This was my first Williams novel about the sprawling Schuyler clan but it won't be my last. The author tracks the same characters through her loosely connected novels, which provides an interesting layer of interest but doesn't require the reader to read them in order. In this novel, Williams hones in on Pepper Schuyler, the spunky iconoclast who delights in rocking the boat and doesn't mind making her own path, which is how she ends up holed up in Palm Beach, restoring a very fancy, very expensive vintage Mercedes. The car brings another strong woman into her life: the mysterious Annabelle, who pays a fortune for the car because it's the one that carried her family to safety when they fled Nazi Germany thirty years prior. The sale is just the beginning of their relationship, and as the story unfolds we find out just what happened to Annabelle during WWII, and how Pepper is going to extricate herself from her own current mess.

I'm a fan of Beatriz Williams. From the publisher: "Full of the glamour, wit and delicious twists that are the hallmarks of Beatriz Williams’ fiction and alternating between Sophie’s spirited voice and Theresa’s vibrant timbre, A Certain Age is a beguiling reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set against the sweeping decadence of Gatsby’s New York."

I'm in the middle of this one. (The promo videos William recorded in Manhattan are SO FUN.) This is a great price on a newer release. From the publisher: "New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams recreates the New York City of A Certain Age in this deliciously spicy adventure that mixes past and present and centers on a Jazz Age love triangle involving a rugged Prohibition agent, a saucy redheaded flapper, and a debonair Princetonian from a wealthy family."

From the publisher: "As the 1938 hurricane approaches Rhode Island, another storm brews in this New York Times bestseller from the author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and Along the Infinite Sea. Lily Dane has returned to Seaview, Rhode Island, where her family has summered for generations. It's an escape not only from New York's social scene but from a heartbreak that still haunts her. Here, among the seaside community that has embraced her since childhood, she finds comfort in the familiar rituals of summer. But this summer is different. Budgie and Nick Greenwald—Lily's former best friend and former fiancé—have arrived, too, and Seaview's elite are abuzz. Under Budgie's glamorous influence, Lily is seduced into a complicated web of renewed friendship and dangerous longing as a cataclysmic hurricane churns north through the Atlantic."

From the publisher: "The New York Times bestselling author transports readers to lush, lawless Prohibition-era Florida in this rich historical novel—an intricate blend of suspense, betrayal, and redemption set among the rum runners and scoundrels of a paradise far from home."

A new historical novel with a vintage vibe from the author of A Hundred Summers. There are two kinds of people on Long Island Sound’s Winthrop Island: the summer residents with their patrician ways and old money, and the working class populated by domestic workers and Portugese fishermen. In the the summer of 1951, society girl Miranda Schuyler created a stir when she crossed the divide and got involved with the lighthouse keeper’s son. Too many of the island’s secrets came to light in the process, and the summer ended in tragedy. Twenty years later, Miranda, now a successful Shakespearean actress, finally returns to the island to right this old injustice. A story of islands both real and metaphorical, exiles, and one woman’s search for atonement.

Book of the Month called this: "Lifestyles of the rich and famous—during WWII." If you're a fan of Susan Meissner, she praises Beatriz Williams, saying, "I adore a story that brims with deliciously delivered and sensory-rich settings like those in this book—the Bahamas, Germany, England, and Scotland. Plus, the little known details of Wallis Simpson and her abdicated king—whom fans of The Crown will remember—thoroughly intrigued me. This novel contains all the ingredients for a fascinating work of historical fiction, and it's penned by a gifted wordsmith. A tale of wartime courage, espionage, dashed dreams, renewed hopes, and the tightest bonds of love. My kind of read!"

I'm a fan of Beatriz Williams. And Elin Hilderbrand says she thinks Williams is writing "the best historical fiction out there. It's lush with period detail but feels immediate." High praise. From the publisher: "In 1947, photographer and war correspondent Janey Everett arrives at a remote surfing village on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to research a planned biography of forgotten aviation pioneer Sam Mallory, who joined the loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War and never returned. Obsessed with Sam's fate, Janey has tracked down Irene Lindquist, the owner of a local island-hopping airline, whom she believes might actually be the legendary Irene Foster, Mallory’s onetime student and flying partner. Foster’s disappearance during a round-the-world flight in 1937 remains one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries. At first, the flinty Mrs. Lindquist denies any connection to Foster. But Janey informs her that the wreck of Sam Mallory’s airplane has recently been discovered in a Spanish desert, and piece by piece, the details of Foster’s extraordinary life emerge."

From the publisher: "The heiress . . . The Resistance fighter . . . The widow . . . Three women whose fates are joined by one splendid hotel. France, 1914. As war breaks out, Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. France, 1942. Raised by her indomitable, free-spirited American grandmother in the glamorous Hotel Ritz, Marguerite 'Daisy' Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator, after France falls to Hitler. France, 1964. For Barbara Babs' Langford, her husband, Kit, was the love of her life. Yet their marriage was haunted by a mysterious woman known only as La Fleur. Curious to know more, Babs joins Drew, an American lawyer hired to find a Resistance fighter turned traitor known as 'La Fleur' in his search, a journey of discovery that that takes them to Paris and the Ritz—and to unexpected places of the heart. . . ."

From the publisher: "Amiens, France, 1916: Captain Julian Ashford, a British officer in the trenches of the Western Front, is waylaid in the town square by Kate, a beautiful young American. Julian’s never seen her before, but she has information about the reconnaissance mission he’s about to embark on. Who is she? And why did she track him down in Amiens? New York, 2007: A young Wall Street analyst, Kate Wilson learned to rely on logic and cynicism. So why does she fall so desperately in love with Julian Laurence, a billionaire with a mysterious past? What she doesn’t know is that he has been waiting for her...the enchanting woman who emerged from the shadows of the Great War to save his life."

Inspired by the British spy ring the Cambridge Five, our story begins with the inexplicable disappearance of Iris, her American diplomat husband, and their two children from their London home in 1948. No one knows why: did Soviet agents take them out or did they in fact defect to Russia? Four years later, Iris contacts her estranged twin sister Ruth, asking for help. To her credit, Ruth heads to Moscow, posing as the wife of a counterintelligence agent in order to hopefully smuggle Iris and her family out of the country. But the truth is more complicated than Ruth knows—and it might just pit sister against sister in this gripping espionage tale.

From the publisher: "A novel of money and secrets set among the famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to the present day. 2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America’s most lavish historic houses. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia “Lucky” Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion’s ruined boathouse. 1958: Lucia “Lucky” Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother—the American-born Princess di Conti—fled Mussolini’s Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn’t seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion’s old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth...and change everything she thought she knew about her past."

From the publisher: "A captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century—two deep in the past, one in the present—to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania."