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The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard

A Novel

Audiobook
0 of 3 copies available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 3 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.

    • Library Journal

      December 6, 2024

      Callahan's (The Night She Won Miss America) latest is a dual-timeline historical mystery set in 1959 and in 2018, when a granddaughter uncovers her late grandmother's secret life as an Oscar-nominated Hollywood actress. The novel begins with a dramatic chase scene in 1959 that will draw in listeners even before they learn about Kit's present-day investigation into her grandmother's past. Kit finds some souvenirs that lead her to Martha's Vineyard, where her grandmother, Mercy, intended to stay for one summer to heal a broken heart but ended up entangled with a handsome man and, unfortunately for her, a wealthy and powerful founding family. Callahan uses remarkably descriptive language to paint the era and place of each of the novel's timelines, while the mystery elements move the plot along. Lisa Flanagan narrates Mercy's sections with incredible pacing, balancing the fast chatter of Hollywood with more dramatic pauses for suspense and tension throughout Mercy's time on the Vineyard. Helen Laser narrates Kit's sections, providing a youthful, deep, sarcastic, and witty tone that's fitting for her character. VERDICT For fans of New England family dramas like those by Ann Patchett and Ethan Joella, and listeners looking for a mystery with a summer setting and plot depth.--Taylor Skorski

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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