Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via “Soul Train”; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay; and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens. On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance. Among them is lifetime resident Miss Metropolitan, advice columnist for the local weekly. But how could anyone who fancies herself a “newspaperwoman” have missed a horror story unfolding right across the street? And why is it that only two of the three girls --- now women --- were found?

After years of struggling to write following the deaths of his wife and son, English professor Connor Nye publishes his first novel, a thriller about the murder of a young woman. There’s just one problem: Connor didn’t write the book. His missing student did. And then she appears on his doorstep, alive and well, threatening to expose him. Connor’s problems escalate when the police insist details in the novel implicate him in an unsolved murder from two years ago. Soon Connor discovers the crime is part of a disturbing scandal on campus and faces an impossible dilemma --- admit he didn’t write the book and lose his job, or keep up the lie and risk everything. When another murder occurs, Connor must clear his name by unraveling the horrifying secrets buried in his student’s manuscript.

Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool --- a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime --- it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?

In her 20s, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s complexion isn’t dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white --- her complexion is dark because she is African American.

For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on the North Fork of Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered, and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface. For matriarch Vivian, she fears that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she's harbored for decades. Meanwhile, her daughter, Leah, finds her marriage at a crossroads and returns home for a sorely needed escape. And granddaughter Sadie runs to the vineyard looking for inspiration. But when Sadie uncovers journals from Vivian's old book club dedicated to scandalous novels of decades past, she realizes that this might be the distraction they all need.

It’s 1966, and Frankie Croy retreats to her friend’s vacant palazzo in Venice. Years have passed since the initial success of Frankie’s debut novel, and she has spent her career trying to live up to the expectations. Now, after a particularly scathing review of her most recent work, she needs to recharge and get re-inspired. Then Gilly appears. A precocious young admirer eager to make friends, Gilly seems determined to insinuate herself into Frankie’s solitary life. But there’s something about the young woman that gives Frankie pause. How much of what Gilly tells her is the truth? As a series of lies and revelations emerge, the lives of these two women will be tragically altered as the catastrophic 1966 flooding of Venice ravages the city.

They're not the most popular freshmen at their Florida prep school, but at least everyone knows their name(s). The Brittanys. Brittany Rosenberg drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys. Brittany Gottlieb insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She heard it somewhere!). Brittany Tomassi is from New York. Brittany Jensen once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. She is the greatest person in the whole wide world --- at least as far as the fifth Brittany, our narrator, is concerned. Even within their friend group, she and Jensen are a duo. But Jensen's interests may be diverging from her friends'. And within our narrator's own family, life-changing events may be taking shape --- events that only years later, she has the perspective to see.

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess --- and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

In 2013, after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, 14-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book called Long Division, which is set in 1985. This version of City travels into the future, and steals a laptop and cell phone from an orphaned teenage rapper called Baize Shephard. They take these items with them to 1964 to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City’s two stories converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline --- her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered. But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman --- he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power.