Reading Ahead: July 2018, part 4

Want a summer read guaranteed to hit you right in the feels? Here are several that fit the bill.

When We Found Home, by Susan Mallery. Callie Smith doesn't love being alone, but at least it's safe. That why, after years of having no family, she finds out she has two siblings: privileged Malcolm and street-wise Keira. Wary but daring to hope anyway, Callie moves into the grand family estate with her siblings and their grandfather. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new, better chapter? But starting over can be complicated, even as the different personalities learn how to be a family, instead of alone.

Every Time You Go Away, by Beth Harbison. After the sudden death of her husband, Ben, Willa never really recovered, sinking into her grief and being an absent mother, at best, to her son Jamie. Years later, she decides it's time to return to the house where Ben died, to part with the house and its past and sell it. The house turns out to be a bigger, and more emotional, project than Willa could have imagined, and family and friends come together to help one another through it. Billed as Harbison's most emotional novel yet.

Cottage by the Sea, by Debbie Macomber. Following personal tragedy, Annie heads back to the one place that made her happy in the past: Oceanside in the Pacific Northwest. Thanks to the people she meets there, Annie begins to heal, to connect with her neighbors and her community, to begin to move forward. Then her tenuous happiness threatens to disappear, and Annie must choose whether or not to risk it all. Also available in Large Print. 

The Good Fight, by Danielle Steel. Growing up the daughter and granddaughter of prominent Manhattan lawyers, Meredith McKenzie is headed for greatness. But she rebels against the traditional trappings her parents want for her. It's the 1960s and they expect her to be a debutante, be a conventional young lady, but instead Meredith becomes deeply involved in the civil rights movement and works to end the war in Vietnam. Set vividly against the events of the time, Meredith becomes part of the vanguard of a new generation of women, determined to break down boundaries. Also available in Large Print.