Mary Alice Monroe

"The coming of Spring usually means renewal, but for Linnea Rutledge, Spring 2020 threatens stagnation. Linnea faces another layoff, this time from the aquarium she adores. For her - and her family - finances, emotions, and health teeter at the brink. To complicate matters, her new love interest, Gordon, struggles to return to the Isle of Palms from England. Meanwhile, her old flame, John, turns up from California and is quarantining next door. She...

Late August is a beautiful time on the Southern coast -- the peach trees are ripe, the ocean is warm, and the sweet tea is icy. A perfect time to enjoy the rocking chairs on the porch. But beneath the calm surface bubbles a threat: it's also peak hurricane season. When a hurricane threatens the coasts of Florida and South Carolina, an eclectic group of evacuees flees for the farm of their friends Grace and Charles Phillips in North Carolina: the Phillips's...

"Olivia "Lovie" Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage on Isle of Palms with her daughter Cara. Lovie remembers many summers, but especially 1974. Lovie had always done what was expected -- marrying Stratton Rutledge and turning over her fortune and fate to his control. But she refuses to relinquish her family's seaside cottage where she indulges her vocation as a "Turtle Lady", tending the loggerhead sea turtles. This summer, however, is...

The cycle of life of the turtles of the Isle of Palms has special meaning for the turtle ladies who watch over them. Every season brings new life and new challenges as the turtles make their way back to the ocean. Turtle lady Toy Sooner has faced her share of challenges. The single mother left an abusive relationship to raise her young daughter. She's found meaning working at the aquarium, but she's not sure she's ready for the challenge of starting...

Three granddaughters. Three months. One summer house. In this trilogy set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the author captures the complex relationships between three half sisters scattered across the country, and a grandmother determined to help them rediscover their family bonds. Set amid ancient live oaks and palmettos, overlooking the water, historic Sea Breeze is Marietta Muir's ancestral summer home. Her granddaughters once adored vacations...

Nothing could be more enchanting than a summer wedding--or two!--in Charleston's fabled lowcountry. A centuries-old plantation, an avenue of ancient oaks dripping moss, a storied ballroom, a sand dune at sunset. Yet when a stranger arrives, a long held family secret could silence the bells ringing for the Muir sisters. Scandals surface, family bonds are questioned, and promises are broken and renewed.

Four very different women embark on a transformational journey that follows the migrating monarchs across the United States to Mexico. While taking her grandmother's ashes home to Mexico, Luz attracts a collection of lost women, each seeking change in their lives.

Caretta Rutledge thought she'd left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind. But an unusual request from her mother-coming just as her own life is spinning out of control-has Cara heading back to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart in wonderful ways as she repairs the family beach house, becomes a bona fide "turtle lady" and renews old acquaintances long thought lost. But...

Jake has a 'new' boat, but when Jake, Macon, and Lovie, go fishing the engine dies, and they end up shipwrecked on a small, uninhabited island far from Dewees, struggling to survive while hoping for rescue.

Spending the summer with his grandmother on South Carolina's Dewees Island, eleven-year-old Jake finds two friends who are also struggling with family issues and together they try to save a sea turtle nest from predators.