Beaches Figure In Two New Books By Local Authors

Two local authors have released two very different books with beach backdrops: a children’s picture book set in the lush tropics of Jamaica and a novel set in Orleans.

Author Rachael M. Colby of Harwich has released her debut picture book for children ages 4 to 8. “Tropical Dreams” (Dressed in Love Press, 2026) celebrates diversity, adventure and unity.

 “I want young readers and their families to see the beauty of harmony in diversity and the interdependence displayed throughout creation,” Colby said in an email interview last week. “Our diverse backgrounds, cultures, and abilities can inform, complement, strengthen, and unite rather than divide us when we work and play together.” Colby, who describes herself as a born-again Christian who has lived on the Cape since 1987, has said she writes to “connect cultures’ questions with Christianity’s answers, inspire faith and motivate.”

The book is illustrated by award-winning artist Katherine Hutchinson-Hayes, the founder of Dressed in Love Press, “a traditional Christian publishing company.” Two of Colby’s granddaughters inspired the book’s cover and inside illustrations. A third is the model for the baby in one illustration.

Colby was born in Jamaica and says her heritage is a mix of British, African and Jewish. The book’s setting is a Jamaica-like tropical island filled with the vibrant colors of coconut palms and tropical birds, leaping fish, waterfalls, small huts with thatched roofs, and stacks of tropical fruit. A quartet plays reggae at the edge of a beach.

Children thrive in this landscape. “Black child, white child, hold hands tight/Romp and run from day’s first light,” Colby writes. The children of differing ethnicities remind readers “that our differences make the world richer and more beautiful.” 

Colby points out that Jamaica’s national motto is “Out of Many, One People,” and the U.S.’s traditional motto is “E Pluribus Unum” or “Out of Many, One.”

 “Remember that and live it,” Colby says.

At the end of the book is a glossary of familiar terms (beach, coconut, sand) and less familiar terms such as “Doctor Bird,” defined as the “national bird of Jamaica” — a type of hummingbird.

 “Tropical Dreams” won a Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference Foundations Award. Colby has contributed to several compilation books on writing and faith, and appears in the book “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Well, That Was Funny.” She has also finished three beach-themed children’s picture books, with one set on Cape Cod. She is writing a nonfiction children’s story based on her in-laws’ accounts of participating in a 1960s Civil Rights march.

Colby will sign copies of “Tropical Dreams” at Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham on Saturday, June 27 from 1 to 3 p.m.

 The prolific author Judy Lannon of Orleans has just released her fourth novel, “Back to the Cape” (Outer Beach Press, 2026), the sequel to “Callahan’s Cottage,” released last year.

 Fans of the earlier novel will be thrilled to catch up with the three lifelong friends in their 30s — Ellenor, Emma and Esme — who were reunited for the first time in five years in “Callahan’s Cottage.” But only a few months after the trio parted ways, the friends are meeting up in the Nauset Heights section of Orleans for a sad reason — Ellenor’s father, Ordelle Snow, has just been found dead on the side of a New Hampshire road.

Or is his death, in fact, a sad occasion? Ordelle, a “legendary figure” in the fishing community, seems to have been detested by everyone who knew him, particularly his four children who view him as a liar and a cheat.

It just so happens that Ordelle owned 12 acres of “prime oceanfront property” overlooking Pochet Inlet in Orleans. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Cape Cod real estate will appreciate that this land is worth a small fortune.

But when the time comes for a reading of the will in the attorney’s office, Ellenor questions the identity of that extra woman, Della Winston, who has joined her and her three brothers — OJ, Red and Delle. Ellenor’s first impression of Della is that “she’s a hot mess. She looks like she’s been in a hurricane.” Not to give too much away, but Della enters the family’s life like a whirling buzz saw.

How will Ellenor deal with Della? And how will friends Emma and Esme deal with the changes in their own lives? And what about the fate of that 12 acres? These are the questions that keep the reader turning pages.

Lannon’s award-winning novels are described as “contemporary women’s fiction.” She knows the Cape well as a full-time Orleans resident since 1974. As in her previous novels, each chapter opens with an apt and often witty quotation that hints at what is to come in the chapter. Lannon is currently writing a novel centered around the villainous character Della.

Lannon will sign copies of “Back to the Cape” on July 8 to 11 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Artists’ Shacks at Saquatucket Harbor in Harwich Port; on July 15 beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Below the Brine Bookshop, also in Harwich Port; on July 18 and 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Drummer Boy Park, Brewster; and on July 30 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Brewster Book Store in Brewster.