Nantucket

About the Nantucket series

Four of Elin Hilderbrand's standalone-in-plot novels -- spanning sixteen years of her career -- are linked by the recurring figure of Ed Kapenash, Nantucket's police chief, who investigates a death or disappearance at the center of each book. A Summer Affair (2008) centers on a charity-gala affair that spins out of control; The Castaways (2009) follows a tight circle of island couples after one pair drowns in a sailing accident Kapenash can't quite close the book on; The Perfect Couple (2018) turns a Nantucket wedding into a death investigation and was adapted into the 2024 Netflix series of the same name; and Swan Song (2024) -- billed by Hilderbrand as her final Nantucket novel -- brings Kapenash back for one last case, a mansion fire and a missing concierge, on the eve of his retirement.

Unlike Winter Street or Paradise, these four books don't form one continuous plot -- each has its own self-contained mystery and cast -- but Kapenash's recurring presence, plus cameos and callbacks between them (Swan Song in particular gathers characters from across Hilderbrand's earlier Nantucket novels), gives them a shared thread that reading in order pays off, even though none of the four requires having read the others.