Meghan Gray hasn’t returned to the golden sands of Hatteras Island since her beloved Pappy passed away 10 years ago. But with her life in New York falling apart—and her dreams of becoming a successful chef going up smoke—she quits her waitress job and heads back home on a hot summer’s day, hoping she’ll find some answers there.

For Faith, the one summer she can't forget is when she fell in love as a teenager - only for her sister, Casey, to steal her man. Now, at the request of her beloved 90-year-old grandmother, Faith has agreed to a family holiday - at their childhood beach house, where it all began. Faith hasn't seen her sister in years but is finally ready to forgive and forget, enjoy the sunshine and relive happy memories. What she's not ready for is meeting Jake Buchanan.

Alice Emerson and best friend Sasha Miller have made a pact. They’ve decided to swap city living for the beautiful white beaches of the Outer Banks and pour everything they have into launching an ice cream shop in the little house by the sea. Swept away by her plans, love is the last thing on Alice’s mind. But she keeps running into mysterious doctor Jack Murphy, and finds herself falling for his golden charm and warm smile.

When her gram passes away, Melanie Simpson feels utterly lost. She has no idea what to do with her life after she has devoted years to looking after her beloved grandmother. But Gram’s will may hold the answer, instructing Melanie to use her inheritance to buy a crumbling house in Rosemary Bay. They used to visit the village every summer, sit by the sparkling gulf on a beach the color of a fresh pearl, and daydream about turning the place on the corner into a bed and breakfast.

Callie Weaver and best friend Olivia Dixon have finally done it: put their life savings into the beach house they admired through childhood summers, on the dazzling white sand of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. They’re going to buff the salt from its windows, paint its sun-bleached sidings, and open it as a bed and breakfast. Callie’s too busy to think about her love life, but when she catches the attention of local heartthrob Luke Sullivan, his blue eyes and easy smile make it hard to say no.

A Barefoot Summer is a beautiful, touching story about coming home, the importance of family, and the special place that first loves hold in our hearts. Sometimes you find perfect where you least expect it. Libby Potter has just lost the perfect job, the perfect apartment and the perfect boyfriend. Moving back to the home town that she couldn’t wait to escape when she was younger was definitely not on her to-do list. Especially as it means running into the man whose heart she broke when she left.

For Sydney Flynn, her treasured family home, Starlight Cottage, is her sanctuary. The house on the beach, surrounded by glittering turquoise waters, is the perfect place for her fresh start, piecing her life back together after it fell apart. That’s until her knees almost buckle at the sight of Nate Henderson. Nate is back to make it up to Sydney, but can she forgive him for all the heartbreak he caused? And it’s not only about her - Sydney is a single mother to Robby, her whole world, and she won’t let just anyone into their lives. Can she trust that Nate has really changed?

Hannah Townsend has the perfect job at a New York magazine, a small but elegant apartment in the Upper West Side, and a successful beau named Miles Monahan. This year, she’s leaving the icy city sludge for sunshine! She’s got tickets for two to Barbados, and she’s meeting Miles at the airport for a week of cocktails, sandy beaches, and the music of steel drums.

About to land her biggest deal yet, Leigh Henderson is on her game. She’s prepared for this, and nothing can get in her way. Except Rebecca Mayer, who’d sashayed in a few weeks ago with a former client list that would fill the entire hallway to Leigh’s office if she laid it out end to end. When her boss unexpectedly offers the deal to Rebecca and tells Leigh he’s letting her go, Leigh finds herself without a job.

After the loss of her fiancé a year ago, event planner Lauren Sutton can’t seem to go on with her choice of career or the life she’d built with her fiancé any longer. Floundering emotionally, she makes a snap decision to sell her half of the business and spend the summer among the sand dunes and changing tides of the Outer Banks, taking care of an old inn in Rodanthe, North Carolina, with its elderly owner Mary Everett.

Christmas is a time for family... isn't it? Allie Richfield loves Christmas, so when she lands a job as House Manager for the amazing Ashford Estate - which includes organizing the Marley family festivities - she is in her element. With a budget bigger than her life savings and a team of staff, how hard can it be? As one-by-one she meets the Marleys, she’s about to find out... Allie’s new boss, Robert, might be gorgeous, but he’s also colder than the snow outside and refuses to come home for Christmas.

Holly McAdams loves spending the Christmas holidays at her family’s cozy cabin, with its little red door and twinkling lights, tucked in the snowy hills outside Nashville. But this year will be different. Someone unexpected is joining them. After Holly and her beloved Nana struggle through a snowstorm to reach the cabin, they discover gorgeous and wealthy Joseph Barnes, who has been renting the cabin for the last few weeks, is now snowed in. And it looks like he’ll be staying for the holidays.

Elizabeth Holloway's sparkling world comes crashing down around her when her boyfriend of seven years drops the bomb that he’s leaving her—at Christmas. In an attempt to piece her life back together, she suddenly finds herself 700 miles from her New York City home, trudging through the snow, back at her childhood farm in the Great Smoky Mountains.

When Mia Broadhurst’s grandmother passes away, Mia returns to the quaint seaside village of Winstead Cape, where Grandma Ruth ran the historic lighthouse on the edge of the coast. Mia can’t bear to part with the last piece of her grandma - the lighthouse that has been in their family for generations - but with her life back in New York, she has no choice. With the snow falling, Mia works with real estate agent Will Thacker to restore the old lighthouse. She tries not to get lost in his deep blue eyes that match the Atlantic Ocean. After all, she’s only back for Christmas.

White Oaks Inn has always been at the heart of Christmas celebrations for Scarlett Bailey and her family. Her adored gran has owned the rambling, old-fashioned hotel, filled with the scent of cinnamon and chocolate, since Scarlett was a little girl. But now her gran’s home is under threat. And it looks like it could be the Baileys’ last Christmas together there....

Abbie Fox hasn’t seen her father or two younger sisters in almost two years, during which she’s jetted around the world and experienced life, if not love. But now Lily, the baby of the family, is sending Abbie urgent emails begging her to return home to Nantucket. Their middle sister, Emma, has taken to her bed, emotionally devastated after the loss of her high-powered stockbroker’s job and a shockingly unexpected break-up with her fiancé.

In the wake of a broken engagement and the death of her last surviving family member, romance novelist Maya Reynolds moves to the haven of Coral Cove, North Carolina, to take over her great-aunt’s toy store. Some of her grief is immediately eased when she is talked into adopting a kitten by the local veterinarian’s daughter, eight-year-old Ashlyn.

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future. That was half a lifetime ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband, George, is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone.

In the small seaside town of Palmetto Beach, the Sheffield sisters – responsibly Riley, vivacious Maisy, and fun-loving Adalee – reunite to celebrate their mother’s birthday and try to save the family bookstore, which has long been a beloved gathering place in their tight-knit community. But June also marks the return of Mack Logan, who 13 years ago was Riley’s best friend and Maisy’s teenage crush.

Caretta Rutledge thought she’d left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother – coming just as her own life is spinning out of control – has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide “turtle lady” and renews old acquaintances long thought lost.

It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward's husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news - Cal's family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal's reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt. Charting the course of an uncertain life - and feeling guilt from her husband's tragic death - Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cal's unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of the ancestral Heyward home on the Bluff.

In the wake of his wife's murder, agent Grady Shields turned his back on the FBI - and everything else-to retreat into the vast solitude of Montana, grieve for his lost love, and forget the world. But after years in seclusion, his sister's wedding draws him to St. Dennis, a peaceful town on the Chesapeake Bay. Though he swears he isn't interested in finding love again, Grady can't ignore the mutual sparks that fly when he meets Vanessa Keaton.

After losing two loved ones in a devastating tornado and suffering a head injury, Tara Abbott flees to St. Simons Island, where her disorientation causes the lines between imagination and reality, past and present to blur. There she encounters island residents Julep Burnside, Luella Ward, Sue Beth Manning, and Dell Calhoun - The Glynn Girls - who have been friends since Bible camp, 40 years earlier. When Julep's son Gavin identifies a troubled soul in need of help, can the Glynn Girls guide Tara back to herself?

Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband - between her reality and the woman she wants to be - she doesn’t quite seem to fit into her own life. But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellie’s world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mother’s funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellie’s not sure she can face....

Not long after Isabel "Izzy" Chambers opens up a knitting shop in the sleepy fishing town of Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, a diverse group of women begins congregating each week to form the Seaside Knitters. Izzy raises some eyebrows when she rents the apartment above her shop to Angie Archer, whose reputation for loose behavior and a quick temper has made her unpopular with many locals. But could any of them have wanted her dead? Angie's body is discovered drowned in the harbor, her long red hair tangled like seaweed in a lobster trap.

Best friends Lexi Laney and Clare Hart shared idyllic girlish adventures all over Nantucket Island, spending much of their time at their secret hideaway, Moon Shell Beach, a magical place where they remade the world. In the less innocent world of adults, the estranged soul mates struggle to recapture the feelings of bliss.

Madeline, Avery, and Nikki are strangers to each other, but they have one thing in common. They each wake up one morning to discover their life savings have vanished, along with their trusted financial manager - leaving them with nothing but co-ownership of a ramshackle beachfront house. Throwing their lots in together, they take on the challenge of restoring the historic property. But just as they begin to reinvent themselves and discover the power of friendship, secrets threaten to tear down their trust.

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.

Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.

Together again in the house they grew up in, the Waverley sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy - if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom - or with each other.

Dr. Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina's Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman's life, Olivia realizes who she is - Annie O'Neill, the woman Olivia's husband, Paul, is in love with.

This winter, let four tales of mistletoe magic and the spirit of the season cast a special glow as some of your favorite authors introduce stories of hope, happiness, and holiday hearts.