Patti Callahan Henry books in order

Like most mothers, Amy Reynolds has anticipated the moment when her son brings home his first serious girlfriend. But she’s shocked to meet the girl’s father. Nick Lowry was the college boyfriend who captivated her heart and soul and then, without a word of explanation or warning, disappeared. She still wonders what took him away from her.

Amy’s marriage is satisfying, her teenage children thriving. She loves her beautifully restored home and her work teaching at the local college. She has long since buried her memories of Nick. But now that he is back in her life, she can’t help recalling the beach where they pledged their destinies together twenty years ago. 

She can’t help missing the young woman she was then, full of passion and promise. And she can’t help being tempted by the life she might have lived...might still live—even though making that choice would betray all she holds dear.

Meridy Dresden was once a free-spirited, fun-loving girl. All that changed when the boy she loved was killed in a tragic fire. Since then, she alone has carried the burden of a terrible secret. Now, years later, married to a wonderful man and mother of a teenage son, she is shocked to learn that a childhood friend is being blamed for that long-ago fire. 

Fearful but determined, Meridy returns to the South Carolina Lowcountry and summons the courage to make a decision that may destroy her well-ordered life, her family’s reputation, her contented marriage, and everything she’s worked so hard to protect…including her heart.

Twenty-seven-year-old Kara Larson is bogged down in the stress of planning her elaborate wedding to a professional golfer. Still, to fulfill the requirements of the Palmetto Pointe Junior Society, she makes time in her busy schedule to visit an elderly woman at a nursing home facility. 

Soon she finds herself mesmerized by the singsong Irish lilt of ninety-six-year-old Maeve Mahoney as Maeve recounts the rambling story of her first love back in Ireland. Or, Kara begins to wonder, is she really retelling an ancient tale of myth and legend? 

Waiting for the story to unfold in bits and pieces, and trying to discern the underlying truth, Kara is drawn in—and driven to remember her own first love: childhood neighbor Jack Sullivan. Gradually she realizes that before she embarks on her new life, she must find out how her own story—with Jack—will end.

Nine months after her father's death, Catherine Leary still hasn't fulfilled his last wish: that she scatter his ashes in the Seaboro River in South Carolina. The scene of a childhood tragedy that forced her family to move, Seaboro is the last place Catherine wants to see again. But on the evening of her thirtieth birthday, her father’s young colleague—whom she once dated—pays a visit...

Hoping to stop Forrest Anderson from exposing her family's secrets, she travels to her once-beloved Lowcountry town and embarks on a poignant trip into the past...a journey that might lead her into a new life of love, forgiveness, and self-discovery.

Since a solo plane crash killed her husband two years ago, Annabelle Murphy has found solace in raising her two children. Just when she thinks the grief is behind her, she receives the news that the wreckage of the plane has been discovered—and that her husband did not die alone. He was with another woman. Suddenly Annabelle is forced to question everything she once held true.

Sofie Milstead knows the woman who was on that plane. A dolphin researcher who has lived a quiet life, Sofie has never let anyone get too close. But when Annabelle shows up on Sofie’s doorstep full of painful questions, both women must confront their intertwining pasts—and find the courage they need to face the truth...

In the small seaside town of Palmetto Beach, the Sheffield sisters—responsible Riley, vivacious Maisy-Rose, and fun-loving Adelee—reunite to save the family's beach-community bookstore. But summer also marks the return of Mack Logan, whose choice of Maisy over Riley years ago destroyed the special closeness between the sisters...

Now Riley, a single mom, is hiding a shattering secret about their mother. Maisy, a California designer, still blames Riley for ruining her one true love. And Adalee resents the family's intrusion into her summer plans. All three will be forced to confront the conflicts that tore them apart and the bounds of love and loyalty that still draw them together...

Can one song change the course of a life?

Brothers Jimmy and Jack Sullivan live a nomadic life doing what they love: touring with their band, The Unknown Souls. But Jack’s recent engagement to Kara has everyone looking forward to a Christmas destination wedding in Ireland.

Unlike his brother, Jimmy never expected to fall in love. But he feels a sense of peace and happiness whenever he’s around Kara’s best friend, Charlotte—which has him wondering what he’s missing. Over Thanksgiving, Jimmy and Charlotte write a song while sitting together on the back porch. 

When the band sings it at a Christmas concert the next night, Jimmy insists it’s the perfect love song—but a manager for another famous duo is adamant that it’s the perfect Christmas song. Before Jimmy knows what’s happening, he’s on tour with the hottest country band around and suddenly everyone knows his name.

But fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and Jimmy finds himself far away from those he loves—especially Charlotte. Only a Christmas miracle—or two—will be able to lead Jimmy back to Ireland, to his brother, and to love.

On the coast of Alabama, there is a house cloaked in mystery, a place that reveals the truth and changes lives...

Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband – between her reality and the woman she wants to be – she doesn't quite seem to fit into her own life.

But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellie's world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mother's funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellie's not sure she can face, until, in the painful midst of going through her mother's things, she discovers a hidden diary – and a window onto stories buried long ago.

As Ellie and Hutch start speaking for the first time in years, Ellie's closed heart slowly begins to open. Fighting their feelings, they set out together to dig into Lillian's history. Using both the diary and a trip to the Summer House, a mysterious and seductive bayside home, they gamble that they can work together and not fall in love again. But in piecing together a decades-old unrequited-love story, they just might uncover the secrets in their own hearts…

Kate Vaughan is no stranger to tough choices. She’s made them before. Now it’s time to do it again.

Kate has a secret, something tucked away in her past. And she’s getting on with her life. Her business is thriving. She has a strong relationship with her family, and a devoted boyfriend whom she wants to love with all her heart. If Kate had ever made a list, Rowan would fill the imagined boxes of a perfect mate. But she wants more than the perfect-on-paper relationship; she wants a real and imperfect love. That’s why, when Kate discovers the small velvet box hidden in Rowan’s drawer, she panics.

It always happens this way. Just when Kate thinks she can love, just when she believes she can conquer her fear, she’s filled with dread. And she wants more than anything to make this feeling go away. But how? When the mistakes have been made and the running is over, it’s time to face the truth. Kate knows this. She understands that a woman can never undo what can never be undone. Yet for the first time in her life she also knows that she won’t fully love until she confronts those from her past. It’s time to act.

Can she do it? Can she travel to the place where it all began, to the one who shares her secret? Can the lost ever become found?

Eve and Cooper Morrison are Savannah's power couple. They're on every artistic board and deeply involved in the community. She owns and operates a letterpress studio specializing in the handmade; he runs a digital magazine featuring all things southern gentlemen. The perfect juxtaposition of the old and the new, Eve and Cooper are the beautiful people. The lucky ones. And they have the wealth and name that comes from being part of an old Georgia family.

But things may not be as good as they seem.

Eve's sister, Willa, is staying with the family until she gets "back on her feet." Their daughter, Gwen, is all adolescent rebellion. And Cooper thinks Eve works too much. Still, the Morrison marriage is strong. After twenty-one years together, Eve and Cooper know each other. They count on each other. They know what to expect. 

But when Cooper and Willa are involved in a car accident, the questions surrounding the event bring the family close to breaking point. Sifting between the stories―what Cooper says, what Willa remembers, what the evidence indicates―Eve has to find out what really happened. And what she's going to do about it.

Ella's life has been completely upended. She's young, beautiful, and deeply in love--until her husband dies in a tragic sailing accident. Or so she'll have everyone believe. Screenwriter Hunter needs a hit, but crippling writers' block and a serious lack of motivation are getting him nowhere. He's on the lookout for a love story. It doesn't matter who it belongs to.

When Hunter and Ella meet in Watersend, South Carolina, it feels like the perfect match, something close to fate. In Ella, Hunter finds the perfect love story, full of longing and sacrifice. It's the stuff of epic films. In Hunter, Ella finds possibility. It's an opportunity to live out a fantasy--the life she wishes she had. And more real. Besides--what's a little white lie between strangers?

But one lie leads to another, and soon Hunter and Ella find themselves caught in a web of deceit. As they try to untangle their lies and reclaim their lives, they feel something stronger is keeping them together.

The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it... 

Bonny Blankenship’s most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Lainey’s mother disappeared.

Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. 

During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.

Ten years ago, Lena Donohue experienced a wedding-day betrayal so painful that she fled the small town of Watersend, South Carolina, and reinvented herself in New York City. Though now a freelance travel writer, the one place she rarely goes is home—until she learns of her dad’s failing health.

Returning to Watersend means seeing the sister she has avoided for a decade and the brother who runs the family’s Irish pub and has borne the burden of his sisters’ rift. While Alzheimer’s slowly steals their father’s memories, the siblings rush to preserve his life in stories and in photographs. As his secret past brings Lena’s own childhood into focus, it sends her on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.

1939: Fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora evacuate their London home for a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the Aberdeen family in a charming stone cottage, Hazel distracts her young sister with a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own: Whisperwood.

But the unthinkable happens when Flora suddenly vanishes after playing near the banks of the River Thames. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, carrying the guilt into adulthood.

Twenty years later, Hazel is back in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore for a career at Sotheby’s. With a cherished boyfriend and an upcoming Paris getaway, Hazel’s future seems set. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing a picture book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. 

Hazel never told a soul about the storybook world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years? Or is something sinister at play?

Inspired by the title Dorothea Benton Frank planned for her next book—Reunion Beach—these close friends and colleagues channeled their creativity and admiration into stories and poems that celebrate this remarkable woman and her abiding love for the Lowcountry of her native South Carolina—and Charleston—a place of beauty, history, charm, and Gullah magic.

From Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author, a sequel to Summer of ’69.

From Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author, comes a poignant, humorous interview from the hereafter between Pat Conroy and Dorothea Benton Frank.

From Patti Callahan, bestselling author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis and Surviving Savannah, comes The Bridemaids, a story about a girls trip to the South Carolina beach.

From Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author, Mother and Child Reunion, a heartwarming story set under the warm South Carolina sun.

Reunion Beach also features letters, short stories, poems, and essays from:

Mary Norris, New York Times bestselling author and staff writer for The New Yorker

Cassandra King Conroy, bestselling and award-winning author of Tell Me A Story

Nathalie Dupree, James Beard Award–winning cookbook author

Marjory Wentworth, former Poet Laureate of South Carolina

Gervais Hagerty, author of In Polite Company

Jacqueline Bouvier Lee, Peter Frank, Victoria Peluso, and William Frank

Infused with Dorothea Benton Frank’s witty spirit, Reunion Beach is a literary homage and beautiful keepsake that keeps this dearly missed writer’s flame burning bright.