When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets --- secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives.

Emily is in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend.

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life after losing his beloved wife. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too.

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem --- she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path?

On the heels of a difficult break-up and a devastating diagnosis, Shakespeare scholar Lizzie Delford decides to take one last lavish vacation on Elba with her best friend and his movie-star boyfriend. When Lizzie sneaks off to the public beach, she meets a sardonic chef named Dante; his battered dog, Lily; and his wry daughter, Etta, a 12-year-old desperate for a mother. While Dante shows Lizzie the island’s secrets, and Etta dazzles with her irreverent humor, Lizzie is confronted with a dilemma. Is it right to fall in love if time is short? Is it better to find a mother briefly, or to have no mother at all? And most pressingly, are the delicacies of life worth tasting, even if you will get to savor them only for a short while?

Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was immediately taken with Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends. Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate, estranged from the others. Her carefully walled life is torn open by threatening letters. Unless she and her former friends return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers --- their last-ditch attempt to save Home --- will be revealed. From vastly different lives, the five return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?

In the summer of 1991, a teenage girl named Dee McBride vanished in the city of Milwaukee. Nearly 30 years later, Dee’s sister, Peg, is still haunted by her disappearance. Their mother, on her deathbed, is desperate to find out what happened to Dee, so the family hires a psychic to help find Dee’s body and bring them some semblance of peace. The appearance of the psychic plunges Peg back to those final carefree months when she last saw Dee. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes dominated the headlines and overwhelmed local law enforcement. Peg’s hazy recollections are far from easy for her to interpret, assess or even keep clear in her mind. And now digging deep into her memory raises doubts and difficult --- even terrifying --- questions.

Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” --- the family summer place that she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t forever changed the course of their lives. As Miranda Cowley Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity.

Nineteen-year-old Sherri Taylor plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she’s ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and factory workers for the defining experience of her life. Living in the “bunny hutch” --- Playboy’s version of a college dorm --- Sherri gets her education in the joys of sisterhood, the thrill of financial independence, the magic of first love, and the heady effects of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But as spring gives way to summer, Sherri finds herself caught in a romantic triangle --- and the tragedy that ensues will haunt her for the next 40 years.