"After a summer spent in the Philippines with her family, Lara Dela Cruz is eager to start her senior year and reunite with her three besties. Summer is the season of change, and Lara's ready to get the lowdown on all the major updates and hot gossip she's missed. But what she doesn't expect is to find out that all three of her friends are now in relationships. As if the mushy public displays of affection and lunches spent hearing her friends gush about their new 'boy-fries' weren't bad enough, Lara's long time frenemy James has become impossibly annoying. Sure, they are now both third wheels, but why is he asking her to tutor him in classes? And why, after they start spending more time together, does she begin to notice how cute he looks when he smiles?"--Back cover.

For three generations of women, a summer on Martha’s Vineyard brings family drama, new beginnings, and a second chance at love in this heartwarming novel. Lauren has the perfect life . . . if she ignores the fact that it’s a fragile house of cards, and that her daughter Mack has just turned into a teenage stranger. Jenna is desperate to start a family with her husband, but it’s . . . Just. Not. Happening. While her heart is breaking inside, she’s determined to keep her trademark smile on her face. Nancy knows she hasn’t been the best mother, but how can she ever tell Lauren and Jenna the reason why? Then life changes in an instant, and Lauren, Mack, Jenna and Nancy are thrown together for a summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Somehow, these very different women must relearn how to be a family. And while unraveling their secrets might be their biggest challenge, the rewards could be infinite.

During a summer stay at Sorrento, Italy, as a guest of the Commune of Sorrento, I was booked at the Hotel Parco dei Principi. On the premises is a botanical garden, and the lovely pink, and white Baroque Villa Cortchakov, built by the Bourbon Prince Siracusa, in 1792, later owned by Prince Constantine Cortchakov. So, the Park of the Princes. The villa stands alone, unoccupied. Why did the Prince go mad there, in his arms his dead Hungarian mistress, Tania? What role did the gardener-herbalist-shaman Father Zacharias play in this tragedy? What was the nature of that elixir brewed by him called Perenne Amore, or Everlasting Love? When there are no answers, only a teasing Arcanum, then imagination leaps to entwine the villa in a plot of fated loves, the presence of archaic coca leaf, and the green, somber consciousness of the fabulous garden, All secrets are now lurid folklore. How can a visiting novelist reject this bait? He can't. He begins to write this novel sitting at a table on the maiolica tiled terrace facing the fabulous Bay of Naples, The Villa Cortchakov over his right shoulder bemused at the suspicions and speculations of the enraptured stranger, whose socks are unmatched, sipping a chilled vodka.

From the author of Welcome to Paradise, Now Go To Hell, a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction One of Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament's Top 10 of 2018 It's no surprise that surfers like to party. The 1960-70s image, bolstered by Tom Wolfe and Big Wednesday, was one of mild outlaws--tanned boys refusing to grow up, spending their days drinking beer and smoking joints on the beach in between mindless hours in the water. But in the 1980s, as surf brands morphed into multibillion-dollar companies, the derelict portrait began to harm business. The external surf image became Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton, beacons of health, vitality, bravery, and clean-living. Internally, though, surfing had moved on from booze and weed to its heart's true home, its soul's twin flame: cocaine. The rise of cocaine in American popular culture as the choice of rich, white elites was matched, then quadrupled, within surf culture. The parties got wilder, the nights stretched longer, the stories became more ridiculously unbelievable. And there has been no stopping, no dip in passion. It is a forbidden love, and few, if any, outside the surf world know about this particular rhapsody. Drug use is kept very well-hidden, even from insiders, but evidence of its psychosis rears its head from time to time in the form of overdoses, bar fights, surf contests, murders, and cover-ups. Cocaine + Surfing draws back the curtain on a hopped-up, sometimes-sexy, sometimes-deadly relationship and uses cocaine as the vehicle to expose and explain the utterly absurd surf industry to outsiders.

SEE NO EVIL The house was impossible to stay away from, but he couldn’t tell the beautiful woman inside why. For P.I. Joe Lopez didn’t remember why…. HEAR NO EVIL Then the memories came flooding back, and if not for professor Emma Jensen Reese, Joe would have walked away…forever. SPEAK NO EVIL But once the shots rang out, connecting him and Emma in life and nearly in death, Joe was determined to learn what really happened in that house more than twenty years ago. Even as someone else was hell-bent on keeping the past buried….

It was just one weekend. One weekend altered everything! He was the governor's son and a rising figure in business. He had everything at his feet. She was a struggling college student who worked two jobs. Beautifully independent and uncompromising. So, how did one weekend affect everything? What will happen when the secret is revealed? This story contains plenty of drama, secrets, and lies. Get ready, readers! MATURE CONTENT: PLEASE CONSIDER BEFORE READING THIS BOOK SINCE SOME SCENES WOULD BE ONLY APPROPRIATE FOR 18+ AND ADULTS.