The Seaside Café

For thirty years the Seaside Café has fed the locals and summer visitors of Coates Island, off the coast of North Carolina. Kayana Johnson has come back to help her brother run it, and to lick the wounds left by a marriage that ended badly.

When conversation with two regular customers turns to books, Kayana proposes a summer book club: once a week on the patio, three women and a novel. What starts as a distraction becomes a place where each of them can admit what she actually wants — and where Kayana finds herself drawn to a man she did not plan on.

Rochelle Alers opens The Book Club series with a warm, unhurried story about friendship between women, family obligation, and the second acts available to people who thought they were finished with them.