Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with The New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author Beatriz Williams about her new book, When You Loved Me.

Author Bio:

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Husbands and Lovers, The Summer Wives, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, the Wicked City series, and several other works of historical fiction, including five novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. 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 her first novel was published in 2012. 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. Her essays have appeared in magazines such as Real Simple and Southern Living, among others, and she regularly reviews fiction for the New York Times Book Review.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives in southeastern Connecticut with her husband and four mostly-grown children.

About the Book:

A love story steeped in New England legend. A young widow returns to her late father’s New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving new novel from Beatriz Williams.

Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: the property’s mired in debt she can’t repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.

Thirteen summers ago, a teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate, and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy’s best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy’s life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now Ben’s returned to live quietly in the Peabodys’ caretaker lodge, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career. He’s also the last person who saw Lucy’s father alive.

As Lucy reconstructs her father’s troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy’s long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.

A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.

For more information about Beatriz Williams, visit beatrizwilliams.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with New York Times Bestselling author Luanne Rice about her new book, Until Midnight.

Author Bio:

Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine novels, including three YA novels, that have been translated into thirty languages. Until Midnight is her most recent.

Rice’s books often center on love, family, nature, and the sea. The Beautiful Lost deals with teen depression, something Rice experienced herself. She is an advocate for mental health awareness, a participant in McLean Hospital's Deconstructing Stigma: A Change in Thought Can Change a Life

Several of Rice's novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells for Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Beach Girls for a mini-series on Lifetime. Rice contributed a monologue to Motherhood Out Loud, a play that premiered at Hartford Stage Company and was performed Off-Broadway and at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

In 2002, Connecticut College awarded Rice an honorary degree. Her papers are located in the college's Special Collections Library. A profile of Rice appeared in Connecticut College Magazine, Fall 2014.

She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn.

In June 2014, she received the 2014 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement as a literary artist. Christopher Plummer, actor, and Tim Prentice, sculptor, were also celebrated, and Rice was thrilled to share the moment with them.

Rice, an avid environmentalist, is honored to be a creative affiliate of the Safina Center. Visit her links page to find out more about the causes and organizations that offer support and work for a better world.

About the Book:

Until Midnight is the thrilling new novel from the Amazon Charts and New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice (Last Night, The Shadow Box and Last Day). The Reid Brothers are back…

Rhode Island’s picturesque Ocean House is the perfect setting for Kate Woodward and Conor Reid’s fairy-tale wedding weekend. But there may not be a happily ever after.

When an old friend of Conor’s disrupts the rehearsal dinner and reveals a blindsiding secret—a claim that she and Conor share a child—Kate calls off the wedding, thinking things can’t get any worse. Until the next morning, when that same woman is found with her throat slashed.

As investigators close in and suspicions mount, the evidence points to a mystery deeper than anyone imagined. The soundproof boat with telltale signs of something sinister. The mansion on the hill that lures in young girls and doesn’t let them go. A secret society whose members might be more familiar than not. And the truth of the dead woman’s past that draws Kate and Conor into a nightmare.

For more information about Luanne Rice, visit luannerice.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with New York Times Bestselling author Annabel Monaghan about her new book, Dolly All The Time

Author Bio:

Annabel is the New York Times bestselling and Library Reads Hall of Fame author of Dolly All The Time, It’s A Love Story, Summer Romance, Same Time Next Summer and Nora Goes Off Script, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

She is also the author of two novels for young adults, A Girl Named Digit and Double Digit, as well as Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big?, a collection of essays based on her column that appeared on the Huffington Post, The Week and The Rye Record. She has a BA in English from Duke University and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania. She hosts an author series called Friends with Words and spent several years on the novel writing faculty at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Florida and Connecticut with her family. Her novels have been translated into 23 languages.

Book Summary:

A romance about a single mother who’s offered a Pretty Woman-type deal that’s too good to refuse. If they begin by pretending, can they end with something real?

Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn’t solve. Not when her mom left when she was twelve, and not at thirty-nine when she moves with her son back to Wickford, Rhode Island for the summer to keep her dad and brother from losing the family home.

So when she comes across Stewart Wickford—annoyingly handsome scion of the Wickford family—with a flat tire and at the wrong end of a very public, very humiliating breakup, it’s in her nature to help. But Stewart’s proposed arrangement ends up being more than either of them bargained for, because as public dinners and high society benefits turn into sunset boat rides and swinging on the porch, Dolly starts to feel something more than helpful. She’s never relied on anyone besides herself, can she really start now?

For more information about Katherine Center, visit AnnabelMonaghan.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with New York Times Bestselling author Katherine Center about her new book, The Shippers.

Author Bio:

BookPage calls Katherine Center “the reigning queen of comfort reads.” She’s the New York Times bestselling author of over half a dozen books, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, and What You Wish For. Katherine writes laugh-and-cry books about how life knocks us down—and how we get back up. She’s been compared to both Jane Austen and Nora Ephron, and the Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Her books have made countless Best-Of lists, including RealSimple’s Best Books of 2020, Amazon's Top 100 Books of 2019, Goodreads' Best Books of the Year, and many more. Bestselling author Emily Henry calls her summer 2022 book, The Bodyguard, “a shot of pure joy.” The movie adaptation of Katherine’s novel The Lost Husband (starring Josh Duhamel) hit #1 on Netflix, and her novel Happiness for Beginners is now a Netflix original starring Ellie Kemper. Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two kids, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.

Book Summary:

She wants him to help her woo someone else. Genius. Foolproof. Can’t go wrong.

After a lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton vows to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. Armed with pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest). Determined to woo him for closure, she ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, as her wingman. Cooper: who RSVPed no, but showed up anyway. Cooper: who moved to London without a word four years ago. Cooper: who broke her heart.

Shipboard antics abound in this witty, heart-tugging, childhood-friends-to-lovers romance, as JoJo and Cooper team up, fake flirt, slow dance, share a cabin, sing duets, get jealous, answer long-held questions, and finally, at last, discover truths about each other that will change everything.

For more information about Katherine Center, visit katherinecenter.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with New York Times Bestselling author Belle Burden about her new book, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage.

Author Bio:

Belle Burden is an attorney specializing in juvenile immigration cases. Her work has appeared in The New York Times. Belle attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College and received her JD from New York University School of Law. She lives in New York City with her three children.

Follow Belle on Instagram @belleburden

Book Summary:

In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through it all, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice. With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

For more information about Belle Burden, belleburden.com, and for more on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as the New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice has a conversation with nationally bestselling and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce about her new book, Best Boy.

Author Bio:

Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road, a national bestseller, was named one of the best books of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews and an Indie Next pick by the ABA. Her Ocean House Author Series—in partnership with Martin House Books and WCRI—brings world-class authors like Sarah Ferguson, Chris Bohjalian, and Katie Couric to Watch Hill. With fellow authors, Luanne Rice and Amy Scheibe, she created the Deer Mountain Writers’ Retreat in the Catskills.

Deborah writes the quarterly Hey Rhody reading recommendation column. She began as an actress on All My Children and in multiple films, before transitioning to the role of story editor at Miramax Films, developing Emma and early versions of Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time.

Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree and two honorary doctorates, from both Lake Erie College and the University of Rhode Island. With her husband, Chuck, Deborah restored the Avon Theatre, Ocean House Hotel, Deer Mountain Inn, United Theatre, Martin House Books, and numerous Main Street revitalization projects in Rhode Island and the Catskills. She serves on multiple governing and advisory boards.

Book Summary:

A gripping psychological thriller, Best Boy teeters on the knife-edge of memory and identity when the arrival of a shocking letter threatens the carefully constructed life of a woman desperate to outrun her past.

Viveca Stevenson has it all: a handsome and successful husband, an adorable ten-year-old son, and a coastal dream house in Greenwich, Connecticut. She has a solid group of girlfriends and is content with the afterglow of the film career she’s left behind. But when a threatening letter arrives—from a man she does not remember—it cracks open a part of her past she thought was buried for good.

A terrifying chain of events is set in motion, forcing Viveca to confront what happened on a shattering Halloween night in high school when she had a different name, a different face, a different voice. Who is the man contacting her now and was he really the best boy on her most famous film, Misty? Why can’t she remember him—or that night?

A taut psychological thriller, Best Boy explores identity, memory, and the dangerous power of forgetting.

For more information about Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce has a conversation with her New York Times & USA Today bestselling author Marie Benedict about her recent book Daughter of Egypt.

About the Author:

MARIE BENEDICT is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Queens of Crime, The Mitford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in the Room, Lady Clementine, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and with Victoria Christopher Murray, the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian and the Target Book of the Year The First Ladies. All have been translated into multiple languages, and many have been selected for the Barnes & Noble Book Club, Target Book Club, Costco Book Club, Indie Next List, and LibraryReads List. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

Book Summary:

In the 1920s, archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert—daughter of Lord Carnarvon—whose daring spirit and relentless curiosity made the momentous find possible. Though not a trained archaeologist, she nonetheless pursued her passion, determined to leave her mark on the field and be treated as an equal by her male colleagues.

Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt’s lost pharaoh. From her father Thutmose I, she learned how to lead and through her political savvy she rose to guide her kingdom to prosperity. By her side was her trusted adviser and secret lover, Senemut. Though he was a commoner and she royalty, together they formed a partnership that allowed a dynasty to flourish. Though Hatshepsut’s reign was bold and visionary it was also nearly erased from history.

When Evelyn becomes obsessed with finding Hatshepsut’s secret tomb, she risks everything to uncover the truth about her reign. She must also confront the reality of the artifact trade—that despite regulations governing the removal of artifacts from Egypt, colonial antiquity collectors were selling them at alarming rates. Evelyn must rethink her assumptions as she resolves that valued artifacts must be kept in Egypt, their rightful home. But as danger closes in and political tensions rise, she must make an impossible choice: protect her father’s legacy—or forge her own.

Propelled by high adventure and deadly intrigue, Daughter of Egypt is the story of two ambitious women who lived centuries apart. Both were forced to hide who they were during their lifetimes, yet ultimately changed history forever.

For more information about Marie Benedict, visit authormariebenedict.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and her new release, Best Boy, along with information about the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com