France, 1939. In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. As danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious 18-year-old girl. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

Otto finds a note left by his wife in the kitchen of their farmhouse in windswept Saskatchewan. Eighty-three-year-old Etta will be walking 3,200 kilometers to see the ocean, but somehow, Otto understands. He took his own journey once before, to fight in a faraway land. With Etta gone, Otto struggles with his demons of war, while their friend Russell initially pursues the woman he has loved from afar. And James --- well, James you have to meet on the page.

When Gaby Baillieux releases the Angel Worm into Australia’s prison computer system, hundreds of asylum-seekers walk free. And because the Americans run the prisons, the doors of some 5,000 jails in the United States also open. Is this a mistake, or a declaration of cyber war? Felix Moore, known to himself as “our sole remaining left-wing journalist,” is determined to write Gaby’s biography in order to find the answers. But how can he get Gaby --- on the run, scared, confused and angry --- to cooperate?

HOW TO BE BOTH is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real --- and all of life’s givens are given a second chance.

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?