Charter Books will host Annabel Monaghan at OceanCliff on Monday, June 8, for a summer cocktail event celebrating her latest novel, Dolly All the Time. The event runs from 4 to 6 p.m., and Monaghan will be in conversation with Kylie McCollough.

Tickets are $75 and include admission to the reception, a signed copy of the book, a complimentary drink and hors d'oeuvres. OceanCliff’s cash bar will be open during the event, and the Safari Room restaurant will be available for dinner afterward. For readers looking for a local literary night out, the setup is built to be more than a book talk.

Dolly All the Time will be published on May 28 and is set in Whitfield, a fictional Rhode Island town inspired by Newport. The novel follows Dolly Brick, a hardworking single mother who returns to her seaside hometown during summer break to help her father, then gets pulled into a fake-dating arrangement with Stewart Whitfield, a wealthy scion who works too much and seems to have little time for anything else.

Monaghan arrives with a strong track record. She is the author of It’s a Love Story, Summer Romance, Same Time Next Summer and Nora Goes Off Script, and she has also written two young adult novels. Her books have been translated into 23 languages, a reach that has helped turn her into one of the more reliable names in contemporary romance.

Charter Books was founded in 2020 at 8 Broadway in Newport, and the event fits the store’s role as a steady organizer of literary gatherings in town. McCollough, who founded the Newport Ladies Book Club, brings a familiar Newport audience to the stage; the club has been featured on the Today Show with Read with Jenna for its immersive book discussions.

The evening also underscores how closely Monaghan’s new novel tracks the region that will host her. Whitfield is fictional, but the Newport influence is obvious, and the June 8 event gives local readers a chance to meet the author just as the book reaches shelves. That timing matters: the celebration comes one week after publication, with summer reading season already underway and interest likely to rise around a novel set so close to home.

Monaghan splits her time between Connecticut and Florida, but on June 8 her audience will be in Newport, where a room at OceanCliff will be filled with readers, cocktails and one more reminder that the season’s most local story is also a very public one.