On a frigid January night, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson are called to the scene of a raging fire that quickly becomes a double homicide and kidnapping. As the days and hours tick by, Russ and Clare fight personal and professional battles they never could have imagined that will change their lives forever.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of 13 is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Two already stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn't believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.

Life has been more bitter than sweet for Anya Balachine. Perhaps hardest of all, her decision to open a nightclub with her old nemesis Charles Delacroix has cost Anya her relationship with Win. But after a terrible misjudgment leaves Anya fighting for her life, she is forced to reckon with her choices.

Weeks after meeting a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, Asta Eicher and her three children are dead. Journalist Emily Thornhill becomes deeply invested in understanding what happened, and allies herself with a banker who is wracked by guilt for not saving Asta. She goes to West Virginia to cover the murder trial and to investigate the story herself, accompanied by a charming and unconventional photographer who is equally drawn to the case.

To Sam Blount, meeting Julia is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Working at the local college, he’d been feeling troubled about his approaching 40th birthday, but being with Julia makes him feel young and hopeful. Their relationship is tested by a shy young man with a secret, Marcus Broley, who is also infatuated with Julia.

Putting aside poetry in favor of music, and drawing on his classical bassoon training, Paul Chowder turns instead to his new acoustic guitar with one goal in mind: to learn songwriting. As he struggles to come to terms with the horror of America’s drone wars and ex-girlfriend Roz’s recent relationship with a local NPR radio host, Paul fills his days with Quaker meetings, Planet Fitness workouts, and some experiments with tobacco.

Summer, 1929. Global financial ruin may be on the horizon, but in Paris, decadence is synonymous with freedom. The American expat community of artists, musicians and writers is joined by Harris Stuyvesant, private inquiry agent and former officer with the American Bureau of Investigation. Stuyvesant is investigating a missing American girl, whose disappearance may be one of many, and possibly linked to a series of murders.

Kathryn Callaghan has just finished her novel about painter Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, a survivor of the French Revolution hated for her sympathetic portraits of Marie Antoinette. Though still haunted by the story she has written, Kathryn must leave the 18th-century European world she has researched and made vivid in order to return to her own life as an American in 2012.

Twelve-year-old William Eng has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday --- or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday --- William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.