College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her. But a promising start quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate is driving her insane, and a reckless trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home. Then shocking news arrives: Lily’s grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history. As Lily grieves, she’s drawn into a journey of self-discovery --- piecing together memories, stories and silences over a series of hilarious and devastating attempts at connection.

For decades, the women of Wester House have unsettled and fascinated their small, timeless North Carolina town. Their home is full of whispers, old griefs and uncanny knowing. But when Willamena Wester reaches out to the granddaughter she once pushed away, long-buried truths begin to stir. 1976: Restless young Willamena falls for a stranded musician who brings freedom and the promise of another life to her carefully controlled world. Their brief, incandescent love story promises to escape the pull of the Wester legacy until Willamena makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever. Present day: Returning home is the last thing Bailey Wester wants. Yet, as she reconnects with Willamena, the grandmother she feared, Bailey begins to understand the love, heartbreak and impossible choices that shaped the women in her family.

The victim’s corpse is so mangled and damaged it’s hard to believe a lone, unarmed assailant could have managed it. The killer was clearly unnaturally strong --- and smart enough to find a way into wealthy biotech executive Larry Chu’s highly secure building. Most of all, whoever did this was very, very angry. The excessive violence leads NYSPD Lieutenant Eve Dallas to conclude that this was a deeply personal act. And though the motive seems rooted in heated emotion rather than cold hard cash, she can’t ignore the suspicious bank account in the Cayman Islands, or the shadowy, profit-hungry company Chu worked for. The mystery only grows when it turns out that Chu isn’t the only victim --- and Dallas will need to tear through one layer of secrecy after another to reveal what lies behind this explosion of fury.

Carl Mørck, the former head of Department Q, comes across a disturbing audio recording and turns it over to his former colleagues, who are struggling to keep the old department up and running on their own. That is, until a new transfer unexpectedly arrives --- Helena Henry, a Frenchwoman who throws herself into the investigation with gusto, but who may also have secrets of her own. When the team realizes that the audio recording might shed new light on a supposedly open-and-shut murder-suicide case from years earlier, suddenly everything they thought they knew is called into question. Meanwhile, a spurt of seemingly random violence leads the Department Q team to investigate a possible connection to a different long-ago dark and sinister event.

Noah is the boy everyone admires --- an honor student, a champion swimmer, a hometown success story. Until he confesses to sexually abusing young girls during swim practice. In a single moment, his future evaporates, and his family shoulders the fallout. After 18 months in a juvenile sexual rehabilitation center, Noah returns home. But the town recoils, and his father refuses to let him back into their family's life. Noah's mom, Adrianne, is forced into an impossible role: the mother of a child no one believes deserves saving. As devastating truths emerge, she must confront the darkest question of all: When does standing by your child become a betrayal of everyone around you?

After a magical night out on the town with her boyfriend, Jack, Emily wakes up alone in a huge bed. But the beautiful, well-lit room is nothing like the hotel she and Jack rented, and she has no memory of this place from the night before. Where is she? A woman’s voice directs her to remain in bed. And beyond the end of the bed is a picture frame upon an easel --- a frame with no canvas, no painting, no art. But there is the silhouette of a person Emily does not recognize. A person emanating demand, danger and evil. And the way the woman talks...and the things she says. She’s acting as if Emily herself is the painting. The still life. The art. Emily is as scared as she is confused. But it’s immediately clear that Jack’s life is on the line with her own.

Detective Andy Cooper is about to retire and isn't sure what's next. She'll need to do something, if only to distract herself from how empty her life has become. Everything changes when bodies begin to turn up. Murdered, but how? Not by knife, gun or any obvious weapon. Instead: teethmarks. Chunks missing. Like they'd been chewed on. And not by humans. As she's struggling to solve her final case, an unexpected new friendship seems like just what Andy needs. Where she is detached from life, Fiona embraces it. Where she is a homebody, Fiona roams. Yet the women are drawn together by a shared love of nature and wildlife. Until Andy learns the dark truth behind Fiona's smile. A secret that threatens to unravel the world as she knows it.

Growing up, Marnie Stephens believed that destiny was real and the universe had a plan. But at 30, real life has become more difficult than divine. Especially when Marnie wakes up at a hospital in Boston with no memory of how she got there...or the last year of her life. Her doctor tells her she suffered a head injury; her boyfriend, Matt, insists they broke up months ago; and her hair is somehow eight inches shorter. Before she knows it, she finds herself in an apartment she doesn’t remember with a new neighbor, Ben Morgan, she’s sure she won’t forget. As Marnie sets out to retrace the last year of her life, the last thing she needs is to start falling for Ben, the grumpy (and incredibly attractive) neighbor helping her. But the universe has other plans.

Graziella, a 96-year-old former nun, spends her days running the parish’s food kitchen, convinced it is her responsibility to keep everyone fed in their working-class New York neighborhood. Her daughter, Grace, a respected psychology professor, appears accomplished and composed, yet she finds herself unmoored as her personal life falters. Ella --- Graziella’s granddaughter and Grace’s daughter --- is weary of defending her vegan diet and anti-capitalistic lifestyle. Blind to her own brilliance, she longs, above all, for a place to belong. Living together again, the three Graces reckon with the distances that have shaped them, and with what it means, at last, to be fully known.

Nanako Hanada is a passionate book lover who manages the Village Vanguard, an iconically eccentric bookstore in Tokyo. But her story takes a turn with the breakdown of her marriage. Spending her nights alone in Tokyo's four-hour capsules, she’s finding herself rather isolated. That's until Nanako finds the meet-up site Perfect Strangers, where people meet for 30-minute bursts to find friendship or romance, build a network, or just share ideas. She sets up her profile promising to recommend people “the book that will change their life.” In the ensuing year, Nanako meets hundreds of people, a ragtag range of strangers who happen to believe in the power of a great book.