In 18th-century Paris, Jacob Cerf is a Jew, a peddler of knives, saltcellars and snuffboxes. Despite a disastrous teenage marriage, he is determined to raise himself up in life. More than 200 years later, Jacob is amazed to find himself reincarnated as a fly in the Long Island suburbs of 21st-century America. Thanks to his arrival, the lives of a reliable volunteer fireman and a young Orthodox Jewish woman nursing a secret ambition will never be the same.

For Rebecca Dana, Truman Capote and Nora Ephron were her gods and New York City was her Jerusalem. After graduating from college, she moves to New York and all of her dreams come true. However, when they come crashing down around her, she finds herself living in Brooklyn's Lubavitch community with Cosmo, a 30-year-old Russian rabbi who practices jujitsu on the side. Both disenchanted with their religions, they go searching for meaning.

When a deadly supercolony of ants begins a series of gruesome attacks on New York City, the desperate mayor turns to the greatest ant expert in the world, Paul O'Keefe, who then calls on his ex-wife Kendra Hart, an entomologist studying fire ants in the New Mexico desert, for help. When the ants launch an all-out attack, Paul and Kendra hit the streets of New York to search for the coveted queen and unlock the secrets of an indestructible new species before the president nukes Manhattan.

At age 12, Julia Pandl was initiated into the rite of the Sunday brunch while working at her father's Milwaukee-based restaurant with her eight older siblings. There she learned the ropes of the family business as well as life lessons that would shape her for all the years to come. Her time working at the restaurant was not just a time of growing up, but ultimately of becoming a source of strength and support as the world her father knew began to change into a tougher, less welcoming place.

Fourteen-year-old Peter and his two siblings live on the fictional island of Finø, where people of all religious faiths coexist peacefully. Yet nothing is at it seems. When their eccentric and profoundly devout mother and father suddenly disappear, they must question whether their parents' relentless quest to boost church attendance has put them in danger.

In the present day: As three strangers attempt to navigate the chaos cast upon civilization by a U.S. government experiment gone wrong, their destinies intertwine. A hundred years in the future: Amy, Peter, Alicia and the others introduced in THE PASSAGE hunt the original 12 virals, unaware that the rules of the game have changed and that one of them will have to sacrifice everything to bring the Twelve down.

Yael, Avishag and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain.

On a small snow-covered island lives 12-year-old Minou, her philosopher Papa, Boxman the magician, and a clever dog called No-Name. A year earlier, Minou's mother left the house wearing her best shoes and carrying a large black umbrella. She never returned. One morning, Minou finds a dead boy washed up on the beach. Her father decides to lay him in the room that once belonged to her mother. Can her mother’s disappearance be explained by the boy?

The Rovaniemis and their nine children belong to a deeply traditional church in modern-day Michigan. A normal family in many ways, the Rovaniemis struggle with sibling rivalry, parental expectations, and forming their own unique identities in such a large family. But when two of the children venture from the faith, the family fragments and a haunting question emerges: Do we believe for ourselves, or for each other?

Meet the Keller family, five generations of firstborn women --- a line of daughters unbroken --- living together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. Told from varying viewpoints, Courtney Miller Santo’s debut novel captures the joys and sorrows of family --- the love, secrets, disappointments, jealousies and forgiveness that tie generations to one other.