Seabrookers Are Reading

A Fall of Marigolds
by Susan Meissner
Taryn Michaels specializes in hard-to-find patterns at an Upper West Side fabric shop. She is haunted by her failure to find a match for a scarf covered in bright marigolds, the same scarf she was holding when the Twin Towers fell in 2001. Unbeknownst to Taryn, the scarf began its life in New York on Ellis Island in 1911, when a very recently widowed Welshman carried it into the scarlet fever ward of nurse Clara Wood. Meissner seamlessly weaves a connection between Taryn and Clara, whose broken hearts have left them in an in-between place. (2014; F)

The Life We Bury
by Allen Eskens
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe’s life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran — and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl’s life, especially Carl’s valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. (2014; F)

One Good Thing
by Georgia Hunter
Hunter pens an unforgettable story of hardship and hope, courage and resilience, that follows one young woman’s journey through war-torn Italy. Hunter is also the author of We Were the Lucky Ones, published in 2017. (2025; F)

Memorial Days
by Geraldine Brooks
It was Memorial Day 2019, when Geraldine Brooks received news that her husband, Tony Horwitz, had collapsed and died, far from home, in the middle of his book tour. The complex tasks required in the face of such a sudden death left her no time to properly grieve for him. Three years later, still feeling broken and bereft, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Tasmania. Alone on a rugged stretch of coast, she revisited a thirty-five-year marriage filled with risk, adventure, humor, and love. (2025; NF)

Raising Hare
by Chloe Dalton
A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare. (2025; NF)

Heartwood
by Amity Gaige
In the heart of the Maine woods, forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker, goes missing. She vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental. (2025; F)

Beautiful Ugly
by Alice Feeney
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life. He calls his wife, Abby, to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes when she sees something in the road ahead. Over Grady’s protests, Abby gets out of the car. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver’s door is open, her phone is still there… but his wife has disappeared. A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny, remote Scottish island to try to get his life back. And then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife. (2025; F)

Broken Country
by Clare Leslie Hall
Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager–the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise, and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to choose between the woman she once was and the woman she has become. (2025; F)

The Friend
by Sigrid Nunez
Becoming the guardian of her late best friend’s enormous Great Dane, a grieving woman is evicted from her no-pets apartment and forges a deep bond with the equally distraught animal in ways that initially disturb her friends. (2018; F)

Theo of Golden
by Allen Levi
Questions linger about Theo, a pleasant, mysterious stranger, after he arrives in the southern city of Golden. Who is he, and why is he here? Levi spins a story about the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the far-reaching possibilities of anonymous kindness. (2023; F)

Everything Is Tuberculosis
by John Green
Green intertwines the scientific and social aspects of tuberculosis (TB) with the story of Henry, a young man with TB whom Green met in Sierra Leone, to illustrate the human impact of the disease and the challenges faced by those affected. (2025; NF)