Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal. Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain...and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they finally will be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects. On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog. As they attempt to make their way to the Poppy Fields --- where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder --- each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage.

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over 25 years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet, and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband. What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives --- their 50th birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague --- all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.

Chicago, 1924: Emily and her new husband, Henry, yearn to leave the bustle of Chicago for the promise of their own American dream among the harsh beauty of the prairie. But leaving the city means leaving Emily’s beloved sister, Annie. Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have established their new home among the warmth of the farming community in Kansas. Their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep. Meanwhile, drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and Emily's much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of all: Dorothy.

Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their 90s, and Monica worries about them constantly --- especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade. Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue.

Joni Lark is one of the most coveted songwriters in LA, yet she can’t write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it. When she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes it will spark inspiration. But when she gets there, nothing is how she left it. How can Joni write when her world is leaving her behind? Until she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it --- belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with an emptiness of his own. Surely, he’s a figment of Joni’s overworked imagination. Then a very real man shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s arrogant and guarded, and he has a plan for breaking their inconvenient telepathic connection: finish the song haunting them both and hope they don’t risk their hearts --- or their secrets --- in the process.

Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror for those with knowledge of this infamous all-women’s concentration camp, better known since it became the setting of Martha Hall Kelly’s bestselling novel, LILAC GIRLS. Particularly shocking were the medical experiments performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80 percent of its inmates were political prisoners, among them a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance. Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazis in occupied France, these women joined forces to defy their German captors and keep one another alive.

Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In this comprehensive but fast-paced narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America’s forgotten founding fathers, a constitutional visionary who helped to rewrite the post–Civil War Constitution and give birth to modern civil rights law.

Anders is a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists in the Civil War to shape the American Future --- as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus. Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler --- until he’s captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate --- until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. His new brothers include a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. 

Having recently moved from London to a small Cornish seaside village, Nova Davies started a book club at the local community center. But the five members disagree on everything, and a significant sum of money is stolen during one of the meetings, putting the much-loved community center at risk. Suspicion for the theft falls on book club member Michael, especially when he disappears and a dead body turns up at his house. Agatha Christie superfan Phyllis is determined to prove Michael has been framed, while romance reader Arthur believes there is a mystery woman involved, and teenage sci-fi fan Ash thinks dark forces are at play. While trying to locate Michael, solve the murder and recover the stolen money, each of them has their own secrets to protect.