As Ted and Grace Chapman’s picture-perfect life begins to crumble, they are rescued by Beth, an assistant promising to calm Ted’s rages and lend Grace emotional support. But Grace harbors dark secrets in her past, and Beth’s persona might be too good to be true. It soon appears that this new interloper might be the biggest threat of all, one that could cost Grace her marriage, her reputation and even her sanity.

Following World War II, four women in Sydney, Australia join 650 other war brides on an extraordinary voyage to England --- aboard HMS Victoria, which still carries not just arms and aircraft but a thousand naval officers. The men and the brides will find their lives intertwined despite the Navy’s ironclad sanctions. And for Frances Mackenzie, whose past comes back to haunt her far from home, the journey will change her life in ways she never could have predicted.

On the grounds of a Caribbean island resort, newlyweds Deb and Chip meet a marine biologist who says she has sighted mermaids in a coral reef. As the resort's "parent company" swoops in to corner the market on mythological creatures, the couple joins forces with other adventurous souls to save said mermaids from the "Venture of Marvels," which wants to turn their reef into a theme park.

A platoon of young men and one female soldier leaves Italy for one of the most dangerous places on earth: Forward Operating Base (FOB) in the Gulistan district of Afghanistan. Each member in the platoon manages the toxic mix of boredom and fear that is life at the FOB in his own way. But when a much-debated mission goes devastatingly awry, the soldiers find their lives changed in an instant.

The North Dakota oil business is spawning shantytowns full of men hired to work on the rigs. When two young men in their first year on the job disappear, only their mothers believe there’s hope of finding them. Colleen, used to her decorous life in a wealthy suburb, is determined to find her son. And hard-bitten Shay, from the wrong side of the tracks, is on the same mission. These two unlikely partners must work together against the town of strangers if they want any chance of finding their lost boys.

In the waning months of World War II, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood. The subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands. The friends come together once again to recall their days in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case. Is the truth buried among these aging friends and their memories?

In 1905, a tourist agent and amateur antiques collector named Armand de Potter mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Greece. His body is never recovered, and his wife is left to manage his affairs on her own. But as she starts to piece together his life, she realizes that everything was not as he had said.

Maternal, sexy Catt and her beautiful, daring best friend, Bree, are hairdressers at an L.A. salon called Head Hunter, and work out at a gym called Body Farm. They have over a decade of sobriety behind them and are getting close to living the lives they've always wanted. But when Catt's husband, Dash, leaves her, and then her neighbor is brutally murdered, possibly by a man being called the Hollywood Serial Killer, Catt's world begins to come crashing down.
 

Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, MORAL DISORDER, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships. A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband in "Alphinland," the first of three loosely linked stories about the romantic geometries of a group of writers and artists.

One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. STATION ELEVEN charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.