Beautiful Nights

A Novel

By: Nina George

Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells

A respected professor begins a secret affair with her son’s girlfriend one summer on the Brittany coast in this intense, poetic novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop.

Claire is one of Paris’s most esteemed behavioral biologists, with an enviable career and family. But she has become increasingly frustrated by the stasis of her marriage, including her husband’s unremarked-on affairs, and feels caged by the obligations she took on too early in life.

As she and her family prepare for their annual holiday to the Brittany coast, her son, Nico, comes to her with a request: Can his new girlfriend, Julie, join them for the summer? Nico feels certain that this is the next step in merging their lives together, but Julie wonders if this man is really her path or if her passions—for performance, for intimacy, for a bigger life—will jeopardize their future.

What Julie and Claire don’t realize is that they share a secret—they’ve met before, in a compromising moment whose implications color their relationship from the moment it’s revealed. Both Julie and Claire are at a crossroads, each waiting for something that will set her on fire inside—the rush of life, colors, courage. Under the blazing Brittany sun, by the tranquility of the sea and in the raging of a nighttime thunderstorm, they will ignite and never be the same again.

Sensual, provocative, and probing, Nina George’s Beautiful Nights explores femininity in all its facets and stages. It is a story of becoming who you were meant to be by breaking apart the things you’ve always known.

Critic reviews

Praise for Beautiful Nights

“Emotion-evoking . . . George does an excellent job with the setting of this story to amplify the feeling of longing between the women . . . There is a lot of good in this novel; the story of Claire and Julie is a moving one, and one that I think is important to be told as we take steps to change expectations of women and make them simply for a woman to be herself.”—Chicago Review of Books

“George’s fluid and lyrical prose carries the reader along as the story alternates from languid scenes to heavy emotions. It’s a worthy choice for the beach bag.”—Publishers Weekly


Praise for The Little Village of Book Lovers

“[Nina] George brings to fruition the previously fictitious novel that inspired Monsieur Perdu’s floating bookshop in her bestselling The Little Paris Bookshop. . . . George’s moving, magical relationship novel is full of pain and promise.”—Library Journal, starred review

“An elegantly crafted, unhurried examination of the enthralling and elusive nature of love.”—Kirkus Reviews



Praise for the New York Times bestselling novel The Little Paris Bookshop

“[A] bona fide international hit.”—The New York Times Book Review

“If you’re looking to be charmed right out of your own life for a few hours, sit down with this wise and winsome novel.”—Oprah Daily

“A beautiful story of grief, companionship, forgiveness and building a life worth living . . . The Little Paris Bookshop is . . . medicine for the wounded soul.”—BookPage

Reality the need to be who you are . I loved the authors other novels and was happy she had a new one . Brava !

Nothing do not know what to say . There is nothing I did not like about this book