Chairing a team to evaluate the faltering Rye Manor School for girls, Maggie Detweiler will determine if the school has a future at all. At a reception for the faculty and trustees to "welcome" Maggie’s team, no one seems more keen for all to go well than Florence Meagher. But when Maggie arrives to observe her teaching, Florence is missing. Florence’s husband, Ray, seems more annoyed than alarmed at her disappearance. But Florence’s sister is distraught. There have been tensions in the marriage, and at their last visit, Florence had warned, "If anything happens to me, don’t assume it’s an accident." Two days later, Florence’s body is found in the campus swimming pool.

Indulging their pleasure in travel and new experiences, recently retired private school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The inn’s tranquility is soon shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas, and Lisa’s actress sister, Glory. After a suspicious late-night fire is brought under control, Alex’s charred body is found in the ashes. Feeling that justice could use a helping hand --- as could the deputy sheriff --- Maggie and Hope decide that they could have a useful role to play in uncovering the truth.

GOSSIP is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship, competition and motherhood that explores the myriad ways we use and abuse "information" about others --- be it true, false, or imagined --- to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another.

In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to the fortunes of Hitler's war. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of the country's Jews.