September 2010, The Last Child, by John Hart, and Summer Shift, by Lynne Kiele Bonasia

As with her first novel, Some Assembly Required (2008), Bonasia has set Summer Shift on her home turf of Cape Cod. The story centers on Mary Hopkins, the owner of a local clam bar, who is still laden with feelings of guilt surrounding her husband’s death in a car accident more than a decade past. Over the course of a single summer, events combine to draw Mary out among the living again, including a second chance at love. Bonasia is not a particularly suspenseful writer—few revelations or the ultimate outcome will surprise the reader—and she juggles one too many subplots. Yet she has a gift for vivid and inventive descriptions and a clear affection for and understanding of her characters, who come across as flesh-and-blood individuals as opposed to typical small-town eccentrics. It’s impossible not to root for Mary, particularly as she copes with a beloved great-aunt’s onset of Alzheimer’s, which Bonasia handles with tenderness and poignancy. --Patty Wetli