THE SALTGRASS SISTERS SERIES

• The Lighthouse Season

• The Supper Table

• The Keeper’s Daughter

A complete three-book beach-town women’s fiction series with clean romance — three books fully built, ready to publish back-to-back.

---

Three Marlowe sisters. One summer on a Georgia barrier island. One mother who vanished in late spring with three sealed letters and a note that said she’d come back.

Saltgrass Key sits forty minutes by ferry off the Georgia coast — small enough that everyone knows the shape of everyone else’s daily life, specific enough to feel like a place you’ve been. Marlowe’s Galley: a teal weatherboard building three blocks from the harbor, hand-lettered sign from 1984, closed for two years, one summer stipulation standing between the Marlowe sisters and their mother’s estate.

Junie Marlowe, lighthouse keeper, vanished in late spring. Her attorney has three sealed letters — one per daughter, one per month — and a condition: all three sisters must run the Galley together for one full summer before anything can settle. Junie left in order. She tied her skiff properly. She said she’d come back.

What she left behind: the restaurant, the mystery, and three daughters who are each carrying more than she knows.

This trilogy follows Dell (54), Tess (47), and Sadie (39) through the same summer, each in her own book, each falling in love, each carrying a piece of the secret their mother buried decades before any of them were born. The mystery advances per book and closes completely in Book 3. Every clue pays off. Every sister comes home.

---

The Books

Book 1 — The Lighthouse Season (Dell × Abel)

She’s fifty-four, newly divorced, and back on a Georgia island she thought she’d already said goodbye to. She didn’t plan on the contractor.

Dell Marlowe is the eldest, the manager, the one who holds things together — which means she arrives on Saltgrass Key, assesses the Galley’s condition, organizes the kitchen, and begins running a restaurant she never planned to run with the efficiency of someone who has been doing this her whole life. She does not examine what she wants for herself. She has not done that in a very long time.

Abel Rooke has been restoring old buildings on Saltgrass Key for eight years. He is fifty-six, unhurried, exact, and the first person in Dell’s adult life who brings her coffee without being asked and sits beside her on the kitchen floor when she finds her parents’ anniversary reservation at the back of a filing cabinet — and does not make it a moment. He asks what she wants now. She answers more honestly than she planned.

The mystery begins: the skiff tied properly at the mooring. The first sealed letter that says someone is owed a goodbye. The ledger initials that make the youngest sister go very still.

Dell’s arc: from reliably useful to knowing what she wants.

Later-in-life romance · Fresh start after divorce · Slow burn · Small coastal town · Sisters and found family · Gentle family mystery begins · He’s been there all along

80,000 words · 26 chapters + epilogue · Sweet/Closed Door · Heat-flexible (Dial the Heat™)

One buyer. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

→ [CLAIM THE LIGHTHOUSE SEASON — $250]

---

Book 2 — The Supper Table (Tess × Gideon)

She’s been performing fine for six months. The oyster farmer is the first person it doesn’t work on.

Tess Marlowe is the family’s success story — the sister with the good marriage, the polish, the professional ease that looks effortless to everyone who doesn’t know what it costs. Her marriage to Philip Warfield ended six months ago. She has told no one. She is still wearing the ring.

She manages Marlowe’s Galley’s front of house with the precision of twenty years in hospitality and the specific vigilance of someone keeping a secret in a small room. She performs fine to a level of expertise that has become its own trap.

Gideon Pratt supplies the oysters. He shows up on Thursdays with the delivery count exactly right and without the professional warmth she’s learned to trade in — no compliment, no performance, just a genuine question and two extra minutes that don’t need explaining. He asks her what actually wakes her up at 3am. He waits for the real answer.

Her mother’s sealed letter arrives at mid-summer and says I know about the marriage before it says anything else.

The mystery deepens: the second sealed letter, the excised lighthouse log, the unsigned postmarked card from a mainland town. A mother’s disappearance beginning to look less like abandonment and more like mirror.

And in the dining room on the night of the island council dinner, with the walk-in compressor failed and eighteen covers and her whole summer’s performance about to break — Tess walks to the front of the room and tells the truth. About the food. And then, without planning to, about herself. The room stays. The council table applauds.

This is the book’s commercial peak, and the scene that sells the series to a reader’s friends.

Tess’s arc: from performance to presence.

Hidden divorce reveal · Midlife reinvention · Performing heroine / patient hero · Slow burn · The truth told in public · Small coastal town · Series mystery advances · The ring comes off

80,000 words · 26 chapters + epilogue · Sweet/Closed Door · Heat-flexible (Dial the Heat™)

One buyer. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

→ [CLAIM THE SUPPER TABLE — $250]

---

Book 3 — The Keeper’s Daughter (Sadie × Beck)

She’s been carrying her mother’s secret for twenty-one years. The harbor pilot who watched her leave never asked why. He’s still here.

Sadie Marlowe is thirty-nine years old and has not stayed anywhere longer than eight months since she was eighteen. She is the youngest sister, the family’s best cook, and the only person alive besides her mother who knows what the ledger initials mean — because she found the letters in the lighthouse study at eighteen, confronted Junie, made a promise she should not have made, and left the island rather than carry the secret in the same house as the people who deserved to know it.

She is back for one obligated summer. The season has thirty days left. The last sealed letter has her name on it.

Beck Tanner has been the harbor pilot on Saltgrass Key for thirteen years. He was on the dock the morning Sadie’s ferry left. He did not ask her to stay; he did not ask her why; he built his life here — rooted and real, the most settled person she has ever known — without organizing it around her absence.

This is the book where the secret comes out. Sadie tells Beck first. Then her sisters. Abel traces the postmark town to a mainland hospice. The sisters drive four hours. They find their mother in a garden. Sadie crosses the garden first.

There is one chapter from Junie’s POV in this book — the only time in the trilogy she speaks in her own voice. It is in the hospice. It is brief and specific and warm and it is the chapter that earns the whole series.

Every clue from Books 1 and 2 closes on the page. The mystery resolves as grace, not twist. Every sister comes home.

Sadie’s arc: from carrying to staying.

Long-held secret finally told · Second-chance romance · The one who left and the one who stayed · Series mystery fully resolved · The Junie chapter · She crosses the room first · She stays

80,000 words · 26 chapters + epilogue · Sweet/Closed Door · Heat-flexible (Dial the Heat™)

One buyer. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

→ [CLAIM THE KEEPER’S DAUGHTER — $250]

---

Why this series sells

Later-in-life women’s fiction is one of the fastest-growing positions in indie publishing. The 45–65 reader demographic is the largest growth segment in both women’s fiction and clean romance. She wants a heroine who looks like her — capable, complicated, not done yet. The Saltgrass Trio gives her three: Dell at fifty-four, Tess at forty-seven, Sadie at thirty-nine. Full demographic coverage from 35 to 65 in a single trilogy.

The series mystery is the read-through engine. A missing mother, six planted clues across three books, a fully resolved secret in Book 3, and the knowledge — planted in Book 1 — that the youngest sister knows something the others don’t. The reader who finishes Book 1 cannot stop. The reader who finishes Book 2 cannot stop. The reader who finishes Book 3 tells everyone she knows.

Book 2 is not a middle-book problem. The Supper Table is the series’ commercial peak. The hidden divorce reveal. The patient hero who sees through the performance. The dining room speech — a woman who has been managing everything perfectly tells a room full of people the truth about herself. The room stays. This is the kind of scene that gets screenshotted and shared, that converts a Book 2 sale into a Book 3 pre-order, that turns a reader into a recommender.

The Junie chapter earns the series. One POV chapter from Junie — in the hospice, saying goodbye — is the scene that makes readers recommend the trilogy to everyone they know. It exists only in Book 3. Readers who know it’s there read toward it.

The fair-play mystery closes completely. Six clues planted across three books. Every one pays off on the page in Book 3. Readers who were paying attention get every thread resolved. This is rare in series fiction and generates word-of-mouth that outlasts any individual launch.

The coastal Georgia setting is commercially underserved. Nantucket and the Outer Banks are saturated. Saltgrass Key is specific and fresh — barrier island, Spanish moss, shrimp trawlers, a teal restaurant three blocks from the harbor. Real place energy with no crowding.

The restaurant spine gives every chapter a visual anchor. Marlowe’s Galley is the series’ physical center — it appears on every cover, drives the plot in every book, and gives the marketing team a consistent, immediately visual element for social, ads, and the series page.

---

Tropes

The Lighthouse Season (Book 1) Later-in-Life Romance · Fresh Start After Divorce · She Didn’t Plan to Stay · Slow Burn · Small Coastal Town · Restaurant Setting · Sisters and Found Family · Gentle Family Mystery Begins · He Brings Coffee Without Being Asked · He Sits Beside Her on the Floor

The Supper Table (Book 2) Hidden Divorce Reveal · Midlife Reinvention · Performing Heroine / Patient Hero · Slow Burn · The Truth Told in Public · The Ring Comes Off · Sisters and Found Family · Series Mystery Advances · He Brings Her Things She Didn’t Ask For · She Stops Performing

The Keeper’s Daughter (Book 3) Long-Held Secret Finally Told · Second-Chance Romance · The One Who Left and the One Who Stayed · Series Mystery Fully Resolved · Found Family · The Junie Chapter · She Crosses the Room First · She Stays

Heat level: Sweet / Closed Door · Heat-flexible via Dial the Heat™

Perfect for fans of: Rachel Hanna, Fiona Baker, Debbie Macomber, and Kristy Woodson Harvey