Joan Ashby is a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories. When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact (“work is paramount, absolutely no children”). She then makes a fateful, selfless decision to embrace her unintentional family. Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.

An airplane touches down at a desolate airport in a remote Colorado ski town. Shortly after landing, Dr. Lyle Martin, a world-class infectious disease specialist, is brusquely awakened to shocking news: Everyone not on the plane appears to be dead. The world has gone dark. While they were in the air, a lethal new kind of virus surfaced, threatening mankind's survival, and now Martin --- one of the most sought-after virologists on the planet until his career took a precipitous slide --- is at the center of the investigation.

Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. When Agatha learns from Meghan’s popular parenting blog that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever.

When the investment bank Weiss & Partners is shuttered in September 2008, CEO Bob D’Amico must fend off allegations of malfeasance, as well as the judgment and resentment of his community. As panic builds, five women in his life must scramble to negotiate power on their own terms and ask themselves what  --- if anything --- is worth saving. In the aftermath of this collapse, D’Amico’s teenage daughter, Madison, begins to probe her father’s heretofore secret world for information. Four other women in Madison’s life --- her mother Isabel, her best friend Amanda, her nanny Lily, and family friend Mina --- begin to question their own shifting roles in their insular, moneyed world.

Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan --- a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand. Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children. Estranged from her sister, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago.

When former prosecutor Bill ten Boom is tapped by the International Criminal Court --- an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity --- he feels drawn to what will become the most elusive case of his career. Over 10 years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now for the first time, a witness has stepped forward: Ferko Rincic claims that armed men marched the camp's Gypsy residents to a cave in the middle of the night --- and then with a hand grenade set off an avalanche, burying 400 people alive. Only Ferko survived. Boom's task is to examine Ferko's claims and determine who might have massacred the Roma.

When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France. As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known to occupied countries as “Last Hope Island.” Getting there, one young emigré declared, was “like getting to heaven.” Acclaimed historian Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history.

K. is possessed of a hyper-articulate exasperation with the world, a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K. loses his metaphorical capacity, becoming so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates everyone, friends and strangers alike. When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.

Peter Rena is a “fixer.” He and his partner, Randi Brooks, earn their living making the problems of the powerful disappear. They get their biggest job yet when the White House hires them to vet the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Judge Roland Madison is a legal giant, but he’s a political maverick, with views that might make the already tricky confirmation process even more difficult. Rena and his team go full-bore to cover every inch of the judge’s past, while the competing factions of Washington, D.C. mobilize with frightening intensity. All of that becomes background when a string of seemingly random killings overlaps with Rena’s investigation, with Judge Madison a possible target.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat --- until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether or not to intervene in a foreign country. Revealing a piece of forgotten history, Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the 20th century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands.