When Caroline Lash arrives in Greenhead, Massachusetts, she falls head-over-heels for Van Whittaker. Born and raised in this picturesque coastal village, Van runs with the same crowd he did as a kid: his ex-girlfriend, Bailey; Augusta, who is old money, horsey and snobbish; and Fran, who is too fed up with boys to ever consider marrying one. Together, the group runs wild through the marshes, beaches and bars of Greenhead, drinking on houseboats and spending long afternoons sunbathing with their children. But when Bailey discovers that she is pregnant with Van’s baby, the delicate balance of the group’s friendship is thrown off. Soon Caroline is cast out of the circle. What she does next exposes long-held secrets and works the entire town of Greenhead into a lather. 

Ever since her father broke her heart when she was nine, Julia Heimdahl has tried to be good company for bad men: a jovial drinking companion, an easygoing, witty non-complainer, one of the boys. Now a literary novelist in late middle age and late mid-career, she is at a moment of crisis, although she doesn’t know it yet. GOOD COMPANY takes place over the course of a weekend-long book festival at Baldwin College, which happens to be Julia’s alma mater, where she has come to promote her recently published memoir. She’s been placed on a panel with a fellow memoirist named Ellis Blackwell, a man so outrageously flirtatious and fawningly flattering that Julia is almost too disarmed to recognize how dangerous he is. 

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods. In one, she and her brother, Ennis, live in the wooded shadow of their family's isolated Vermont farmhouse. In the other, they live in the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame --- until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors. Now an adult, Guinevere is forced to confront the questions she has spent the last 20 years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s fantasy world?

Song is a nobody --- just a food delivery worker from a village in Northeastern China --- but her son, River, is a little wonder. At the age of four, he toddled to a piano and tapped out his favorite song. At eight, he mastered Liszt's three Liebestraume. At 10, he blazed through the complete set of Chopin's études. And at every step, Song is there to light his way --- until finally, at the age of 11, River is invited to study with a preeminent teacher in Beijing. But in the chaos of Beijing Railway Station, Song faces every mother's nightmare. She loses her grip on River’s little hand and is unable to find him after a desperate, harrowing search. Over the next days, weeks and, eventually, years, Song and River fight to forge a path back to each other as they carve out new lives that carry them farther apart.

Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, Stevie can’t wait to move away from L.A., and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, out-of-work actress Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Now, neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other. And their cost of living forces them into a glass-walled pool house in the backyard, while their home is rented out to pay the bills. But when Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s forever crush, arrives for the funeral, the three are pulled into a messy orbit, moving back into the “Big House” and play-acting a picture-perfect family even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.

Alan Anderson is a powerful advertising executive who is up for the biggest pitch of his career and the account everyone wants: US Dairy. Cow’s milk sales are plummeting, and the C-Suite wants to see trendy oat milk kicked to the curb. When an anarchist farmer tanks Alan’s presentation, Alan bombs the pitch but ends the day with an epiphany. No longer will he exploit the insecurities of others in the service of capitalism. Alan is opting out. This development is anathema to his wife, Vivian, who can only watch as Alan moves into their backyard playhouse to live off the land and --- worse --- spend time with the family. But instead of shocking the neighbors, Alan’s commitment to a less-is-more lifestyle seems to be catching on. Could everyone want what Alan is not selling? 

It’s December 24, 1979, just before closing at Baker-Taylor’s discount department store, and Fran (née Baker) is surveying her domain. Her husband, Fred, is charming customers in the front of the store. The older Taylor kids are on register, while the younger ones’ chaos is contained to the stockroom. All is right in the world as the new decade approaches. With four healthy children and financial stability their own parents could have only dreamed of, Fred and Fran are the picture of the American Dream --- with a successful chain of family-owned stores built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each member of the family is struggling to keep up.

It all starts when Petra and her little sister, Patch, hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again 30 years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister. In a chiarascuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, GLYPH asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making.

At 26, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home. For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery. Now her disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables. But Fanny has another secret in store. She has won a spot on “America’s Beauty Extreme,” a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that already has claimed her mother’s face, she must confront the corrosive reality of the American Dream that is at the fraught heart of their relationship. 

Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family --- to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef, she will find herself. She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She's ready to believe.