Winter Cottage

Lucy Kincaid grew up on the move with a mother who rarely explained anything, least of all who Lucy's father was. When her mother dies, Lucy learns she has inherited a house in Cape Hudson, Virginia, from a woman whose name she has never heard.

She drives up from Nashville expecting a small cottage. What she finds is a grand old estate. Its size is the first sign that her mother's silence hid something far bigger than an awkward family situation.

The house comes with a complication. A man would inherit it if Lucy did not, and he has his own opinion about why she has turned up. Her welcome in Cape Hudson is cool from the start.

The book alternates between Lucy's present and roughly a century of the estate's past, a dual timeline in which the house's history slowly feeds into her own. Both threads head toward the answer Lucy came for: where she comes from, and who her family is.