Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe. Lila leaves the rearing of her daughters to her generous husband, Joe. Grace, their youngest daughter, feels abandoned. She wishes her mother would attend PTA meetings, not White House correspondents’ dinners. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila’s shadow, yet the more she resists, the more Lila seems to shape her life. Grace becomes a successful reporter, even publishing a bestselling book about her mother. In the process of writing it, she realizes how little she knows about her own family.

Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain. As Eve learns to walk, talk and write again --- and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children --- she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it. Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief.

The small, rundown village of Great Diddling is full of stories. The way the villagers avoid outsiders, the furtive stares and whispers in the presence of newcomers --- author Berit Gardner can sense the edge of a story waiting to be unraveled, and she's just the person to do it. In fact, with a book deadline looming over her and no manuscript, Berit doesn't just want this story. She needs it. Then, while attending a village tea party, Berit becomes part of the action herself. An explosion in the library of the village's grand manor kills a local man, and the resulting investigation and influx of outsiders sends the quiet, rundown community into chaos. The residents of Great Diddling rewrite their own narrative and transform the death of one of their own from a tragedy into a new beginning.

In the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel. Out of money and motivation, Elijah throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, whom he betrayed but was never able to forget. As the town turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder.

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes. Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella, and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress --- and embarks on an adventure. As weeks --- and many decadent meals --- go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at the famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past.

Beloved author Jill McCorkle offers an intimate look at the moments when a person’s life changes forever. A woman uses her hearing impairment as a way to guard herself from her husband’s commentary. A telephone lineman strains to communicate with his family even as he feels pushed aside in a digital world. And a young couple buys a confessional booth for fun, only to discover the cost of honesty. Moving and unforgettable, the stories in OLD CRIMES capture moments of great intensity, longing and affection.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come. In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her --- and she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading to “new homes” where they are promised jobs and safety. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. But when the final train is at the station, Nico sees his family being loaded into a large boxcar crowded with other neighbors. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that he helped send the people he loved --- and all the others --- to their doom at Auschwitz. Nico never tells the truth again.

Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In 10 tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. A father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, THE COVENANT OF WATER is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: In every generation, at least one person dies by drowning --- and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a 12-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her 40-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl --- and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi --- will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph, as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.