When Eliza Whitney loses both her beloved husband and her high-powered job in the same month, she’s uncertain what the next chapter of her life will look like. At 53, she’s too young to retire and too old to start over. Then her estranged father’s widow contacts her and asks her to come to Sanibel Island to help settle his affairs. Eliza sees the trip to a place called Shellseeker Beach as a distraction from her loss and maybe a way to get some closure on the difficult relationship she'd had with her father.

The last thing Beck Foster wants to do is attend a party for her estranged aunt in the Florida Keys. One month earlier, Beck’s seemingly ideal existence imploded when her husband of 34 years announced he was leaving her. Now, so she has to sell her house, get a job, and somehow put her broken heart and life back together. She can’t do all that if she runs off to visit a woman she barely remembers. Or can she? Accompanied by her grown daughter who also longs for an escape, Beck heads to Coconut Key, where she’d lived the earliest years of her life.

After coming together following their father's stroke, the Wingate women have found second-chance romance, faced trials and tribulations, and built wonderful lives on Amelia Island. Their father is fully recovered and healthy, their businesses are flourishing, and the whole family is bursting with love and laughter.

When the Chambers sisters receive an invitation from their jet-setting aunt to spend the entire month of December at the family's cabin in Asheville, North Carolina, they have one question—why? The retreat, tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains, may be the site of many happy childhood holidays and summers, but it also holds sad memories. The sisters and their aunt have spent twenty-five years avoiding the cabin and renting it to strangers. Why would Aunt Elizabeth want her "dearest darling" nieces to put their busy lives in three different states on hold and spend a month in the mountains?

April Raines is facing the end of her long-term marriage after her husband begins another family. Eager for a fresh start, she returns home with her grown daughters to Crown Island, just off the coast of Southern California.