The Sea Gate

A broken family, a house of secrets—an entrancing tale of love and courage set during the Second World War. After Rebecca’s mother dies, she must sort through her empty flat and come to terms with her loss. As she goes through her mother’s mail, she finds a handwritten envelope. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. Olivia, her mother’s elderly cousin, needs help to save her beloved home. Rebecca immediately goes to visit Olivia in Cornwall only to find a house full of secrets—treasures in the attic and a mysterious tunnel leading from the cellar to the sea, and Olivia, nowhere to be found. As it turns out, the old woman is stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her house is made habitable again. Rebecca sets to work restoring the home to its former glory, but as she peels back the layers of paint and grime, she uncovers even more buried secrets—secrets from a time when the Second World War was raging, when Olivia was a young woman, and when both romance and danger lurked around every corner... A sweeping and utterly spellbinding tale of a young woman’s courage in the face of war and the lengths to which she’ll go to protect those she loves against the most unexpected of enemies.

'A beautifully written and intriguing story that stayed with me long after I had turned the last page' Santa Montefiore. 'I wanted to live in this story. Jane Johnson writes with such grace and ease' Carol Drinkwater. One house, two women, a lifetime of secrets... Following the death of her mother, Becky begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother's elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home. Becky arrives at Chynalls to find the beautiful old house crumbling into the ground, and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable. Though daunted by the enormity of the task, Becky sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner... The Sea Gate is a sweeping, spellbinding novel about the lives of two very different women, and the secrets that bind them together. 'I was completely swept up in this... Quite magical' Rachel Hore. 'I can't recommend it highly enough' Katie Fforde. 'I so enjoyed this. It's a treat!' Amanda Craig. 'A beautiful, evocative story... This had me in tears' Liz Fenwick.

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Eleven-year-old Remy loves Seagate, the island where her grandmother had a house and where her family spends every summer vacation. But this year’s different. Remy misses her dog, Danish, who recently passed away. The usual Seagate traditions don’t feel the same—and neither does her relationship with her two best friends, Micayla and Bennett. Micayla’s family is moving to Seagate year-round, and she’s spending more time with the year-round kids. Bennett’s doing “boy stuff” with new kid Calvin and his snobby sister Claire. Remy takes comfort in the company of Dog Beach—which is where she hatches her plan to bring her friends closer and recapture the Seagate magic. This start of a new series is filled with summer treats, activities, and the spirit of friendship and invention that are Greenwald’s trademarks. Praise for Welcome to Dog Beach "Remy’s quiet tale of change and growth marks a promising start to a new series." --Kirkus Reviews "Greenwald (My Summer of Pink & Green) gives Remy a candid and relatable voice in this first book in the Seagate Summers series." --Publishers Weekly "Dog devotees and aspiring entrepreneurs will find a friend and mentor in Remy, who adroitly combines her puppy love with a knack for business. She’ll also make a good companion for those self-serious tween readers looking for a little sympathy on the perplexing and often unpleasant road to adolescence." --Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Remy can't wait for another summer on Seagate Island. It's time to bring back her successful dog-sitting business on Dog Beach and see her favorite friends. But instead of sunny days and fun in the sand, the summer is off to a rainy start. Remy and the dogs have cabin fever, and, to make matters worse, her friendship with her longtime pal, Bennett, is starting to feel complicated. What can one twelve-year-old do to create summer magic when the summer doesn't seem to be showing up?

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Today, gated communities abound in our nation. But what was it like living in one 100 years ago? Author Arnold Rosen describes life in New York?s first gated community (the gate was erected in 1898) in his book, SEA GATE REMEMBERED. As the pages turn, this book tours you through the generation?s coming of age in the 1930?s and 40s—the games we played, the stores we shopped, the schools we attended and the somber war years. So much of the many privacies beyond the gate are revealed by the author and ex-Sea Gaters who spent their youthful years beyond the wired fences at the southwestern tip of Brooklyn walled off from Coney Island next door and extending to the rest of North America. Arnold Rosen, author of twenty books on computers and office technology, grew up in Sea Gate where his father owned and operated sideshows and amusement rides beyond the fence in Coney Island. Now professor emeritus at Nassau Community College, Rosen graduated with a BS degree from Ohio State University an an MS degree from Hunter College after serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. The author lived in Sea Gate from 1932 to 1952 and now has come ?full circle" to retire in another gated community—Sun City—Hilton Head, South Carolina.

An enthralling story of secrets and discovering love where you least expect it, in The Tenth Gift the art of embroidery uncannily links two fascinating women of different eras and their equally passionate love stories In an expensive London restaurant, Julia Lovat receives a gift that changes her life. At first glance it is a book of exquisite seventeenth-century embroidery patterns belonging to a woman named Catherine Ann Tregenna. Yet in its margins are the faintest diary entries; they reveal that “Cat” and others were stolen from their Cornish church in 1625 by Muslim pirates and taken on a brutal voyage to Morocco to be auctioned off as slaves. Captivated by this dramatic discovery, Julia sets off to North Africa to determine the authenticity of the book and to uncover more of Cat’s mesmerizing story. There, in the company of a charismatic Moroccan guide, amid the sultry heat, the spice markets, and exotic ruins, Julia will discover secrets long buried. And in Morocco—just as Cat did before her—she will lose her heart. Though they live almost 400 years apart, the stories of these two women converge in an extraordinary and haunting manner that begs the question, is history fated to repeat itself? “The Tenth Gift is wildly yet convincingly romantic—a rare combo . . . both a sensitive portrayal of Muslim culture and a delectable adventure of the heart.”—USA Today