Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice --- catastrophic events known as Drains --- leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him. After the Dark One fell, the world went back to normal…for everyone but them. On the 10th anniversary of the Dark One’s defeat, something unthinkable happens: one of the Chosen Ones dies. When the others gather for the funeral, they discover that the Dark One’s ultimate goal was much bigger than they, the government or even prophecy could have foretold --- bigger than the world itself.

Alexis and Austin don't have a typical "meet cute" --- the couple comes together for the first time when Alexis, an emergency room doctor, sutures a bullet wound in Austin's arm. Six months later, they're on a romantic getaway in Vietnam: a bike tour on which Austin can show Alexis his passion for cycling, and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But then Austin fails to return from a solo ride. Alexis' boyfriend has vanished, the only clue left behind a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, she starts to uncover a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in?

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school, and her teacher, Bobby Nock, a 25-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect. It’s an open-and-shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed --- until Maya Seale, convinced of Nock’s innocence, persuades her fellow jurors to return the verdict of not guilty. Flash forward 10 years. A true-crime docuseries reassembles the jury, with particular focus on Maya, now a defense attorney herself. When one of the jurors is found dead in Maya’s hotel room, all evidence points to her as the killer. Now, she must prove her own innocence --- by getting to the bottom of a case that is far from closed.

When Nick Brink and his boyfriend, Clay Guillory, meet up on the Grand Canal in Venice, they have a plan in mind --- and it doesn’t involve a vacation. Nick and Clay are running away from their turbulent lives in New York City, each desperate for a happier, freer future someplace else. Their method of escape? Selling a collection of counterfeit antiques to a brash, unsuspecting American living out his retirement years in a grand palazzo. As it turns out, tricking a millionaire out of money isn’t as easy as it seems. As Nick falls under the spell of the city’s decrepit magic, Clay comes to terms with personal loss and the price of letting go of the past. Their future awaits, but it is built on disastrous deceits, and more than one life stands in the way of their dreams.

At the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her 12-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. Her desperation leads her to Ettie, the daughter of a rabbi whose years spent eavesdropping on her father enables her to create a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Hanni’s daughter, Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she, Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked. What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters who take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never-ending.

Raised in isolation by her mother and Maeve on a small island off the coast of a post-apocalyptic Ireland, Orpen’s life has revolved around training to fight a threat she’s never seen. More and more she feels the call of the mainland, and the prospect of finding other survivors. But that is where danger lies, too, in the form of the flesh-eating menace known as the skrake. Then disaster strikes. Alone, pushing an unconscious Maeve in a wheelbarrow, Orpen decides her last hope is abandoning the safety of the island and journeying across the country to reach the legendary banshees, the rumored all-female fighting force that battles the skrake. But the skrake are not the only threat.

Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. With the unexpected arrival of young Jonah Bendt --- a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters 15 years before --- the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past.

Newly widowed and the father of an infant son, Henry VIII realizes he must marry again to ensure the royal succession. Forty-six, overweight and suffering from gout, Henry is soundly rejected by some of Europe's most eligible princesses. Anna of Kleve, from a small German duchy, is 24 and has a secret she is desperate to keep hidden. Henry commissions her portrait from his court painter, who depicts her from the most flattering perspective. Entranced by the lovely image, Henry is bitterly surprised when Anna arrives in England and he sees her in the flesh. Some think her attractive, but Henry knows he can never love her. What follows is the fascinating story of an awkward royal union that somehow had to be terminated.

Humanity clings to life on January --- a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization --- but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside. Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives --- with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice. Burdened with a dangerous, painful secret, Sophie and her ragtag group of exiles face the ultimate challenge --- and they are running out of time.

Wealthy, privileged and fiercely independent New Yorker Jennie Jerome took Victorian England by storm when she landed on its shores. As Lady Randolph Churchill, she gave birth to a man who defined the 20th century: her son Winston. But Jennie --- reared in the luxury of Gilded Age Newport and the Paris of the Second Empire --- lived an outrageously modern life all her own, filled with controversy, passion, tragedy and triumph. Breathing new life into Jennie’s legacy and the glittering world over which she reigned, Stephanie Barron's novel paints a portrait of the difficult --- and sometimes impossible --- balance among love, freedom and obligation, while capturing the spirit of an unforgettable woman, one who altered the course of history.