Newport, Rhode Island Books in Order

The Newport, Rhode Island novels follow families who land in one of America’s most storied seaside towns and discover that beautiful views do not protect anyone from grief or complicated choices. Old mansions, elite schools, and the Atlantic itself all play a part.

In The Geometry of Sisters, a widowed English teacher moves her teenage daughter and younger son from the Midwest to Newport so she can take a job at a prestigious academy. They are still reeling from the loss of a father and a missing older sister. As the new school year unfolds, each sibling has to decide whom to trust and how much of their story to reveal, while the mother confronts her own fractured relationship with a sister she left behind.

The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners brings back some of the younger characters and shifts the focus to Pell Davis, a girl who travels from Newport to the Isle of Capri in search of the mother who walked away years earlier. Under Mediterranean sun, among expatriate artists and cliffside paths, Pell and Lyra must work out whether they can be family again and what that would cost.

Read together, the books trace how families can fracture and re‑form across time and distance. Newport’s crashing waves and fogbound streets connect teenagers sneaking out after curfew, mothers keeping painful secrets, and teachers trying to give their students a sense of belonging.

You can start with either title, but beginning with The Geometry of Sisters gives you the deepest sense of how the academy and its students fit together before the story heads overseas in The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners.