kinfolk always did--until Aunt Eugenia visits from California and talks the girls into going to visit a wealthy cousin in Chattanooga. On the way, she admits that her real plan is to educate the girls by taking them to the Highlander Folk School once attended by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. There Tab is introduced to nonviolent protests and the lies told by both white and black. And back home, their father breaks with tradition and backs a new candidate for governor who just might beat Wallace.