THE SUMMER WIVES by Beatriz Williams & SIGNED Giveaway

Just in time for summer reading the new Beatriz Williams’ novel, THE SUMMER WIVES (WilliamMorrow) arrives. Complete with all the drama, prejudice, mistrust, secrets and love you’ve come to expect, THE SUMMER WIVES will be one of your favorite books to take to the beach or pool. May I suggest a nice Cosmopolitan to accompany your cozying up with THE SUMMER WIVES.

It’s the summer of 1951 in Beatriz Williams’ new  novel, THE SUMMER WIVES (WilliamMorrow). Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose estate on Winthrop overlooks its famous lighthouse, Miranda’s catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister—all long legs and world-weary bravado—is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society.

But beneath the Island’s patrician façade, there are really two castes: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic laborers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the grand houses. Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in September he returns to Brown University, where he’s determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph has enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, he and Miranda are caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the Island for nearly two decades.

Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned actress hiding a terrible heartbreak. On its surface, the Island remains the same–determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the once-powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for murder eighteen years earlier. What’s more, Miranda herself is no longer a naive teenager, and she begins an impassioned quest for justice to the man she once loved . . . even if that means laying bare every last one of the secrets that bind the families of Winthrop Island.

THE SUMMER WIVES alternates between two time periods – the 1950s and 1960s – and takes readers inside a tight community among those who belong and who don’t. It’s a scrumptious dessert we know we’ll always find in a Beatriz Williams’ novel.

*****

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times bestselling author of A Hundred Summers, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, Along the Infinite Sea, A Certain Age, and several other works of historical fiction. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before she turned her attention to writing novels that combine her passion for history with an obsessive devotion to voice and characterization. Beatriz’s books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in bestseller lists around the world.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives near the Connecticut shore with her husband and four children, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

http://www.beatrizwilliams.com

Thanks to Beatriz and William Morrow, we have one signed copy of THE SUMMER WIVES to giveaway. Just tell us what you’re looking forward to doing this summer. We’ll announce a winner soon. Good luck.