In the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory --- and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails. Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s.

At the start of the 1989 uprising in Romania, CIA analyst Bill Hefflin --- a disillusioned Romanian expat --- arrives in Bucharest at the insistence of his KGB asset, code-named Boris. As Hefflin becomes embroiled in an uprising that turns into a brutal revolution, nothing is as it seems, including the search for his childhood love, which has taken on mythical proportions. With the bloody events unfolding at blinding speed, Hefflin realizes the revolution is manipulated by outside forces, including his own CIA and Boris --- the puppeteer who seems to be pulling all the strings of Hefflin’s life.

The First Rule is the most important: Always run, never fight. For generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1968, and she is on the cusp of destiny, poised to launch the first humans into space. But she cannot take them to the stars, not quite yet. Her adversary is at her heels, the future of the planet at stake, and obeying the First Rule is no longer an option. For the first time in 100 generations, Mia’s family will have to choose to stand their ground, risking not only their bloodline but the future of the human race.

Commissario Guido Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini. Her son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing that their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors --- that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Carmen Valdez, an assistant at Triumph Comics, is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to figure out what happened to him. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

Ever since her husband’s death in a freak accident the year before, Skyla spends her nights ruminating about the regrets and deceptions in her long marriage. That is, until she rents a cottage to a charming British man, Teddy Cornwell. A thousand miles away, Linelle is about to turn 50. Bored by her spouse and fired from her job, her only source of joy is an online affair with her very first love, a man she’s not seen in nearly 30 years, Teddy Cornwell. While in New York City, Jeremy, a failed and bitter writer, accepts an assignment to review a new restaurant in Providence. Years ago, Providence was the site of his first great love and first great heartbreak --- and maybe, just maybe, he’ll look her up when he’s back in town.

A DNA match on an online ancestry database brings Wilde closer to his past than he’s ever dreamed and finally gives him the opening he needs to track down his father. But meeting the man brings up more questions than answers. So Wilde reaches out to his last, most desperate lead: a second cousin who disappears as quickly as he resurfaces, having experienced an epic fall from grace. Was his cousin’s downfall a long time coming? Or was he the victim of a conspiracy as cunning as it is complex? And how does it all connect to the man once known as The Stranger, a treacherous fugitive with a growing following whose mission and methods have only turned more dangerous with time?

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. None of them know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke --- until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they’re located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it? FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman?

In response to a hostage situation, more than 600 inmates from the Pronghorn Correctional Facility, including everyone on Death Row, are released into the Nevada Desert. John Kradle, convicted of murdering his wife and son, is one of the escapees. Now, desperate to discover what really happened that night, Kradle must avoid capture and work quickly to prove his innocence as law enforcement closes in on the fugitives. Death Row Supervisor, and now fugitive-hunter, Celine Osbourne has focused all of her energy on catching Kradle and bringing him back to Death Row. She has very personal reasons for hating him --- and she knows exactly where he’s heading.

Archie Mint has led a charmed life. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered --- and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint has been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined. While working on Mint’s body before his funeral, mortician “Zig” Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Mint’s former top-secret military unit and his connection to artist Nola Brown. Following Nola’s trail, he uncovers one of the U.S. government’s most intensely guarded secrets --- an undisclosed military facility that holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself.