Amy Hill Hearth

"Sharks are as timid as rabbits." So says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack on a swimmer at the Jersey Shore. It's July 1916, a time when little is known about ocean creatures, and swimming in the sea is a relatively new pastime. Americans up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer's death. Little do they know that this is only...

In 1962, Jackie Hart moves from Boston to Florida, with her family. Wanting something fulfilling to do, she starts a reading club and hosts a local late-night radio show as "Miss Dreamsville." The conservative, segregated town loves Miss Dreamsville, but doesn't know what to make of Jackie. Her book club welcomes everyone - even a black woman, a gay man, and a convict - who found there what had so far eluded them: a place in the world.

"In this sequel to Hearth's debut novel, MISS DREAMSVILLE AND THE COLLIER COUNTY WOMEN'S LITERARY SOCIETY, the characters reunite one year later (late summer 1964) to fight a large development along the tidal river where book club member Robbie-Lee grew up and where his mother, Dolores Simpson, a former stripper turned alligator hunter, still lives in a fishing shack. The developer is Darryl Norwood, ex-husband of narrator Dora Witherspoon, who returns...

Warm, feisty, and intelligent, the Delany sisters speak their mind in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two remarkable women who continued to love, laugh, and embrace life after over a hundred years of living side by side. Their sharp memories show us the post-Reconstruction South and Booker T. Washington, Harlem's Golden Age and Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Bessie breaks barriers to...