Nell and Van meet as children when their parents fall in love. They become best friends and each other’s whole world. Then tragedy strikes, and Van is sent to the other side of the globe. Five years later, they find each other again. But they’re no longer children, and the bond between them smolders into flames. New feelings surprise them both. They are destined, soulmates. Until an untimely discovery tears them apart again. For the next two decades, fate brings Nell and Van together every five years, even as life and circumstance divide them. They will have to make a choice, but it’s bigger than their lives alone. Is it bigger than their love?

From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly 3,000 interviews, involving 400 voices from the industry, HOLLYWOOD lets a reader “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera (Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd) to the biggest behind it (Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele), as well as the lesser known individuals who shaped what was heard and seen on screen. The result is like a conversation among the gods and goddesses of film: lively, funny, insightful, historically accurate and, for the first time, authentically honest in its portrait of Hollywood. It’s the insider’s story.

Sylvie understands that the crime she and Tess committed decades ago was wrong, and that's why she has buried the secret deep in her past. No one needs to know about the person Sylvie once was, especially since it would mean the end of her relationship and ruin her breakout legal career. But when Tess is diagnosed with cancer, she decides that the time is right to make amends for past wrongs and organizes an extravagant New Year's Eve party as a backdrop for her dramatic confessions. As midnight approaches and the countdown begins, it seems one of the guests doesn't want a resolution. They want revenge. They want someone at this party to die.

Chuck Ayers can’t decide if he should make the annual trip to Hilton Head without his late wife, Cat. Ella Burke works two jobs to make ends meet and fill the hours while she waits for news about her missing daughter. Kirsten Bonato put her aspirations for veterinary school aside after her father’s sudden death and finds comfort working at an animal shelter. These three individuals’ stories intersect in surprising and heartwarming ways as each person discovers how to move forward with their lives.

Winter begins with the shortest day of the year before nightfall. As in her companion volume, SUMMER SOLSTICE, Nina MacLaughlin meditates on both the dark and the light and what this season means in our lives. “Winter tells us,” she says, “more than petaled spring, or hot-grassed summer, or fall with its yellow leaves, that we are mortal. In the frankness of its cold, in the mystery of its deep-blue dark, the place in us that knows of death is tickled, focused, stoked. The angels sing on the doorknobs and others sing from the abyss. The sun has been in retreat since June, and the heat inside glows brighter in proportion to its absence. We make up for the lost light in the spark that burns inside us.”

When Rivkah Milmanovitch arrives at Ellis Island, her husband is not waiting for her as promised. Alone and pregnant, she makes her way to the Lower East Side tenement of an old friend. Lottie Aarons, whose husband went out for a newspaper and never returned, takes Rivkah in, and they work side-by-side in dispiriting sweatshops. Rivkah gives birth to a daughter, Mimi, determined that her child will have a better life in America. Frederick Winthrop, a slum landlord, lives in one of Fifth Avenue‘s sumptuous mansions --- and preys on young girls. When he serendipitously meets 15-year-old Mimi, she is easily seduced, and her life takes an unexpected turn. But as she rises to international fame, she must struggle with the secrets of her past and protect those she loves.