Category: Local Favorites

In The Salt When her mother’s life ends in a mysterious accident, Maggie Atwood must face the legacy of alcoholism and lies that she fled from years before. From the safety of her new life in New Orleans with the man of her dreams, she reluctantly makes her way back to the town where it all began and the past she’s tried to forget. It’s been over two years since Maggie stepped foot in Haven, a small seaside town on the Massachusetts shoreline, and even longer since she spoke to her mother. The charismatic and troubled Vivian, serial wife and drinker, was a tough woman to love, though everyone did, and now she was dead. Maggie knows that she cannot move forward without diving backwards into the chaos and characters that defined her youth. Upholding a generations long tradition of self-medicating, Maggie navigates her way through thinly suppressed rage and childhood fears in an attempt to figure out what finally really happened to her mother. Swaddled in a haze of Valium and sarcasm, she begins to suspect that her mother’s death was not an accident. Determined to understand the motivation behind a lifetime of drunken deception, Maggie delves into the long-buried secrets of her eccentric, wealthy family. What she finds is the heartbreaking truth behind her mother’s infectious pain, and with it finally, peace. In The Salt is a novel that seeps into your skin and your bones like a cold New England day. Vivid in detail, imagery and emotion, Maggie’s journey from anger to acceptance is one that anyone with an unconventional family can relate to. Is there any other kind?

The Rooster Who Loved the Violin is a children’s story brought to life by the collaboration of two artists with a flair for the fantastic.

Inspired by Key West’s colorful history and its female lighthouse keepers in the 19th century, and written by local author and journalist, Joanna Brady.

One afternoon in 1839, Emily Lowry’s husband vanishes from Wreckers’ Cay, an isolated island off the coast of Key West where he tends to the lighthouse. As days stretch into months, Emily has no choice but take charge of Wrecker’s Cay and her husband’s duties tending the light to support her three children and a fourth on the way. Unexpected help arrives when a runaway slave named Andrew washes up on their beach. At first, Emily is intensely wary of this strange, charming man, whose very presence there is highly illegal. But Andrew proves himself an enormous help and soon wins the hearts of the Lowry family. And far from the outside world and society’s rules his place in Emily’s life, as steadfast now as the light, will forever change their futures. When Emily’s family is ripped apart once again, she faces untold hardships that test her love and determination and show how the passionate love of a defiant, determined woman can overcome any obstacle.