When Kaye Bennett, matriarch of the Bennett family, summons her adult children to the shore house, she anticipates a vacation full of nostalgia. It’s a chance to relive the carefree joy of summers past: basking in the hot sun, cooling off in the surf, and enjoying long, relaxing evenings watching fireflies on the deck. But when Kaye’s son and daughter arrive, late and uncooperative, it becomes clear the family desperately needs to reconnect. 

At the moment he knows he is dying, Johnny Eagle takes a photograph, which is later discovered by his heartbroken wife, Heidi. Heidi pores over the image and sees a busy street scene and a pavement full of strangers - she has no idea what this last message from her beloved husband could mean. Heidi has spent her days - and her years - giving cherished old furniture a second chance. But there are some parts of Heidi’s own life she believes are beyond repair. 

When Abby steps off the ferry and onto the isle of Kinlossay, she squeezes her daughter’s hand and prays this trip was not a mistake. For the last year she has been receiving letters from a mysterious stranger detailing every moment of his life on this rugged little island. Swept away by descriptions of buttercups dancing on rolling fields, his words were a lifeline to Abby, filling her grey life with colour. But then, one day, the messages stopped.

I never expected to have to uproot my family to go live in my parents’ isolated cottage on Lost Lake. It’s twenty miles to the nearest town, an insignificant speck in endless pine forests. Nobody’s lived here for a decade. Now, I pick up a rusty pail from its nest of autumn leaves and turn to my daughter. Suddenly, I recall how I used to help my own mother pick wild strawberries up here as a little girl. Maybe, this isn’t a punishment. Maybe this place will be the making of our family.

When Julie’s mother falls ill, she has no choice but to return to her parents’ Wisconsin resort, Wood Violet, for the summer. Away from the pressures of their corporate jobs in the city, Julie hopes she and husband, Tristan, can start to heal after another failed pregnancy. But, on arriving home, Julie discovers resort life is anything but peaceful. She has to focus more on saving the business than her marriage, and the appearance of childhood sweetheart Chase throws her into disarray. 

Just turned eighteen, Romany is on the cusp of taking her first steps into adulthood when tragedy strikes, and she finds herself suddenly alone without her mother, Angie, the only parent she has ever known. In her final letter, Angie has charged her four closest friends with guiding Romany through her last year of school—but is there an ulterior motive to her unusual dying wish? Each of the four guardians possesses an outlook on life that Angie wants to give her daughter as a legacy. 

Cousins Tabby and Ellie Mae are due for a change. Running their aunt’s beachfront bed-and-breakfast in Sandcastle, Texas, is just the thing to shake things up…though their lives spin out of control in more ways than one when a hurricane barrels into the coastline. It’s a miracle it didn’t carry them off to Kansas. Not so lucky are the assisted-living center and a small eclectic group of local folks who take shelter with the cousins. 

It's never too late to change the habits of a lifetime... Evelyn Pringle isn't the sort to make rash decisions. Or any decisions, really – she's always left that sort of thing up to her husband. But he's been found dead, wearing his best suit, with a diamond ring in his pocket that doesn't fit her. When Evelyn finds a letter addressed to a woman on the Isle of Wight, she decides to deliver it. By hand. So begins a very unusual holiday, and an adventure no one could have predicted – least of all Evelyn herself.

I walk slowly to the kitchen counter, staring out the window as Ceci rocks back and forth on the swing. My beautiful darling girl has been through so much already. How can I tell her that her life is about to change forever? When the woman from the hospital tells me that my husband Drew is in a coma my world comes crashing down. In an instant, I see our whole married life flashing before my eyes: the way our children ran into his arms when he came home from work, the way his face lit up when he read to them.

Down a winding lane lined with honeysuckle and wild flowers, there’s a beautiful orchard beside the rushing River Wye. There, in a little farmhouse in the furthest corner, a young woman has a difficult and life-changing decision to make... Life on Appleyard Farm is all Freya Sherbourne has ever known. Having spent her childhood playing between the blossom-heavy apple trees, Freya can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. But times have been hard since her father’s sudden death, and now that she’s being forced to put the farm up for sale, her world is about to come crashing down.

When Anna Crowe is killed in her sleep alongside her children, the quiet local community of Corbally is shocked. It’s also a chilling reminder of when her sister, Janey, disappeared as a baby, 29 years ago, never to be seen again. Detective Iris Locke is assigned to the case, and, after a year undercover which ended in failure when her cover got blown, she’s desperate to make her mark - and to live up to the reputation of her ex-cop father, the former head of the Limerick Murder Squad.

Twenty-two years of marriage, and all Becca Larkin’s divorce settlement includes is a live-aboard sailboat and a huge helping of heartache. So when normally cautious Becca proposes a girls’ trip with her daughter, Liv, boating from Maine to a ready buyer for the boat in Miami, it seems like a recipe for a fun summer and a fresh start. After all, how hard can this sailing thing be?

When a shipwreck surfaces, old secrets are sure to follow. Or so goes the lore in Ivy Neale’s hometown of Nags Head, North Carolina. When Ivy inherits her family’s beachfront cottage upon her grandmother’s death, she knows returning to Nags Head means facing the best friend and the boyfriend who betrayed her years ago. But then a winter gale uncovers the shipwreck of local legend—and Ivy soon begins to stumble across more skeletons in the closet than just her own.

Clara King is left in sole charge of a fabulous new clifftop hotel for the summer. The owner has barely left the country when Clara realises that someone is hell bent on putting the Bluebell Cliff out of business. It becomes a race against time to hunt down the sneaky saboteur before they succeed in bringing the hotel to its knees. Meanwhile Clara’s family is in crisis following her grandfather’s affair.

It’s a beautiful day for a wedding. White roses scent the air and the summer sunlight streams in. A spoon chimes against a champagne flute and the room falls silent. And there he is - my husband - getting to his feet to propose a toast. He’s still handsome. His new wife is next to him, gazing upwards, oblivious. I’m not supposed to be here. All these years in the same town and I had no idea until I saw his name on the seating plan. He lived with me, once. Loved me. Small-town memories are long, but the people in this room don’t want to remember.