Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Linda Breland, a single mother tired of living hand-to-mouth in New Jersey, decides to move herself and her two teenage daughters to her distant hometown of Mount Pleasant, S.C., where her sister, Mimi, still lives. Linda's straight-shooting style impresses local restauranteur Brad Jackson, who hires her to manage his restaurant; hints of a future romance are about as subtle as a kitchen fire. Frank easily, breezily shifts among her multiple first-person...

After graduating from college in Boston, Beth returns to the South to spend a year house-sitting her family's home, Island Gamble, while her mother, Susan, visits Paris. Frank's portrayal of a large and complicated family is humorous and precise: there's Susan, adoring and kind; Aunt Maggie, a stickler for manners; twin aunts Sophie and Allison, who run an exercise-and-vitamin empire; and uncles Timmy and Henry, the latter of whom has ties to Beth's...

Returning to Folly Beach, her childhood home, newly widowed Cate Cooper, whose late husband's financial exploits have left her homeless and broke, discovers that it is possible to go home again and discover the person she was meant to become.

"Best friends since the first day of classes at The College of Charleston, Ashley Anne Waters and Mary Beth Smythe, now 23 years old, live in Ashley's parents' beach house rent-free. Ashley is a gallery assistant who aspires to become an artist. Mary Beth, a gifted cook from Tennessee, works for a caterer while searching for a good teaching job. Though they both know what they want out of life, their parents barely support their dreams and worry for...

"One enchanted summer, two couples begin a friendship that will last more than twenty years and transform their lives. A chance meeting on the Isle of Palms, one of Charleston's most stunning barrier islands, brings former sweethearts, Adam Stanley and Eve Landers together again. Their respective spouses, Eliza and Carl, fight sparks of jealousy flaring from their imagined rekindling of old flames. As Adam and Eve get caught up on their lives, their...