NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Engrossing...entertaining...the perfect book to take to the beach." - Boston Herald Two families, both carried by the Mayflower across stormy seas... both destined to generations of proud leadership, shameful intrigue, and passion for the sandy crest of land that became their heritage... This is the story of the Bigelow and Hilyard clans, from their first years on America's shores, through the fury of her wars and the glory of her triumphs, to our own time when young Geoff Hilyard must fight to save both his marriage to a Bigelow heir and the windswept coast he loves. It is a struggle that will take him deep into the past, to a centuries-old feud that never died..And on a dangerous quest for a priceless relic of American history that has lain hidden in the Cape for over two hundred years.

From the drifting sand dunes and quaint shops of Provincetown to Nantuckets whitewashed verandas and craggy beaches, Cape Cod Stories evokes all the rustic beauty and history of this picturesque area in the words of Americas best writers. With a striking new cover, this popular anthology is the next best thing to a summer on the Cape.

Ask any child to draw a house, and what you will probably get is a symmetrical structure of one and a half stories with a door in the middle and a window on either side - in other words, a "Cape." From the mid-1600s to the 1850s, capes were the standard New England home, providing farmers and fishermen, city dwellers and country folk with houses that were easy to build, economical, and whose low-slung design stood up to the bracing winds that swept in from the ocean. After World War II, these straightforward practical designs were adapted to twentieth-century living. Here is the history of these charming homes, accompanied by detailed and elegant pencil drawings illuminating everything from the wallpapers to the floor plans.

Originally published: [Philadelphia?]: Xlibris, c2002.

Malice and mayhem simmer beneath the surface of one of America's favorite vacation areas. “Youthful alienation and despair dominate the 13 stories in Akashic’s noir volume devoted to Cape Cod. [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side.” —Publishers Weekly “David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.” —The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: William Hastings, Elyssa East, Dana Cameron, Paul Tremblay, Adam Mansbach, Seth Greenland, Lizzie Skurnick, David L. Ulin, Kaylie Jones, Fred G. Leebron, Ben Greenman, Dave Zeltserman, and Jedediah Berry. From the introduction by David L. Ulin: “Here, we see the inverse of the Cape Cod stereotype, with its sailboats and its presidents. Here, we see the flip side of the Kennedys, of all those preppies in docksiders eating steamers, of the whale watchers and bicycles and kites. Here, we see the Cape beneath the surface, the Cape after the summer people have gone home. It doesn’t make the other Cape any less real, but it does suggest a symbiosis, in which our sense of the place can’t help but become more complicated, less about vacation living than something more nuanced and profound . . . "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began. There are lines here, lines that get crossed and lines that never get crossed, the kinds of lines that form the web of noir. Call it what you want—summer and smoke is how I think of it—but that’s the Cape Cod at the center of this book.“

A richly-illustrated history of Cape Cod tourism from its bucolic origins to the present crisis of overdevelopment.

Even before the Pilgrims landed in 1620, Cape Cod and its islands promised paradise to visitors, both native and European. In Paul Schneider's sure hands, the story of this waterland created by glaciers and refined by storms and tides -- and of its varied inhabitants -- becomes an irresistible biography of a place. Cape Cod's Great Beach, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket are romantic stops on Schneider's roughly chronological human and natural history. His book is a lucid and compelling collage of seaside ecology, Indians and colonists, religion and revolution, shipwrecks and hurricanes, whalers and vengeful sperm whales, glorious clipper ships and today's beautiful but threatened beaches. Schneider's superb eye for story and detail illuminates both history and landscape. A wonderful introduction, it will also appeal to the millions of people who already have warm associations with these magical places.

Introduction -- Sixteenth-century England -- Early seventeenth century -- Late seventeenth century -- Characteristics of the Cape Cod house -- Historic homes -- Other Cape Cod towns with historic Cape Cod homes -- Conclusion