Have you ever tried to pass the time by imagining the lives of the strangers standing next to you? Ilona Bannister’s FIVE introduces readers to five seemingly random people waiting for a train. But these are not just any five people. From the beginning, we know that one of them is going to die soon. The next train to London will arrive in five minutes, killing one of them. But before this happens, you will learn their stories. Readers might fall in love with the beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. They may pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. Perhaps readers will look away from the child throwing a tantrum. Or judge his mother, who surely must be to blame. And some will be curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman orbiting them all.

It’s 1983, and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s 19, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete --- one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness. Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection --- and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY: Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY. Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention. It had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all --- vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she's not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for. Besides, it’s only three days’ work. Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness. What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property --- and Macy Mullins just might be the only thing standing between it and the rest of humanity.

A rogue black hole is coming for Earth, and in a month everything and everyone they’ve ever known will be gone. Suddenly, after 40 years together, husbands Don and Rodney are out of time. They’re in a race against the clock to make it from Maine to Washington State to take care of some unfinished business before it’s all over. On the road they meet those who refuse to believe death is coming and those who rush to meet it. But there are also people living their final days as best they know how --- impromptu weddings, bright burning bonfires, shared meals and new friends. And as the black hole draws near, among ball lightning and under a cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky, Don and Rodney will look back on their lives and ask if their best was good enough.

Spring, 2007. Alicia Canales Forten is in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, and saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and she moves in. No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness that Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself. But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.

Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie. Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home. Tom is the creator of Thursday, a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon. There's a character in this movie based on Cherry: “Baby.” Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby. Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page --- let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles, Cherry is stuck in Omaha wondering who she's supposed to be without him. One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album…and someone recognizes her from across the room.

When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous ’90s-era boy band and 3,000 screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie --- newly divorced, turning 50 with an empty nest, and here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members --- not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend --- she has accessed a new sense of possibility.

Natalie Heller Mills lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s eight million followers don’t know won’t hurt them. But then one morning, Natalie wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.

Professor Ember Agni is a rising star in archaeology, trying to balance an unfulfilling career in academia and a crumbling marriage, all while pursuing her true passion: unearthing a lost empire that no one else believes existed. Just as she’s about to give up on the ambitious expedition she spent a decade trying to fund, a message arrives from overseas. A former student claims to have found something extraordinary --- an artifact that hints at the forgotten world lying beneath history’s tidy surface. With vindication finally within reach, Ember risks everything for the sake of discovery and undertakes an odyssey that will either make her name or ruin her. But as she journeys deep into an untouched wilderness, in dogged pursuit of a dead civilization, she collides with the wreckage of her own life.

Riley and her brother, Oliver, set off in the pitch-black night, fleeing their troubled home. They are heading for Nowhere --- an abandoned ranch, once the playground of its former eccentric movie-star owner, now a haven for runaways. What awaits could be the freedom they crave. But this mysterious clan guards dark secrets, and the scorched grounds hold the ghosts of the past. Riley quickly realizes that while she and Oliver may have escaped the devil they knew, something darker lurks in the burnt shell of Nowhere. Something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary.