A prominent New England patriarch has died violently, exposing a nest of dark family secrets. That’s the plot of Richard North Patterson’s recently released family drama. The novel, Fall From Grace, set on Martha’s Vineyard, is the first in what is to be a series of three novels.

Mr. Patterson, a part-time Island resident, will discuss his work at a speakeasy on June 20 at 5:30 p.m. held at State Road Restaurant in West Tisbury. Hors d’oeuvres and light refreshments will be served.

Want cupcakes? Well, you won’t find any at Johnny Cupcakes, the new store that opened last Saturday on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs.

The store may smell like frosting, and the décor may include a giant whisk and a stack of cupcake tins, but the pastry display cases aren’t refrigerated because they contain non-perishable items: limited edition T-shirts.

“We trick a lot of hungry people,” said Johnny Earle, founder and CEO of Johnny Cupcakes.

Coming on the heels of a successful Memorial Day weekend, new Edgartown business owners expressed excitement for the coming season and the hope that they are helping to breathe new life into a downtown that has seen a good deal of commercial space turnover in recent years. The trend has not translated to empty storefronts; instead where one business moves out, another takes its place, and the retail landscape this summer is a lively mix of old and new.

Faces are lit up — store faces, that is. Main street Vineyard Haven has filled up for the 2012 summer season, complete with a handful of new shops that add some previously missing color to the harborside village. And the new stores are hard to miss.

Thanks in large part to a Ray Ellis painting of Edgartown harbor that was auctioned for $120,000, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust raised $350,000 for the conservation of its historic buildings and properties across the Island at the annual Taste of the Vineyard fundraiser this past weekend.

Tisbury police chief Daniel Hanavan is bracing for the thousands of cars and visitors that will disembark daily from ferries into Vineyard Haven streets this summer. Edgartown police chief Antone Bettencourt is taking special note of the rise of underage alcohol purchases, while his Oak Bluffs counterpart, Erik Blake, is getting ready for summer bar closings in his town full of bustling night spots.

New Zealand is the westernmost corner of the Polynesian triangle with Hawaii on top and Easter Island anchoring the east. Incredibly large portions of the north and south islands are uninhabited, with preserved glacier formations, breathtaking mountains and sky-blue waters, making the commonwealth monarchy perhaps the last friendly frontier on earth.

Last Sunday evening at the Old Sculpin Gallery, as the Chappaquiddick ferry shuttled back and forth and fishermen dangled their lines off the boardwalk, art enthusiasts and passersby contemplated the artistic expertise of three recent high school graduates, Noelle Nelson and Courtney Mussell, winners of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association 2012 Scholarship, and alternate Christine Janak.

A prominent New England patriarch has died violently, exposing a nest of dark family secrets. That’s the plot of Richard North Patterson’s recently released family drama. The novel, Fall From Grace, set on Martha’s Vineyard, is the first in what is to be a series of three novels.

Mr. Patterson, a part-time Island resident, will discuss his work at a speakeasy on June 20 at 5:30 p.m. held at State Road Restaurant in West Tisbury. Hors d’oeuvres and light refreshments will be served.

Another Letter to My Love

First it was a book, then a movie and now a play being staged by the folks at Island Theatre Workshop. The story in question is I Sent a Letter to My Love, written in 1975 by Bernice Rubens, a Welsh writer who won the Booker Prize in 1970 and was again short-listed for the prize in 1978.