"It used to be that Belly counted the days until summer, until she was back at Cousins Beach with Conrad and Jeremiah. But not this year. Not after Susannah got sick again and Conrad stopped caring. Everything that was right and good has fallen apart, leaving Belly wishing summer would never come. But when Jeremiah calls saying Conrad has disappeared, Belly knows what she must do to make things right again. And it can only happen back at the beach...

"Every August, four women would gather together to spend a week at the beach, renting a new house each year. The ritual began when they were in their twenties and their husbands were in medical school, and became a mainstay of every summer thereafter. Their only criteria was oceanfront and isolation, their only desire to strengthen their far-flung friendships. They called themselves the Girls of August. But when one of the Girls dies tragically, the...

Nine stories set in the universe of the best-selling author's previous romance novels includes a visit with friends of Mallory Blessing three years after her death and Margot Carmichael encouraging her husband to reunite with his ex.

As her friends in the Critter Club animal shelter care for colorful aquarium fish, second-grader Liz and her family spend a long weekend at the beach, where Liz rescues a baby octopus and competes with an unfriendly young neighbor in a sand castle contest.

Lulu, who likes to wear a ladybug costume, goes to the beach for the first time and makes sand castles, flies kites, and deals with her fear of the ocean.

When Katie Woo and her friends go to the beach, Katie is so rude and bossy that her friends do not want to play with her.

Four crocodile friends have many adventures on the way to the beach.

Women, men, boys, and girls spend a day at the beach enjoying a variety of activities on the sand and in the water.

Seven-year-old Lulu and her cousin think their vacation house is the most perfect place ever until they find a trouble-prone, stray dog living on the beach.

Daddy Mouse is so tired from keeping track of his seven little mice at the beach that he fails to notice the tide coming in where he is taking a nap.