Cambridge, 1958. Late for class, Eva Edelstein swerves to miss a dog and crashes her bike. Jim Taylor hurries to help her. In that brief moment, three outcomes are born for Eva and Jim. As the strands of their lives weave together and apart across the decades from college through wildly different successes and disappointments, seductions and betrayals, births and funerals, joys and sorrows, the only constant is the power of their connection.

New York, 1993. Alice Culvert is a caring wife, a doting new mother, a loyal friend and a soulful artist --- a fashion designer who wears a baby carrier and haute couture with equal aplomb. In their loft in Manhattan’s gritty Meatpacking District, Alice and her husband, Oliver, are raising their infant daughter, Doe, delighting in the wonders of early parenthood. Their life together feels so vital and full of promise, which makes Alice’s sudden cancer diagnosis especially staggering. In the span of a single day, the couple’s focus narrows to the basic question of her survival.

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets --- her own, and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Russell has opened her heart: the couple’s longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson? Russell’s faith and affection are suddenly shattered when a man arrives on the doorstep claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s son. What Samuel Hudson tells Russell cannot possibly be true, yet she believes him --- as surely as she believes the threat of the gun in his hand. In a devastating instant, everything changes.

By day, Judith Rashleigh is a put-upon assistant at a prestigious London art house. By night, she’s a hostess at one of the capital’s notorious champagne bars, although her work there pales against her activities on nights off. Feeling reckless, she accompanies one of the champagne bar’s biggest clients to the French Riviera, only to find herself alone again after a fatal accident. Tired of striving and the slow crawl to the top, Judith has a realization: If you need to turn yourself into someone else, loneliness is a good place to start. And she’s been lonely a long time.

The author of the New York Times bestseller and beloved book club favorite THE KITCHEN HOUSE continues the story of Jamie Pyke, son of both a slave and master of Tall Oakes, whose deadly secret compels him to take a treacherous journey through the Underground Railroad. This new, stand-alone novel opens in 1830, and Jamie, who fled from the Virginian plantation he once called home, is passing in Philadelphia society as a wealthy white silversmith. After many years of striving, Jamie has achieved acclaim and security, only to discover that his aristocratic lover Caroline is pregnant.

Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, Fidelma McBride, becomes so enamored that she begs him for a child. All that world is shattered when Vlad is arrested, and his identity as a war criminal is revealed. A disgraced Fidelma flees to England and seeks work among the other migrants displaced by wars and persecution. But it is not until she confronts him --- her nemesis --- at the tribunal in The Hague that her physical and emotional journey reaches its breathtaking climax.

The German government has agreed to release a British subject from prison, but only if he is handed over to a family member. Because the man’s wife is bedridden and his daughter has been killed in an accident, the Secret Service wants Maisie Dobbs --- who bears a striking resemblance to the daughter --- to retrieve the man from Dachau. Traveling into the heart of Nazi Germany, Maisie encounters unexpected dangers --- and finds herself questioning whether it’s time to return to the work she loved. But the Secret Service may have other ideas.

In the fall of 1984, the Grand Hotel in the seaside town of Brighton, England, became ground zero for the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Nimbly weaving together fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy, Jonathan Lee vividly reimagines those fateful days from the perspectives of three unforgettable characters --- a young IRA bomb maker, the deputy hotel manager, and his teenage daughter --- whose lives will be changed forever by the Prime Minister’s visit.

WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS is built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret --- Helen Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In “Books and Roses” one special key opens a library, a garden and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?” an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think,” a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).

When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-30s, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between works and lives --- from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks to Andy Warhol's Time Capsules, from Henry Darger's hoarding to David Wojnarowicz's AIDS activism --- Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone.