Miranda Meadowe lives a relatively solitary life in her rustic country home, but her world dramatically changes when she invites a group of her oldest friends to move in with her. In the beginning, the reunion is joyous. They laugh, dance, drink, behave badly and cling to the heritage they thought would be theirs forever: power, health, stability. But as the days pass, long-forgotten grudges resurface and new tensions emerge. And when an ancient burial site is discovered nearby, the outside world descends upon them. The isolation of the group is breached and the past revealed --- and they realize the future that beckons may be very different from the one they had imagined.

Sadie's life is calm and complete. She is a mother, a good friend, and the robust survivor of a marriage she deliberately left behind. She has come to believe she has everything she wants. But now her father is dying and she must confront the truth about her relationship with him.

Alice is a scientist who relies on method, precision and tangible proof. But when her relationship with Oxford artist Peter Brown collapses spectacularly, she is forced to use her skills to evaluate her own life for the first time. Alice accepts an invitation to travel to the southernmost point of the earth, Antarctica. Upon arrival, she is awestruck by the strangeness of a continent painted in shades of blue and white, lit by an unearthly permanent sunlight. And nothing has prepared her for the close confines of a small base shared with eight men and one other woman. It’s in these close quarters that she develops a strong attraction to a man shrouded in danger and mystery.

The unexpected arrival of her willful teenage granddaughter, Ruby, brings life and disorder to 82-year-old Iris Black's old house in Cairo. Driven by her fraught relationship with her own mother to run away from England, Ruby is seeking refuge with the grandmother she hasn't seen for years. An unlikely bond develops between them, as Ruby helps Iris to record her fading memories of the glittering, cosmopolitan Cairo of World War II, and of her one true love --- the enigmatic Captain Xan Molyneux --- whom she lost to the ravages of conflict.

Nancy Wix, daughter of the stage impresarios Eliza and Devil, must find a way to keep London’s Palmyra theatre afloat, and to entertain audiences who have lost husbands and sons in the first World War. Nancy is a born performer, but she is set apart --- even from her beloved brothers --- by her psychic gifts. As another war begins to threaten the world, Nancy is forced into a final, fateful confrontation with her demons, and must marshal both her ingenuity and her mysterious talents to fight for the survival of friendship, independence and family.

Through her work as an artist’s model, Eliza meets the magnetic and irascible Devil --- a born showman whose dream is to run his own theater company. Devil’s righthand man is Carlo Bonomi, an ill-tempered dwarf with an enormous talent for all things magic and illusion. And then there is Jasper Button, the enigmatic, unlikely final member of this fascinating cast of characters. Thrown together by a twist of fate, their lives are inextricably linked. As Eliza gets sucked into their seductive and dangerous world, she risks not only her heart, but also her life, which is soon thrown into peril.

When Connie hears the news that her sister, Jeanette, is dying, the last thing she wants is to leave her home and return to London. As a child, she was aware only of the differences between herself and her sister. One of them was dark, the other sunny. Yet they both fell in love with the same man. But with the bitterness of betrayal still between them, Connie and Jeanette have to learn to forgive each other.

During World War II, Nerys Watkins accompanies her husband on a missionary posting to India. When he leaves her in the exotic lakeside city of Srinagar to take on a complicated mission, Nerys discovers a new world --- and by the time she is reunited with him, she is a different woman. Years later, when Mair Ellis clears out her dead father's house, she finds an exquisite shawl. Tracing her grandparents' roots back to Kashmir, Mair embarks on a quest that will change her life forever.