Dortchen Wild, who lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century, finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm Grimm and his brothers preserve old half-forgotten tales. As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what one day will become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry, and war, death and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way.

Hannah Martin has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles. She goes out to a bar one night with her best friend, Gabby, and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan. Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan? In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision.

After recovering from a serious illness, Stella Sweeney finds out that her neurologist, Dr. Mannix Taylor, has compiled and self-published a memoir about her illness. Her discovery comes when she spots a photo of the finished copy in an American tabloid --- and it’s in the hands of the vice president’s wife! As her relationship with Dr. Taylor gets more complicated, Stella struggles to figure out who she was before her illness, who she is now, and who she wants to be while relocating to New York City to pursue a career as a newly minted self-help memoirist.

Fifteen-year-old orphan Ana Cortez has just blown her last chance with a foster family. It’s a group home next --- unless she agrees to leave East Los Angeles for a farm trainee program in Northern California. Despite being a fish out of water in this rural setting, Ana eventually comes to love Garber Farm. But when she inadvertently stirs up trouble in town, Ana is afraid she might have ruined her last chance at finding a place to belong.

From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, Monsieur Perdu prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened. After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story.

When a shocking family secret is revealed, twenty-something journalist Cat Coombs finds herself falling into a dark spiral. Wild, glamorous nights out in London and raging hangovers the next day become her norm, leading to a terrible mistake one night while visiting family in America. When she returns home, she confronts the unavoidable reality of her life and knows it's time to grow up. As the years pass, Cat grows into her 40s, a struggling single mother, coping with a new-found sobriety and determined to finally make amends.

The House of Farrell is a prolific skincare company and home of The Cream, an iconic face product. But the world of cosmetics is changing, and the once glorious House of Farrell is now in decline, its customers tempted away by more fashionable brands. With no idea how to right the ship, company figurehead Athina Farrell hires Bianca Bailey, a formidable businesswoman. Athina and Bianca lock horns over the future of the House of Farrell, but it’s the past that tells its devastating tale of ambition and ego, passion and wonder.

A man strikes an under-the-table deal with a surgeon to spend a few quiet seconds closer to his wife than he's ever been; a young soon-to-be mother looks on in paralyzing astonishment as her husband walks away from a 20-year career in advertising at the urging of his spirit animal; an elderly artist risks more than he knows when he's commissioned by his newly arrived neighbors to produce the work of a lifetime. In her debut collection, Lauren Acampora brings to the page the myriad lives of a suburban town and lays them bare.

A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcroft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity --- that she, in fact, is Lydia --- their world comes crashing down once again.

Not only has Che Milan’s longtime lover abruptly dumped her, but her eccentric, demanding mother has recently died. When an urn of ashes arrives, along with a note reminding Che of a half-forgotten promise to take her mother to Canterbury, Che finds herself reluctantly undertaking a pilgrimage. Within days she joins a group of women who are walking the 60 miles from London to the shrine of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, reputed to be the site of miracles. The women swap stories as they walk, each vying to see who can best describe true love.