In their own way, they were all living double lives when they boarded Air France 006: Blake, a respectable family man who works as a contract killer. Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star who uses his womanizing image to hide that he’s gay. Joanna, a Black American lawyer pressured to play the good old boys’ game to succeed with her Big Pharma client. Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet largely obscure writer suddenly on the precipice of global fame. About to start their descent to JFK, they hit a shockingly violent patch of turbulence, emerging on the other side to a reality both perfectly familiar and utterly strange. As it charts the fallout of this logic-defying event, THE ANOMALY takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House and a top-secret hangar.

For trying to save his in-laws, who were fleeing certain death in Syria, Stéphan Pélissier was threatened with 15 years in prison by the Greek justice system, which accused him of human smuggling. His crime? Having gone to search for the parents, brother and sister of his wife, Zéna, in Greece rather than leaving them to undertake a treacherous journey by boat to Italy. Their joy on finding each other quickly turned into a nightmare: Pélissier was arrested as a result of a missing car registration and thrown into prison. Although his relatives were ultimately able to seek asylum --- legally --- in France, Pélissier had to fight to prove his innocence, and to uphold the values of common humanity and solidarity in which he so strongly believes.

Marie and Laurent, a young, affluent couple, have settled into their large Paris apartment and decide to start trying for a baby. This picture-perfect existence is shattered when Marie is assaulted by her new boss. Deeply shaken by the attack, she discovers she is pregnant, and is convinced her rapist is the father. Marie closes herself off in a destructive silence, ultimately leading her to commit an irreparable act.

She recalls little of her childhood, not even her own name. She was barely seven years old when she was snatched by slave raiders from her village in the Darfur region of southern Sudan. In a cruel twist, they gave her the name that she will carry for the rest of her life: Bakhita, "the Lucky One" in Arabic. Sold and resold along the slave trade routes, Bakhita endures years of unspeakable abuse and terror. At age 13, at last, her life takes a turn when the Italian consul in Khartoum purchases her. A few years later, as chaos engulfs the capital, the consul returns to Italy, taking Bakhita with him. In this new land, another long and arduous journey begins --- one that leads her onto a spiritual path for which she is still revered today.

Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor --- raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and subjecting her to endless drills designed to "eliminate weakness." But they could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak. And when, after more than a decade, an outsider managed to penetrate her family's paranoid world, Maude seized her opportunity.

Edgar Feuchtwanger came from a prominent German-Jewish family. He was a carefree five-year-old when Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, moved into the building opposite theirs in Munich. In 1933, the joy of this untroubled life was shattered. Hitler had been named Chancellor. Edgar's parents, stripped of their rights as citizens, tried to protect him from increasingly degrading realities. In class, his teacher had him draw swastikas, and his schoolmates joined the Hitler Youth. In 1939, Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past --- a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of 88, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor.

In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, teenagers Talla and Sardar fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi. Into this family of illiterate shepherds is born Bahram, a boy whose brilliance and intellectual promise are apparent from a very young age. Through his education, Bahram will become a fervent follower of reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and will participate first-hand in his country's political and social upheavals.

Who is the real author of The Black Insignia? Is it H. R. Sanders, whose name is printed on the cover of every installment of the wildly successful young adult adventure series? Or is it Daniel Roche, the enigmatic world traveler who disappears for months at a time? When Daniel’s great-niece, Hélène, moves to Paris to study archaeology, she does not expect to be searching for answers to these questions. In so doing, she uncovers an explosive secret dating back to the darkest days of the Occupation.