 The novel was originally published under the name Amagansett when it first appeared in 2004.However, when it was later published in paperback, the publishers, HarperCollins, changed the name to The Whaleboat House after deciding that the original title was too elliptical.Little has changed in Amagansett since the first settlers arrived there some 300 years earlier, but the discovery of the body of Lillian Wallace, a New York socialite, by a local fisherman named Conrad Labarde, shatters the apparent stability and threatens to tear the close-knit community apart.