Summer 1999: Twentysomething Sawyer is striving to make it in New York. Between her assistant job in publishing, her secret dreams of becoming a writer, and her upcoming wedding to her college boyfriend, her plate is full. But she is facing an incredibly lonely summer as her fiancé has been spending longer and longer hours at work ---- with an all-too-close female colleague, Kendra. When Kendra's boyfriend, Nick, invites Sawyer to meet up and compare notes about their suspicions, the meeting goes awry. But then Nick seeks out Sawyer online to apologize, and a friendship develops. They begin an unofficial ritual --- exploring New York City together every summer Friday --- and soon enough they are living for their Friday afternoons together. But what happens when the summer is over?

San Francisco, 1906. Violet is one of three people grateful for the destruction of the big earthquake. It leaves her and her two best friends unexpectedly wealthy --- if the secret that binds them together stays buried beneath the rubble. Fearing discovery, the women strike out on their own, and orphaned, wallflower Violet reinvents herself. When a whirlwind romance with the city's most eligible widower, Harry Carlyle, lands her in a luxurious mansion as the second Mrs. Carlyle, it seems like her dreams of happiness and love have come true. But all is not right in the Carlyle home, and Violet soon finds herself trapped by the lingering specter of the first Mrs. Carlyle, and by the inescapable secrets of her own violent history.

Louis Thorn and Harry Yamada are boyhood friends divided by family differences. But their childhood camaraderie reignites when they are convinced to perform death-defying tricks as Eagle & Crane in Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus --- until their mutual attraction to Shaw’s stepdaughter, smart and beautiful Ava Brooks, complicates things anew. Then Pearl Harbor is bombed in December 1941, and Harry is imprisoned in a Japanese American internment camp. When a Shaw stunt plane crashes soon after Harry and his father leave the camp without permission, the two bodies discovered are assumed to be theirs. But the details don’t add up, and no one involved seems willing to tell the truth.

In 1958, Greenwich Village buzzes with beatniks, jazz clubs and new ideas --- the ideal spot for three ambitious young people to meet. Cliff Nelson, the son of a successful book editor, is convinced he’s the next Kerouac, if only his father would notice. Eden Katz dreams of being an editor but is shocked when she encounters roadblocks to that ambition. And Miles Tillman, a talented black writer from Harlem, seeks to learn the truth about his father’s past, finding love in the process. Though different, they share a common goal: to succeed in the competitive and uncompromising world of book publishing. As they reach for what they want, they come to understand what they must sacrifice, conceal and betray to achieve their goals, learning they must live with the consequences of their choices. 

Rose Baker is a typist in a New York City Police Department precinct. It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room, she is once again the weaker sex. When glamorous Odalie joins the typing pool, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.