The Summer Wives

(Morrow, $27) Beatriz Williams has crafted “perhaps her most evocative and stirring novel yet,” said in Entertainment Weekly. A writer of historical romances, skilled at exploring the inner lives of women from the 20th century, Williams sets her latest on fictional Winthrop Island, a tony New England vacation spot. There, in 1951, 18-yearold outsider Miranda Schuyler arrives just as her widowed mother is about to marry into the island’s elite. Miranda falls for a working-class local who’s soon entangled in a fatal tragedy. By the time she finally returns in 1969 as a renowned actress, her old flame is an escapee from prison, and Miranda decides she must help clear his name. Some of the book’s romantic scenes tread into florid Bridges of Madison County territory—“a plus or minus, depending on how you felt crossing that bridge,” said in USA Today. But Miranda is “a beautifully crafted character,” and the twists and turns Williams plots for her make for “a satisfying simmer of a read.”