When Liv and Nora decide to take their families on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. The children--two eleven-year-olds, an eight-year-old, and a six-year-old--love the nonstop buffet and the independence they have at the Kids' Club. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor misfortunes leads the families farther and farther from the ship's safety. One minute...

"A night spent sleeping on dirt and leaves is not how Claire Matchett expected to spend her vacation. She thought this would be a break from the stresses of work and raising her young children. A chance to repair her damaged marriage. A week of hiking and hot tubs with friends. It sounded like heaven. Then Claire's minivan breaks down on a lonely dirt road. With no cell reception, the group has no choice but to hike the rest of the way to their hotel....

Every summer, Samantha joins her childhood friends-- Isabel, Kendra and Mina-- on a vacation, somewhere exotic and fabulous. This year it's a beach house in Honduras. But for the first time, their clan is not complete. Mina lost her battle against cancer six months ago, and the friends she left behind are still struggling to find their way forward without her.

Greg Heffley tells about his summer vacation and his attempts to steer clear of trouble when he returns to middle school and tries to keep his older brother Rodrick from telling everyone about Greg's most humiliating experience of the summer.

"One phone call is all it takes to lure Mallory Aldiss back to her family's Rhode Island beach home. It's been twenty years since she's been gone - running from the scandal that destroyed her parents' marriage, drove her and her two sisters apart, and crushed her relationship with the love of her life, Jack Sabathian.Twenty years during which she lived in New York, building her career as a photographer and raising her now teenage daughter Joy. But...

Combat medic Vance Smith made a promise to a fallen officer: to treat the man's young daughter to an idyllic vacation at Beach House No. 9. One month, some sun and surf, a "helmet list" of activities to check off and Vance will move on. But the "little girl" he's expecting turns out to be a full-grown woman. With silky hair, big brown eyes and smelling sweetly of the cupcakes she makes for her mobile bakery, Layla Parker is irresistible.

During a family retreat to a remote winter cabin over the holidays, the father is forced to abruptly depart for work, leaving his two children in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace. Isolated and alone, a blizzard traps them inside the lodge as terrifying events summon specters from Grace's dark past.

In the latest diary of middle-schooler Greg Heffley, he records his attempts to spend his summer vacation sensibly indoors playing video games and watching television, despite his mother's other ideas.

The next generation of Griswolds is at is again, and on the road for another ill-fated adventure. Following in his father's footsteps and hoping for some much-needed family bonding, a grown-up Rusty Griswold surprises his wife, and their two sons with a cross-country trip back to Wally World.

After her daughter, Chess, breaks off an engagement and her fiance subsequently dies in a rock-climbing accident, divorcee Birdie Cousins encourages her younger daughter, Tate, and her sister, India, to join her and Chess on Tuckernuck Island for a month, a time when deep secrets are soon revealed.