As a queer kid in a conservative Ozarks community, Wade Rouse struggled at a young age to garner his father Ted’s approval and find his voice. But Wade and Ted had one thing in common: an undying love for the St. Louis Cardinals. When his father's health takes a turn for the worse, Wade returns to southwest Missouri. Together, during their own magic season, they'll move toward forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. 

When Mitya was two years old, he swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle. For his family, it marks the beginning of the end, the promise of certain death. For Mitya, it is a small, metal treasure that guides him from within. As he grows, his life mirrors the uncertain future of his country, which is attempting to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mitya finds himself facing a different sort of ambiguity: Is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels? After suffering horrific abuse from his cousin, Vovka, who has returned broken from war, Mitya embarks on a journey across underground Moscow to find something better, a place to belong.

1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz's Deli, new-fangled TVs. But in the Perlmans' walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rachel came to Manhattan in a wave of displaced Jews who managed to survive the horrors of war. Her Uncle Fritz fleeing with her, Rachel hoped to find freedom from her pain in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron. But this child of Berlin and daughter of an artist cannot seem to outrun her guilt in the role of American housewife, not until she can shed the ghosts of her past. And when Uncle Fritz discovers the most shocking portrait that her mother had ever painted, Rachel's memories begin to terrorize her, forcing her to face the choices she made to stay alive --- choices that might be her undoing.

On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Liz Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter.

In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders. Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect, but she was acquitted and retreated to the isolation of her mansion. Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist who runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes. They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?

Rob has spent her life running from Sundial, the family’s ranch deep in the Mojave Desert, and her childhood memories. But she’s worried about her daughter, Callie, who collects animal bones and whispers to imaginary friends. It reminds her of a darkness that runs in her family, and Rob knows it’s time to return. Callie is terrified of her mother. Rob digs holes in the backyard late at night and tells disturbing stories about growing up on the ranch. Soon Callie begins to fear that only one of them will leave Sundial alive.

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families by the tail end of the 20th century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. As she grows older, she slowly learns how the town’s prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm --- from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success --- and a movie adaptation --- to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected --- back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.