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The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard

A Novel

ebook
0 of 4 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 4 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks

"I was completely captivated by Michael Callahan's The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard. It's a history mystery you won't be able to put down, with strong female characters and plenty of secrets. Plus, it takes you behind the scenes in vintage Hollywood and Martha's Vineyard. A perfect beach read!"—Lisa Scottoline, #1 bestselling author of Loyalty and The Truth About the Devlins

A tantalizing novel of two women bound by blood but divided by a long-buried secret, and the island that holds the key to the fateful summer that changed everything forever.

In 1959, Hollywood ingenue Mercy Welles seems to have the world at her feet. Far removed from her Nebraska roots, she has crafted herself into a glamorous Oscar-nominated actress engaged to an up-and-coming director...

Until she shockingly vanishes without a trace, just as her career is taking off.

Almost sixty years later, Kit O'Neill, a junior television producer in Manhattan, is packing up her recently deceased grandmother's attic, only to discover a long-lost box of souvenirs that reveal that the grandmother who raised her and her sister was, in fact, the mysterious Mercy Welles.

Putting her investigative skills to use, Kit is determined to solve the riddle of her grandmother's missing life, and the trail eventually leads to Martha's Vineyard.

Mercy retreats to the island nursing a broken heart, only to be drawn to the roguish Ren Sewards, who is not just the simple oysterman he appears to be but a scion of one of the island's wealthy founding families. With her attraction to Ren quickly growing, Mercy soon finds herself entangled in the intrigues of the tightly knit community and the secrets of the Sewards.

Alternating between Mercy and Kit's timelines, including excerpts from letters Mercy wrote the summer she disappeared, The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard unfurls into a heart-stopping story of love, betrayal, and even murder.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 25, 2024
      A woman learns her late grandmother was once a Hollywood starlet in the intriguing latest from Callahan (Searching for Grace Kelly). Kit O’Neill, a junior news program producer in Manhattan, is going through her recently deceased grandmother Nancy’s belongings when she comes across a playbill for a 1959 production staged on Martha’s Vineyard starring Mercy Welles. While searching on the internet for the actor, Kit is surprised to discover Mercy and Nancy were the same person. Eager to find out why her grandmother abandoned her acting career, Kit travels to Los Angeles and later to Martha’s Vineyard to search for answers. In a parallel narrative set in 1959, Mercy rents a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard to recover from a bad breakup from her Hollywood director boyfriend. While on the island, she agrees to appear in a local production of The Rose of Aquinnah and embarks on a romance with Ren Sewards, a taciturn oysterman. As Ren and Mercy get closer, she seeks answers about his broken relationship with his family and encounters danger when she gets too close to the truth. Callahan skillfully blends notes of mystery and romance in this layered story of family secrets. Readers will have a hard time putting it down. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2024
      A breezy, atmospheric novel dripping with secrets. When their beloved grandma Nan dies, sisters Kit and Claire O'Neill must empty out her house in suburban New York. In the attic (where else?), Kit discovers artifacts revealing their grandmother's hidden life as a young movie star in Hollywood. Kit, now a cable news producer, and Claire were raised by Nan after their parents died. Stunned by what she's uncovered, Kit vows to learn how Nebraska-bred Edith Stoppelmoor became Tinseltown's Mercy Welles...and then left it all behind. The novel shifts back and forth in time, from Mercy's exploits circa 1959 to Kit's sleuthing in 2018 and beyond. An up-and-comer in Hollywood, Mercy already has an Oscar nomination when we meet her. But after she finds out her fiance is two-timing her, she decides to take some time off in Martha's Vineyard, the fabled island off the coast of Massachusetts. There she meets Ren Sewards, an oyster fisherman estranged from his wealthy family. The two fall in love, and Mercy becomes involved in some serious island intrigue that may involve a killing or two. (A key scene takes place on Chappaquiddick, the tiny nearby island where Sen. Ted Kennedy famously drove his car off a bridge, triggering a major scandal.) Meanwhile, Kit is piecing together Mercy's story and ultimately winds up on the Vineyard herself, where she meets an attractive young man who could be connected to the decades-old mysteries. Callahan does a nice job describing the Vineyard and its storied past. While his dialogue is stilted in places, and there are a couple of lapses in logic (would Ren really know that Humphrey Bogart line from Casablanca?), the tight plotting carries you along. While it isn't deep, it's smooth and suspenseful--and hard to stop reading once you've begun.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      April 19, 2024
      While cleaning out her late grandmother's attic, Kit O'Neill discovers a box full of mementos from a late-1950s trip to Martha's Vineyard, including a program for a play. Curious about what these artifacts meant to her grandmother, Kit researches the play's lead, Mercy Welles, and is shocked to find that her grandmother was once an Oscar-nominated actress. As Kit chases down leads, alternating chapters share her grandmother's story: she fled Hollywood for Martha's Vineyard to get away from her cheating fianc�, and her relaxing summer break turned into a working vacation when a local playwright asked her to star in his production. Further complicating her vacation is Ren Sewards, whose gruff, hands-off demeanor hides a wounded soul. Callahan (The Night She Won Miss America, 2017) blends mid-century Hollywood glamour and family secrets in this fast-paced, dual-period novel. He captures the historical era in colorful detail, and both women are determined, appealing characters who struggle with their personal and professional lives. Readers who enjoy Beatriz Williams and Crystal Smith Paul will be enthralled.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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