A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car --- also borrowed --- onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, his recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request.

In 1950s Dublin, young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case. One of Rosa’s friends, it turns out, is from a powerful German family that arrived in Ireland under mysterious circumstances shortly after World War II. But as Quirke and Strafford close in, their personal lives may put the case --- and everyone involved --- in peril, including Quirke’s own daughter.

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell if his imagination is just running away with him. Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother years ago --- the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties. Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland, and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself.

Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957, and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns that the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets threaten to obliterate everything.

In MRS. OSMOND, John Banville continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’ beloved THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Eager but naïve, in James’ novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and --- as Isabel finds out too late --- cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter, telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence.

Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, John Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions, it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments.

Oliver Otway Orme --- a man equally self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating --- is a painter of some renown and a petty thief who has never been caught…until now. Unfortunately, the purloined possession in question is the wife of the man who was, perhaps, his best friend. Fearing the consequences, Ollie has fled --- not only from his mistress, his home and his wife, but from the very impulse to paint, and from his own demons. He sequesters himself in the house where he was born and sets about trying to uncover the answer to how and why things have turned out as they did.

Is there any difference between memory and invention? This question haunts Alexander Cleave, whose stunted acting career is suddenly revived by a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is. Cleave explores memories of his first love affair with his best friend's mother, as well as those of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that he can only fail to understand.