Founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company, Houghton and Annabelle Forster raise their four children with the expectation that they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability --- and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.

A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of 19th-century Siam. A post-WWII society woman marries, mothers and holds court, little suspecting her solitary future. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the resident spirits. A young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in New Krungthep, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself.

THE BIRD KING tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret --- he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls?

Seventeen-year-old Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to an isolated cabin in a remote beach town --- a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn't her real name. And Jim isn't really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he's hiding her for her own good. But Evie can't remember anything about that night --- for all she knows, he's lying. As fragments of her memory return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her savior...or her jailer.

It’s the early spring of 1875 in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as “Check,” a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In CHEROKEE AMERICA, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check’s mixed-race family, friends and neighbors come together to protect their community --- and painfully expel one of their own.

After the death of their mother, sisters Daisy and Beatriz Davenport found a home with their aunt Stella in the beautiful and welcoming town of Cape Sanctuary. Now, with Daisy and Bea grown, it’s time for Stella to reveal the secret she’s been keeping from them --- a secret that will change their family forever. Bea thought she’d sown all her wild oats when she got pregnant far too young. The marriage that followed was rocky and not destined to last. Now, just as she’s beginning to pursue a new love with an old friend, Bea’s ex-husband resurfaces and turns her life completely upside down. Then there’s Daisy, who has never taken a risk --- until she meets a man who makes her question everything she thought she knew about life, love and the power of taking chances.

Erin Hosier’s coming-of-age was full of contradictions. Born into the turbulent 1970s, she was raised in rural Ohio by lapsed hippies who traded 1960s rock ‘n’ roll for 1950s-era Christian hymns. Her mother’s newfound faith was rooted in a desire to manage her husband’s mood swings, which could alternately fill the house with music or with violence. With the Beatles providing the soundtrack, Erin grew up adoring her larger-than-life father, Jack. Together, they bonded over their iconic songs, even as they inspired Erin to question authority --- both her father’s and others’.

FEAST YOUR EYES, framed as the catalogue notes from a photography show at the Museum of Modern Art, tells the life story of Lillian Preston. After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school’s photo club, Lillian rejects her parents’ expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter’s sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives, and especially Lillian’s career, as she continues a life-long quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition.

Natalie March is a respected surgeon whose deepest relationship is with her mother, Vera March, a Russian immigrant and MS patient confined to a rehabilitation center. Vera is still haunted by the fact that her Ukrainian parents were sent to the gulag, Stalin's notorious network of labor camps, when she was just a baby. All her life she has presumed that they perished there. Natalie would do anything to heal her mother's psychic pain: it's the one wound that she, a doctor, cannot mend. When a young Russian dancer comes to Natalie's office claiming to be her cousin, and providing details about her grandmother that no stranger could know, Natalie must face a surprising truth: her grandmother, Katarina Melnikova, is still very much alive.

When a shadowy American diplomatic complex is attacked in North Africa, the White House is besieged by accusations of incompetence and wild conspiracy theories. Eager to learn the truth, the president and his staff turn to Peter Rena and his partner, Randi Brooks. The investigators dive headfirst into the furtive world of foreign intelligence and national security, hoping to do it quietly. That becomes impossible, though, when it blows up into an all-out public scandal: Congress opens hearings, and a tireless national security reporter publishes a bombshell exposé. Now, Rena and Brooks are caught in the middle.

Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of his hotel in Switzerland, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, followed by New York, then London and finally Berlin. Two months later, there are 20 survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Jon and the rest try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when he goes up to the roof to investigate the hotel’s worsening water quality, he is shocked to discover the body of a young girl floating in one of the tanks. As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind the girl’s death.

Alexandr, Christine, Zachary and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their 20s. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine are spending a leisurely summer’s evening at home when they receive a call from a distraught Lydia: she is at the hospital. Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored; all agree that Zach, with his generous, grounded spirit, was the irreplaceable one they couldn’t afford to lose. Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.

In the small town of Tiptoe Floorboard, the Doe clan, a close-knit family of criminals and victims, has the run of the place. Yet there are signs that patriarch John Doe’s reign may be coming to an end. When Jetty Doe breaks into a gun store and makes off with a Kalashnikov, the stage is set for a violent confrontation. But while Jetty is making her way across town in a taxi, an elusive, chatty narrator takes us on a wild journey, zooming in and out on various members of the Doe clan with long, digressive riffs that chase down the causes and repercussions of Jetty’s act.

The women in Polly Rosenwaike’s LOOK HOW HAPPY I'M MAKING YOU want to be mothers, or aren’t sure they want to be mothers, or --- having recently given birth --- are overwhelmed by what they’ve wrought. One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another, nervous about her biological clock, “forgets” to take her birth control while dating a younger man and must confront the possibility of becoming a single parent. Four motherless women who meet in a bar every Mother’s Day contend with their losses and what it would mean for one of them to have a child.

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within 24 hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day. Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages, scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation --- awkward but electrifying --- something life-changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world, while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Twenty-one-year-old Mallie Williams has just landed on her feet following a tumultuous youth when the unthinkable happens: she is violently assaulted. The crime leaves her comatose, surrounded by friends and family who are hoping against hopes for a full recovery. But soon Mallie's small community finds themselves divided. The rape has left Mallie pregnant, and while some friends are convinced that she would never keep the pregnancy, others are sure that a baby would be the only good thing to come out of all of this pain. Mallie, her family and her town find themselves at the center of a media storm, confronting questions nobody should have to face. And when Mallie emerges from the fog, what will she think of the choices that were made on her behalf?

Juliette loves Nate. She will follow him anywhere. She’s even become a flight attendant for his airline so she can keep a closer eye on him. They are meant to be. The fact that Nate broke up with her six months ago means nothing. Because Juliette has a plan to win him back. She is the perfect girlfriend. And she’ll make sure no one stops her from getting exactly what she wants. True love hurts, but Juliette knows it’s worth all the pain.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction --- but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

The year is 1911. The young rock blaster Oskar Johansson has been killed in an accident. Or so it says in the local newspaper. In spite of serious injuries, however, Oskar survives. Decades later, Oskar looks back and reflects on his working life as an invalid, his marriage, his dreams and his hopes. Oskar's life is woven together out of fragments of voices, images and episodes that, taken together, provide a sharp and precise picture of life in Sweden for the working class.

Ivan is a tightly wound philosophy professor. His wife, Prue, is quite the opposite: a pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is bold and vibrant, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them. Might it have something to do with the arrival of the college's dashing but insufferable new writer-in-residence, whose novel Prue always seems to be reading? Into this delicate moment barrels Ivan's unstable father-in-law, Frank, in town to hear Prue deliver a lecture on birdsong that is set to cement her tenure application. But the talk doesn't go as planned, unleashing a series of crises that force Ivan to finally confront the problems in his marriage.

On Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor waits in the church graveyard, hoping to encounter the ghost of her missing husband and thus confirm his death. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run. She shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marshy landscape of the Tidelands, not knowing she is leading a spy and an enemy into her life. England is in the grip of a bloody civil war that reaches into the most remote parts of the kingdom. Alinor’s suspicious neighbors are watching each other for any sign that someone might be disloyal to the new parliament, and Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her as a woman who doesn’t follow the rules. They have always whispered about the sinister power of Alinor’s beauty, but the secrets they don’t know about her and James are far more damning.

Ostracized by his family after a botched case that led to the death of his baby cousin, Jeffrey, Frank was on a collision course with catastrophe. Now clean and clinging hard to sobriety, he's barely eking out a living as a private investigator for a defense attorney --- who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. Frank passes the time --- and tests himself --- by robbing the houses of local dealers, taking their cash and flushing their drugs down the toilet. But when an old friend from his police days needs Frank's help to prove he didn't shoot an unarmed civilian, Frank is drawn back into the world of dirty cops and suspicious drug busts, running in the same circles that enabled his addiction those years ago.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping clients perfect their brands. But Iris has died, taken by terminal illness at only 33. Adrift without his friend and colleague, Smith is surprised to discover that in her last six months, Iris created a blog filled with sharp and often funny musings on the end of a life not quite fulfilled. She also made one final request: for Smith to get her posts published as a book. With the help of his charmingly eager, if overbearingly forthright, new intern Carl, Smith tackles the task of fulfilling Iris’ last wish. Before he can do so, though, he must get the approval of Iris’ big sister Jade, a haute cuisine chef who’s been knocked sideways by her loss.