Julie Courtney Sullivan – författare

A REESE''S BOOK CLUB JULY PICKA deeply satisfying and enjoyable novel about family, secrets, ghosts and homecoming

''Entrancing ... filled with mystery'' Reese Witherspoon, Reese''s Book Club July Picks

''I could not put this book down'' Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful

''Compulsively readable ... funny, heartbreaking'' Oprah DailyOn a secluded cliff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house that contains a century''s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned - yet there are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane, and becomes a hideaway for her, a place to escape her troubled, volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a magazine. Convinced that the house is haunted, Genevieve hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers - of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artefacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism - is even older than Maine itself ...

1947: Mary Frances Gerety, a young copywriter in an eminent advertising agency, has to convince the world of two things - that marriage means a diamond ring on every woman''s finger, and that she is as good at her job as any man. And then, in one moment of brilliant inspiration, Mary Frances writes down four words which will achieve both her aims . . .Moving from a Harvard swim-meet in 1927 to the three-martini lunches of 1940s advertising, from the back streets of 1980s Boston to an exquisite Parisian music shop in 2003, The Engagements is a novel about love, marriage, commitment and betrayal; it is as sharp, as fiery and as beautiful as the stone we have taken to represent our dreams.

Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she''s shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn''t sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.

Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children: John, a successful, if opportunistic, political consultant; Bridget, privately preparing to have a baby with her girlfriend; Brian, at loose ends after a failed baseball career; and Patrick, Nora''s favorite, the beautiful boy who gives her no end of heartache. Estranged from her sister and cut off from the world, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago.

A supremely moving novel, Saints for All Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together.