Mary Alice Monroe Books in Order

After her husband’s suicide and the exposure of his financial crimes, Manhattan socialite Nora MacKenzie retreats to a rundown Vermont farm she manages to keep. Learning the realities of rural life alongside gentle, guarded farmhand C. W. Walker, she finds strength, hard truths, and a second chance at love.

Born with a severe facial deformity, Charlotte Godowski grows up shunned and controlled by her mother. Radical reconstructive surgery transforms her into glamorous actress Charlotte Godfrey, but when her body begins to reject the implants, she must decide what beauty, love, and survival really mean.

Five women meet each month to talk about books, but the club soon becomes a lifeline. As Eve grieves her husband, Annie faces infertility, Doris confronts betrayal, Gabriella drops her perfect facade, and Midge refuses to conform, their friendship helps each of them rewrite her own story.

Artist Laurel Carrington leaves her controlling fiancé and disapproving father to study with legendary illustrator Maybelle Starr in the Vermont town of Fallingstar. Immersed in wild woods, old legends, and a deepening connection with gardener Dane, she must choose between a safe life and one that feels enchanted.

After the death of their brain‑injured younger sister, three estranged siblings return to their Milwaukee childhood home. Honoring Merry’s last request sends Jilly, Birdie, and Rose on a cross‑country search that forces them to face buried guilt, old rivalries, and the women they have become.

Caretta "Cara" Rutledge returns to her mother Lovie’s battered cottage on the Isle of Palms just as her career and relationships in Chicago fall apart. A summer spent repairing the house, joining the turtle team, and facing old family wounds gives her a chance at forgiveness and a new life.

Burned‑out ER nurse Ella Majors takes a temporary job caring for Marion, a little girl with diabetes, at her father Harris’s coastal birds‑of‑prey sanctuary. As injured raptors heal and take flight, Ella, Marion, and Harris confront grief, fear, and the risks of opening themselves to love.

Sweetgrass plantation has anchored the Blakely family for eight generations, but rising taxes and relentless development now threaten the land. When estranged son Morgan returns home after his father’s stroke, long‑festering conflicts surface and the family must decide whether to sell or fight for their Lowcountry heritage.

The Blakely family has been shaped by an old tragedy that no one talks about and by years of quiet distance. When estranged son Morgan returns to help care for his failing father, matriarch Mary June finally reveals the heartbreaking secret she has carried, forcing everyone to reconsider love, loyalty, and the land they share.

Five years after Lovie’s death, single mother Toy Sooner is honoring her mentor’s legacy on the Isle of Palms. Balancing work at the aquarium, a fragile new romance, and raising her daughter, she throws herself into opening a turtle hospital and discovers how healing nature can be.

Told as a scrapbook a mother creates for her daughter, this picture book follows a summer spent helping protect loggerhead sea turtle nests. Photographs and simple text introduce young readers to turtle tracks, hatchlings, shorebirds, and the rhythms of a South Carolina beach.

Recovering from breast cancer and her husband’s infidelity, Mia Landan retreats to a rundown fishing cabin in the North Carolina mountains. There she discovers the journal of legendary fly fisher Kate Watkins and, through casting lines and uncovering old secrets, begins to rebuild a life she wants.

When shrimp boat captain Bud Morrison goes missing at sea during a storm, his wife Carolina relives three decades of marriage in a single harrowing day. As the tight shrimping community rallies to search, she confronts the choices, betrayals, and enduring love that shaped their lives.

Every autumn, monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles to Mexico. When Luz Avila’s beloved grandmother dies, Luz honors her wish by driving from Milwaukee to their ancestral village with her ashes, following the butterflies’ route and meeting women along the way who change her understanding of family and forgiveness.

Set in 1974, this prequel follows Olivia "Lovie" Rutledge as she escapes her rigid Charleston life each summer at Primrose Cottage. While she tends sea turtle nests and works with a visiting biologist, she is forced to choose between duty, passion, and the future she wants for her children.

In this photographic picture book, a young girl and her mother find a strange caterpillar in the garden and decide to raise it. Watching it form a chrysalis and emerge as a monarch butterfly, the girl learns about metamorphosis, responsibility, and the bittersweet joy of letting go.

Single mother Faye O’Neill moves to London for a fresh start and rents a charming yet unsettling flat in a Victorian house. Strange lights in her children’s room, a reclusive neighbor who believes she is Wendy from Peter Pan, and an intriguing professor downstairs pull Faye toward a quietly magical new life.

Eighty‑year‑old Marietta "Mamaw" Muir invites her three estranged granddaughters to spend one last summer at Sea Breeze, her beach house on Sullivan’s Island. As free spirit Carson, practical Dora, and guarded Harper reunite, an injured dolphin, old resentments, and buried secrets push them toward a fragile new sisterhood.

Back at Sea Breeze for another season, Dora must face a painful divorce, her son’s autism diagnosis, and a frightening health scare. With Mamaw, Lucille, and her sisters at her side, she begins to imagine a different future while dolphin research and island life mirror her own search for renewal.

As summer draws to a close, Sea Breeze must be sold and each of the Muir sisters has to choose a path forward. Youngest sister Harper, long the peacemaker, discovers her own voice and desires even as family traditions, romance, and financial realities pull her in conflicting directions.

Ten year old Miller McClellan thinks this will be the worst Christmas ever. Money is tight, his father’s shrimp boat is idle, and his older brother comes home from war with invisible wounds and a service dog named Thor. A Christmas Eve crisis in the woods pushes the fractured family toward healing.

Wedding season in the Charleston Lowcountry finds Carson, Dora, and Harper planning celebrations that reflect their very different dreams. When a stranger arrives with a long‑hidden family secret, swirling scandals and doubts threaten the ceremonies, forcing each bride to decide what commitment really means.

When Cara Rutledge reluctantly rents out Primrose Cottage to a shy young artist hired to paint shorebirds, both women expect a simple business arrangement. A season of storms, grief, and unexpected friendship on the Isle of Palms instead reshapes their futures and deepens their ties to the coast.

Newly widowed and an adoptive mother, Cara returns to the beach house to start over. Sharing the cottage with her niece Linnea, she must confront old grief, family expectations, and the changing island landscape while three generations of Rutledges gather for a summer that could break old patterns.

This anthology gathers fifty pieces from South Carolina high school juniors and seniors responding to the question of how to improve their state. Poems, stories, and essays offer candid views of school, family, and community life, introduced by a foreword from Mary Alice Monroe as contest judge.

When a powerful hurricane aims for Florida and South Carolina, a diverse group of evacuees takes refuge at a horse farm in the North Carolina mountains. Over one tense week, old loyalties, fragile romances, and hidden fears collide as they discover what matters most once the storm passes.

As Cara prepares for a second wedding and Linnea comes home to restart her life, the Rutledge family faces new beginnings and fresh worries on the Isle of Palms. A serious illness and a risky building project test their bonds while another turtle season reminds them what truly endures.

Eleven year old Jake is sent to tiny, car‑free Dewees Island to stay with his grandmother while his dad recovers from war injuries. Cut off from Wi‑Fi and his friends, he reluctantly teams up with Macon and Lovie on the Island Turtle Team and finds adventure, purpose, and true friendship.

In spring 2020, Linnea Rutledge is furloughed from her beloved aquarium job and sheltering at the beach house as the world shuts down. With an old boyfriend quarantining next door and her current partner stuck overseas, she tries to protect her family and heart while sea turtle season quietly continues.

Back on Dewees Island for another summer, Jake is thrilled that his recovering father will be there too. When he learns his dad once hid a box of treasures in a tree fort, Jake enlists Macon and Lovie for a treasure hunt that tests their courage, loyalty, and problem solving.

In 1908, headstrong Eliza Rivers grows up roaming Mayfield, her family’s vast Lowcountry estate, riding Marsh Tacky horses and defying expectations as war and storms reshape the South. Eighty years later, now eighty‑eight, she fights to protect the land she loves from development by telling its true story to the next generation.