Sutton Book Club Books in Order

The Sutton Book Club series blends family drama with a thread of military history, all anchored by a rambling Nantucket property that has served as a haven for veterans for generations. The Suttons themselves are a scattered family with old grudges, and the book club is both a literal group and a symbol of what they might reclaim if they can forgive one another.

The first book, Summer Rose, introduces Rebecca, a talented chef who loses her husband in a car accident during a Maine snowstorm. Devastated and unsure how to support her three children, she closes their restaurant and reluctantly follows her estranged father, Victor Sutton, back to Nantucket. There, she discovers that her mother Esme has gone missing and that the Sutton Book Club, the retreat house Esme once ran for veterans, is in financial trouble.

As Rebecca and Victor search for Esme, they reconnect with The Sutton Book Club's original mission, providing a safe, welcoming place for veterans to read, talk, and be understood. Stories from Victor's father, a World War II vet who founded the club, reveal how deeply books and community shaped the family. Doug, another aging veteran, brings key pieces of the past to light, forcing Rebecca to see her parents as complicated people rather than simple heroes or villains.

Subsequent books like A Trick of Light, A Blink of Time, and Wild Lilies follow different Sutton siblings and cousins as they drift back to the island. Some are drawn by financial necessity, others by failing relationships or careers that never quite took off. In each case, the Sutton Book Club house serves as a crossroads where they are confronted with family stories they would rather avoid and with people, often other veterans or their descendants, who need the kind of understanding the Suttons are uniquely positioned to offer.

Later installments, including Willow in the Wind, Against the Current, Chasing the Horizon, and Starlight at Midnight, explore new eras of the family's history and push the younger generation to decide what the book club should become. Do they modernize and expand, or keep it small and intimate? How do they honor the sacrifices of earlier generations while also building lives that are not defined by war or trauma?

The tone of the series is reflective and hopeful. Winters does not shy away from the realities of grief, estrangement, or the invisible wounds carried home from battle, yet she surrounds those themes with scenes of shared meals, beach walks, and late night conversations in creaky old rooms lined with books. Readers who like island settings with an extra layer of historical depth will find a lot to appreciate in the Sutton Book Club saga.