Lost Island

From a New York Times–bestselling author: An island off the Georgia coast holds the memory of a broken heart and the secrets of a woman’s past.

It’s been years since Lacey Ames last saw Hampton Island, where she grew up amid the sandy marshes with her childhood sweetheart, Giles Severn, and her cousin Elise—and where Elise had stolen the man Lacey loved. Lacey never forgot the hurt and betrayal she once suffered at Giles’s grand family home of Sea Oaks, but a curious and compelling summons from Elise prompts her return.

Once Lacey arrives, she realizes how little has changed. Giles is still the handsome charmer she fell in love with, and Elise is still the wily seductress whose succession of lovers has risked a family scandal. But when a series of anonymous harmless pranks turns threatening, Lacey must finally confront the past—and a decade-old secret from one haunting summer at Sea Oaks.

Born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, Phyllis A. Whitney was a prolific author of award-winning adult and children’s fiction. Her sixty-year writing career and the publication of seventy-six books, which together sold over fifty million copies worldwide, established her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century and earned her the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

Whitney resided in several places, including New Jersey. She traveled to every location mentioned in her books in order to better depict the settings of her stories. She earned the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1988, the Agatha in 1990, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104.