Whether ultra-modern or hundreds of years old, every one of these summer houses is brimming with style and serves as an antidote to stress.

From the rocky coast of Maine to the sandy beaches of the Hamptons, from Nantucket to Newport, from Fire Island to Fishers Island, and from Martha's Vineyard to Provincetown, summer houses are as varied in style as the people who take to the beach as soon as the temperature climbs.

In this lushly illustrated book, author Jennifer Ash Rudick has sought out some twenty-five of the best. She invites us into a minimally decorated, lsamu Noguchi-designed home in Northeast Harbor and Apple Parrish Bartlett's cosily decorated house in Dark Harbor, Maine.

We imagine relaxing in a comfortably cushioned rattan chair on the sun porch of a Nantucket house designed by Tom Scheerer, taking in the view of Long Island Sound through the glass curtain wall of a sleek house on Fishers Island, and feeling snugly cosseted in a tiny Provincetown cottage. All we need to do is settle back, kick off our shoes, and let the sun-kissed pages of Summer to Summer wash over us...