While spending a bird-watching summer on Fire Island, the Pye family acquires a small black kitten that can use a typewriter.

Riley and Alice have spent every summer at their parents' modest beach house. And every summer growing up, there was also Paul, a close friend to both girls. Now, after three years away from the island, he's come back. But his return marks a season of change, of unspoken attractions, tragedy, and deep secrets that will launch three friends into an unfamiliar adult world, from which their summer haven can no longer protect them.

"This summer, will three weekends in a Fire Island share house be enough time for Maggie Monroe to fix her life, find love, and make sure she doesn't lose her friends for good? It's been six years since Maggie followed her screenwriting dreams to Los Angeles and forgot to look back. But things in Hollywood didn't go quite to plan. Now, twenty-five and suddenly home in New York, Maggie doesn't know who she's more anxious to see: her ex-boyfriend, Mac,...

"The fire wasn't Marlowe Wexler's fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in love with for years, will never go out with her again. No one dates an accidental arsonist. With her house-sitting career up in flames, it seems the universe owes Marlowe a new summer job, and that's how she ends up at Morning House, a mansion built on an island in the 1920s and abandoned shortly thereafter....

Told in two voices, Jean, a rich girl, and Fritz, an outsider, compete for the affection of handsome newcomer Gil during the summer of 1976 at an exclusive Fire Island enclave, and discover their competition has higher stakes than either can imagine.