While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works. By senior year, Shay and her friend, Laurel, were the only ones who managed to escape. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel's death eight years later --- delivered by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader --- she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive. Recruiting the help of the podcast host, Shay goes back to the place she vowed never to return to in search of answers. As she follows the threads of her friend's life, she's pulled into a dark, seductive world, where wealth and privilege shield brutal philosophies that feel all too familiar.

PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation --- if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years. It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer. It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier --- a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents --- neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands --- all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives.

When audiobook narrator Sewanee Chester arrives in Las Vegas last-minute for a book convention, she unexpectedly spends a whirlwind night with a charming stranger. On her return home, she discovers that one of the world’s most beloved romance novelists wanted her to perform her last book --- with Brock McNight, the industry’s hottest, most secretive voice. As Sewanee begins working on the project, resurrecting her old romance pseudonym, she and Brock forge a real connection, hidden behind the comfort of anonymity. Soon, she is dreaming again. But secrets are revealed, and the realities of life come crashing down around her once more.

When introverted Ethan Fawcett marries fun-loving Barb, he has every reason to believe he will be delivered from a lifetime of solitude. She fills his world with a sense of adventure, expanding his horizons beyond his comfortable routine. To ease Ethan’s fears of becoming a father, Barb suggests they foster two young brothers, Tommy and Sam, and Ethan immediately falls in love with the boys. When the pandemic hits, he becomes obsessed with providing a perfect life for them. But instead of bringing Barb and Ethan closer together, the boys become a wedge in their relationship, as Ethan is unable to share with Barb a secret that has been haunting him since childhood. Then Ethan takes Tommy and Sam on a biking trip in Italy, and it becomes clear just how unusual Ethan and his boys are.

To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna --- the world’s first category 6 hurricane --- upends everything they have taken for granted. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will “normal” ever return?

Deep in the California woods, Jane Pearson is camping with her husband, Leo, and their five-year-old son, Benjamin. As dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world. Leo and Benjamin are gone. After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living. Meanwhile, strange video footage called “The Men” is being broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold the key to the Disappearance?

Eight-year-old Malaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church’s stuffy basement community center. For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother. But their relentless prescriptions don’t work on her. As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand “ladyness” and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called “femininity” that holds no room for her body. Meanwhile, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya’s weight. Nothing seems to help --- until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.

Nearly a decade ago, iconic magician Violet Volk performed her greatest trick yet: vanishing mid-act. Though she hasn’t been seen since, her hold on the public hasn’t wavered. Her sister, Sasha, took over their mother’s salon and built a quiet life for her daughter, Quinn. But Sasha can never seem to escape her sister’s orbit or her memories of their unresolved, tumultuous relationship. Then there’s Cameron Frank, determined to finally get his big break hosting a podcast devoted to all things Violet --- though keeping his job hinges on an exclusive interview with Sasha, the last person who wants to talk to him. Meanwhile, Sasha begins to experience an unsettling series of sleepwalking episodes and coincidences, which all lead back to Violet.

When law grad Cass Walker wakes up after surviving a car accident, she is flooded with memories of a man named Devin. The only problem? Devin --- as confirmed by family, friends and doctors --- doesn’t exist. Everything about him is a figment of Cass’ coma-addled imagination. Still, she can’t get him out of her head. So when she happens upon the real Devin a year later in a Cleveland flower shop, she’s completely shocked. Even more surprising is that Devin actually believes her story, and despite his protective younger brother’s doubts, they soon embark on a real-life romance. With her dream man by her side and a new job at a prestigious law firm, Cass’ future seems perfect. But fate might have other plans.