When Corie Geller asked her parents to move from their apartment into the suburban McMansion she shares with her husband and teenage daughter, she assumed they'd fit right in with the placid life she’d opted for when she left the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force of the FBI. But then her retired NYPD detective father gets a call from good-natured and slightly nerdy film professor April Brown --- one of the victims of a case he was never able to solve. When April was a five-year-old, she’d emerged unscathed from the arson that killed her parents. Now, two decades later, April is asking for help. Someone has made an attempt on her life. Corie and her dad immediately say yes and jump into a full-fledged investigation. If they don’t move fast, whoever attacked April is sure to strike again.

Just a few years ago, Corie Geller was busting terrorists as an agent for the FBI. But at 35, she traded in her badge for the stability of marriage and motherhood. Between cooking meals and playing chauffeur, Corie scouts Arabic fiction for a few literary agencies and, on Wednesdays, has lunch with her fellow Shorehaven freelancers at a so-so French restaurant. Pete Delaney, a milquetoast package designer, always shows up early, sits in the same spot (often with a different phone in hand), and keeps one eye on the Jeep he parks in the lot across the street. Corie intuitively feels that Pete is hiding something. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just imagining things, desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence?

Elegant, amusing and profoundly nasty tycoon Gloria Garrison is shocked that none of her three grandchildren are interested in inheriting her brilliant, booming beauty business. What’s so grand about their lives that they would reject such a kingdom? Memories have a way of intruding at the most inopportune times. Is Gloria’s tough hide as impenetrable as she has always believed?

Sybil and Blake Gregory have established a predictable, well-ordered Manhattan life --- she as a cutting-edge design authority and museum consultant, he in high-tech investments --- raising their teenagers Andrew and Caroline and six-year-old Charlie. But everything changes when Blake is offered a dream job he can’t resist as CEO of a start-up in San Francisco. He accepts it without consulting his wife and buys a magnificent, irresistibly underpriced historic Pacific Heights mansion as their new home. The past and present suddenly collide for them in the elegant mansion filled with tender memories and haunting portraits when an earthquake shocks them the night they arrive.