The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel

The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel

by Heather Barbieri
The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel

The Cottage at Glass Beach: A Novel

by Heather Barbieri

eBook

$13.49  $17.99 Save 25% Current price is $13.49, Original price is $17.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

“The Cottage at Glass Beach, an enchanting novel about mothers and daughters on an isolated island, is a romantic, delicious read. Barbieri’s beautiful writing and beguiling world view revel in the realities and the mysteries of the sea and of life itself.” — Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Heat Wave

Heather Barbieri follows her acclaimed Gaelic-tinged drama The Lace Makers of Glenmara with the resonant tale of a woman who, in the wake of scandal, flees to a remote Maine island to reconnect with her past—and to come to terms with the childhood tragedy that has haunted her for a lifetime.

Married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and mother. But her life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm.

Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her young daughters and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides.

Nora has not been back to the remote community for decades—not since the summer her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her friend Polly suggests, a selkie—a mythical being of island legend—summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone else trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles?

Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own—a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062107985
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 11/21/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 403
Sales rank: 204,807
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

About The Author

The author of two previous novels, The Lace Makers of Glenmara and Snow in July, Heather Barbieri has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.

What People are Saying About This

Melissa Parcel

“Threads of magical realism throughout the book are quite appealing, and the seaside setting is enchanting.”

Margot Livesey

“The Lace Makers of Glenmara is richly peopled and beguilingly charming but what ultimately makes it so moving is Heather Barbieri’s deep understanding that no life is immune from sorrow and difficulty. I read this wonderful novel with enormous pleasure.”

Melinda Bargreen

“Where Barbieri shines is in her depiction of the microcosm of the island and in the strong links between the generations. Nora discover that ‘Everything is connected. The geography of the island, of the soul,’ and Barbieri makes that connection real.”

Marisa de los Santos

“Part seaside fairytale, part exploration of real-world tensions....Let yourself be transported to Burke’s Island, a salt-tinged place steeped in legends of selkies and shipwrecks, but also full of bruised and hopeful people making their wayward, human ways toward happiness.”

Sarah Jio

“Heather Barbieri’s The Cottage at Glass Beach is a moving, heartfelt story told with vivid description. Open the book and listen—you’ll hear the waves crashing onto the shore.”

Susan Maguire

“Barbieri does such a wonderful job setting up the beauty and mystery of the island and its rich Gaelic roots that it is not a stretch to ask the reader to imagine that the place is also magical. A wonderful, subtle, transporting story.”

Tara Quinn

“A must read for fans of Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells.”

Joanne Harris

The Lace Makers of Glenmara is a charming, moving story, written with a delicate touch.”

Nancy Thayer

“The Cottage at Glass Beach, an enchanting novel about mothers and daughters on an isolated island, is a romantic, delicious read. Barbieri’s beautiful writing and beguiling world view revel in the realities and the mysteries of the sea and of life itself.”

Nancy Carty Lepri

“Ms. Barbieri’s writerly sense of whimsy and retrospection implies that anyone can work through adversity to happiness - if only the volition is present.”

Karen Campbell

“Barbieri’s deft writing style is charmingly wry yet evocative, with details and descriptions both telling and vivid. . . . . A sweet summertime yarn [that] . . . provides a lovely, leisurely escape to the bucolic charms of the Emerald Isle.”

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews