As the Nazis sweep across Europe, Jewish teen Max and his parents flee persecution in Germany for Holland. But when Hitler invades in 1940, Max must escape to Chicago, leaving his parents and friends behind. When he learns of his parents' deportation and murder, Max immediately enlists in the US Army. After basic training, he is sent to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, where he is trained in interrogation and counterintelligence. Deployed to the OSS as well, Max carries out dangerous missions in occupied countries. Post-war, he works for the Americans in the German denazification program, bringing him back to his Bavarian childhood home of Regensburg. Though the city avoided large-scale destruction, the Jewish community has been decimated. While there, he reunites with someone from his past. Can they rebuild their lives…together?

With little work during the pandemic, Chicago PI Georgia Davis agrees to help the best friend of fellow sleuth Ellie Foreman. Susan Siler’s aunt died suddenly after her COVID booster, and Susan’s distraught mother wants the death investigated. However, Georgia’s investigation is interrupted by a family trip to Nauvoo, Illinois, the one-time Mormon heartland. It’s there that her life unexpectedly intersects with the runaway spouse of a Mormon Fundamentalist. Back in Evanston, after Georgia is almost killed by a hit-and-run driver, she discovers that she and the escaped woman look remarkably alike. Is someone trying to kill Georgia because of her death investigation? Or is it a case of mistaken identity?

In 1968, two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly 10 years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their journeys too deep to heal?

Chicago PI Georgia Davis is hired to hunt down those behind the assassination of Resistance leader Dena Baldwin at a demonstration 14 months after the 2016 election. The gunman dies within minutes of the shooting. As Georgia sifts through Dena’s 42,000 Facebook followers, she discovers that unknown enemies hiding behind fake profiles have infiltrated the group. She finds others who will do whatever it takes --- including murder --- to shield right-wing, wealthy elites. Threats and bruises have never frightened Georgia, but she’s side-swiped by the sudden reappearance of her mother, who abandoned her when she was a child. Can she survive a family crisis at the same time she pursues killers whose only goal is to protect themselves?

As World War II rages across Europe and the Pacific, its impact ripples through communities in the heartland of America. A farm girl is locked in a dangerous love triangle with two German soldiers held in an Illinois POW camp. Another German, a war refugee, is forced to risk her life spying on the developing Manhattan Project in Chicago. And espionage surrounds the disappearance of an actress from the thriving Jewish community of Chicago’s Lawndale. In this trio of tales, acclaimed thriller author Libby Fischer Hellmann depicts the tumultuous effect of war on the home front and illustrates how the action, terror and tragedy of World War II was not confined to the front lines.

Hired to produce a candy-floss profile of Chicago-based aviation giant Delcroft, Ellie Foreman is dismayed when company VP Charlotte Hollander trashes the production and cancels the project. Ellie believes Hollander was spooked by shots of a specific man in the video footage. But when Ellie arranges to meet the man to find out why, he is killed by a subway train before they can talk. In the confusion, she finds a seemingly abandoned pack of cigarettes with a flash drive inside that belonged to the now-dead man. Ellie gets the drive's contents decrypted, but before long discovers she's under surveillance.

A bloodstained note left for Chicago PI Georgia Davis reveals the shocking existence of a half-sister she never knew about. Her sister, Savannah, is pregnant and begging for Georgia's help. Determined to track her down, Georgia finds herself heading deep into the secretive and dangerous underworld of Chicago's illegal sex trafficking business. But she soon discovers that trafficking is just a small part of the horrifying and deadly situation in which her new sister is caught up.

On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, headstrong 18-year-old Francesca Pacelli flees from her ruthless Mafia-boss father in Havana to the arms of her lover, a rebel fighting with Fidel Castro. Her father, desperate to send her to safety in the US, resorts to torture and blackmail as he searches the island for her. So begins the first part of a spellbinding saga that spans three generations of the same family.

Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.