The Beach at Summerly: A Novel

There are few more skilled practitioners of the craft of summer fiction than Beatriz Williams. The New York Times Book Review

A ravishing summer read from New York Times bestseller Beatriz Williams, sweeping readers back to a mid-century New England rich with secrets and Cold War intrigue.

June 1946. As the residents of Winthrop Island prepare for the first summer season after the sacrifice of war, a glamorous new figure moves into the guest cottage at Summerly, the idyllic seaside estate of the wealthy Peabody family. To Emilia Winthrop, daughter of Summerlys year-round caretaker and a descendant of the islands settlers, Olive Rainsford opens a window into a world of shining possibility. While Emilia spent the war years caring for her incapacitated mother, Olive traveled the world, married fascinating men, and involved herself in political causes. Shes also the beloved aunt of the two surviving Peabody sons, Amory and Shep, with whom Emilia has a tangled romantic history.

As the summer wears on, Emilia develops a deep rapport with Olive, who urges her to leave the island for a life of adventure, while romance blossoms with the sturdy and honorable Shep. But the heady promise of Peabody patronage is blown apart by the arrival of Sumner Fox, an FBI agent who demands Emilias help to capture a Soviet agent whos transmitting vital intelligence on the Wests atomic weapon program from somewhere inside the Summerly estate.

April 1954. Eight years later, Summerly is boarded up and Emilia has rebuilt her shattered life as a professor at Wellesley College, when shocking news arrives from Washingtonthe traitor she helped convict is about to be swapped for an American spy imprisoned in the Soviet Union, but with a mysterious condition only Emilia can fulfill. A reluctant Emilia is summoned to CIA headquarters, where shes forced to confront the harrowing consequences of her actions that fateful summer, and a choice that could destroy the Peabody familyand Emilias chance for redemptionall over again.

Grand and gripping...shot through with suspense, romance, and glorious, beach-laden locales. I could not put it down.--Marie Benedict, New York Times bestselling author of The Mitford Affair