Coastal Summer Reads Author Event with Brooke Lea Foster, Meg Mitchell Moore, and Kate Woodworth in conversation with Julie Gerstenblatt on July 24 at 6 PM.
Meet and mingle with the authors and find your next great beach read!
It wouldn’t be summer in New England without the classic beach read, and on Thursday, July 24 at 6 PM, Ink Fish Books will host a Coastal Summer Reads Author Panel with Brooke Lea Foster (OUR LAST VINEYARD SUMMER), Meg Mitchell Moore (MANSION BEACH), and Kate Woodworth (LITTLE GREAT ISLAND) in conversation with Julie Gerstenblatt (DAUGHTERS OF NANTUCKET) to discuss themes of love, place, belonging, and the complex female relationships that each of their books share.
Tickets are $5 and include light refreshments, an author meet and greet, and book signing.
Space is limited. PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE.
Books will be for sale at the event, in store, or online.
About the Books
Our Last Vineyard Summer - After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother—a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement—calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts.
Our Last Vineyard Summer poignantly captures two generations of women navigating love, loss, and womanhood while trying to find the courage to stand up for what they believe in—and the strength to decide if the home they once loved is worth saving.
Daughters of Nantucket- Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear. Nantucket in 1846 is an island set apart not just by its geography but by its unique circumstances. With their menfolk away at sea, often for years at a time, women here know a rare independence—and the challenges that go with it.
Mansion Beach - It’s the start of the summer, and Nicola Carr has just arrived on Block Island. Her failed relationship and soul-crushing job back in Providence have left her yearning for a fresh start, which she finds in the form of a tiny rental cottage and an internship as a marine wildlife researcher. Nicola’s tranquil summer takes an unexpected turn as the extravagant parties from the grand home next door pique her curiosity. She soon discovers the home belongs to Juliana George, an enigmatic entrepreneur with a past shrouded in mystery.
A sophisticated escapist novel filled with light humor and surprising observations, Mansion Beach explores the depth of human relationships, our cruelly classist society, and the price of secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Little Great Island - After offending the powerful pastor of the cult where she’s lived for a decade, Mari McGavin must flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home. Mari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island…from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies. Little Great Island illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love.
About the Authors
Brooke Lea Foster is an award-winning author and journalist who has worked as a writer and editor at The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The Huffington Post and the Washingtonian magazine. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Parents, PARADE, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today, among others. Her novels, Summer Darlings and On Gin Lane, were featured as top summer reads in People Magazine, named a top summer pick by Entertainment Weekly and named one of PARADE’s best books of summer. She writes the popular Dear Fiction newsletter and she's the author of three nonfiction books. All the Summers in Between is her third novel.
Julie Gerstenblatt holds a doctorate in education in Curriculum and Instruction from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her essays have appeared in The Huffington Post and Cognoscenti, among others. When not writing, Julie is a college essay coach, as well as a producer and on-air host for A Mighty Blaze. A native New Yorker, Julie now lives in coastal Rhode Island with her family and one very smart shichon poo. Daughters of Nantucket is her first novel.
Meg Mitchell Moore began writing as soon as she figured out how the cursive 'T' and 'F' were different and hasn’t stopped since. She worked for many years as a copyeditor, editor, and writer for a variety of nonfiction publications before turning to fiction, publishing her first novel in 2011. She has since published eight more novels, all but one set in New England. (The Admissions is set in Northern California., where her family moved for exactly one year before returning to the east coast.) Among her novels are national bestsellers, Indie Next picks, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. She has a B.A. in English from Providence College and a master’s degree in English Literature from New York University. She lives in the beautiful coastal town of Newburyport, Massachusetts (home of the amazing Newburyport Literary Festival, for which she is a member of the steering committee). Her busy household includes one husband, a rotating cast of three teen and young adult daughters, and two exuberantly shedding golden retrievers.
Kate Woodworth is the award-winning author of the novel Racing into the Dark, which Publishers Weekly said, “hits the mark repeatedly with emotional truths and fluid prose” and which Kirkus Reviews called, “vivid and honest, dramatic and without pat resolutions: an impressive debut”. A passionate lover of the natural world, Kate is the author of essays on the impact of climate change on fishing and farming that have been published by the Climate Fiction Writers League and on her Substack, “Food in the Time of Climate Change.” Her novel about love, community, and climate change, Little Great Island, has been called “an extraordinary achievement and a pure pleasure to read” by National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ha Jin. Kate is the founder and creative force behind “Be the Butterfly”, a grassroots climate action initiative that invites everyone to do one small thing to help mitigate climate change. Kate received her MFA from Boston University.