There’s a body crushed under a load of pipes on a San Francisco construction site, and medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska is on call. So it’s her job to figure out who it is --- and her headache when the autopsy reveals that the death is a homicide staged as an accident. Jessie is hot on the murderer’s trail, then an earthquake sends her and her whole city reeling. When the dust clears, her case has fallen apart and an innocent man is being framed. Jessie knows she’s the only one who can prove it, and she races to piece together the truth --- before it gets buried and brings her down in the rubble.

A dark history lingers in Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, Protestant martyrs were betrayed --- then burned. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And a few weeks ago, the vicar of the local parish hanged himself in the nave of the church. Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a 14-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping for a fresh start. Instead, Jack finds a town rife with conspiracies and secrets, and is greeted with a strange welcome package: an exorcism kit and a note that warns, “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.”

Michael and Megan Fitzgerald’s parents are public intellectuals, an Ivy League clinical psychologist and a renowned psychiatrist, and they brought up their adopted children in a rarefied, experimental environment. It forced secrets upon them that they keep at all costs. In Los Angeles, Detective Garrett Dobbs and FBI Agent Jessica Gimble have joined forces to work a murder that seems like a dead cinch. Their chief suspect is quickly identified and apprehended. But then there's another killing just like the one they've been investigating. And another. And not just in Los Angeles. The Fitzgerald family comes to the investigators' attention, but Dobbs and Gimble are at a loss. If one of the four is involved, which Fitzgerald might it be?

It is the early 1980s, and 15-year-old Libby is obsessed with The Field Guide to the Trees of North America, a gift her Irish immigrant father gave her before he died. She finds solace in “The Kingdom,” a stand of red oak and thick mountain laurel near her home in suburban Pennsylvania, where she can escape from her large and unruly family and share menthol cigarettes and lukewarm beers with her best friend. One night, while driving home, Libby’s mother, exhausted and overwhelmed with the fighting in the backseat, pulls over and orders Libby’s little sister, Ellen, to walk home. What none of this family knows, as they drive off leaving a 12-year-old girl on the side of the road, is what will happen next.

Love can propel us to our greatest heights…and darkest depths. In this new collection of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love --- crimes of passion, games of the heart and deadly affairs. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all on the ready to solve a tantalizing mystery.

The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys and chain-smoking cigarettes. For Josephine, now in her 30s, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in 15 years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace. Yet, Josephine now inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s scandal. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels.

When Jax receives nine missed calls from Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. Jax learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property --- and discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she ever could have imagined. In 1929, 37-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. Her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

Finlay Donovan is a stressed-out single mom of two and struggling novelist. The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors. When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she is mistaken for a contract killer and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet. Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.

A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences a family can have: to have a child and, conversely, the decision not to have a child. A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests --- and questions that reverberate down the years. When does sorrow turn to shame? When does love become labor? When does chance become choice? When does a diagnosis become destiny? And when does fact become fiction?

A mysterious group of detectives recruited for Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries use their cunning and gadgets to solve crimes that have stumped Scotland Yard. Late one night in April 1958, a filing assistant for Miss Brickett’s receives a letter warning her that a heinous act is about to occur. She goes to investigate, but at the stroke of midnight, she is murdered by a killer she can’t see --- her death the only sign she wasn’t alone. Marion Lane, a first-year Inquirer-in-training, finds herself being drawn ever deeper into the investigation. When her colleague is framed for the crime, she must sort through the hidden alliances at Miss Brickett’s and secrets dating back to WWII to uncover the real killer.

Cat lives in Los Angeles, far away from 36 Westeryk Road, the imposing gothic house in Edinburgh where she and her estranged twin sister, El, grew up. As girls, they invented Mirrorland, a dark, imaginary place under the pantry stairs full of pirates, witches and clowns. These days Cat rarely thinks about their childhood home, or the fact that El now lives there with her husband, Ross. But when El mysteriously disappears after going out on her sailboat, Cat is forced to return to 36 Westeryk Road, which has scarcely changed in 20 years. The grand old house is still full of shadowy corners, and at every turn Cat finds herself stumbling on long-held secrets and terrifying ghosts from the past.

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant who answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a San Francisco widower named Martin Hocking, a man she knows nothing about. She quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. The fates of Sophie and two other women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake of 1906, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. She is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother, a Cuban immigrant named Carmen, and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, Carmen must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

After years in Los Angeles, Daniel Sajadi is returning home to Kabul at the helm of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to eradicating the poppy fields that feed the world’s opiate addiction. But on the drive out of Kabul for an anniversary trip with his wife, Daniel accidentally hits and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. He is let off with a nominal fine, in part because nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law, but also because a mysterious witness named Taj Maleki intercedes on his behalf. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to unravel, running from his crumbling marriage and escalating threats from Taj, who turns out to be a powerful opium khan willing to go to extremes to save his poppies.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby, Violet, that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter --- she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son, Sam, is born --- and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fallout forces Blythe to face the truth.

On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival…hand to hand, word to word."

Ohio, 1927: Moonshining is a way of life in rural Bronwyn County, and even the otherwise upstanding Sheriff Lily Ross has been known to turn a blind eye when it comes to stills in the area. But when 13-year-old Jebediah Ranklin almost dies after drinking tainted moonshine, Lily knows that someone has gone too far. With the help of organizer and moonshiner Marvena Whitcomb, she is determined to find out who. But then Lily’s nemesis, the businessman George Vogel, reappears in town with his new wife, Fiona. Along with them is her former brother-in-law, Luther Ross, now an agent for the newly formed Bureau of Prohibition. To Lily, it seems too much of a coincidence that they should arrive now.

Serge Storms has decided to investigate his own history using one of those DNA services from late-night TV. Excited to construct a family tree, he and Coleman hit the road to meet his kin. Serge is thrilled to discover he may be related to a notorious serial killer who’s terrorized the state for 20 years and never been caught. Which of his newfound relatives will be the one to help him hunt down this deranged maniac? Serge doesn’t know that a dogged investigator from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is also hot on the trail. Then he meets a park ranger who’s also longing to make a family reconnection. But all is not as it appears on the surface, and Serge’s newfound friendship in the mysterious swamps of Florida may lead to deadly results.

As the newest member of the Curiosity Club --- an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women --- Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder. She and her natural historian beau, Stoker, tell the patron of the exhibit, Princess Gisela of Alpenwald, of their findings. With Europe on the verge of war, Gisela's chancellor, Count von Rechstein, does not want to make waves --- and before Veronica and Stoker can figure out their next move, the princess disappears.

The night the sky fell, Jack and Nora Abernathy’s daughter vanished in the woods. And Mia’s disappearance broke her parents’ already fragile marriage. Unable to solve her own daughter’s case, Nora lost herself in her work as a homicide detective. Jack’s promising career as a biologist crumbled alongside the meteor strikes that altered weather patterns and caused a massive drought. It isn’t until five years later that the rains finally return to nourish Seattle. In this period of sudden growth, Jack uncovers evidence of a new parasitic fungus, while Nora investigates several brutal, ritualistic murders. Soon they will be drawn together by a horrifying connection between their discoveries.

Mackenzie Dienes seems to have it all: a beautiful home, close friends and a successful career as an elite winemaker with the family winery. There’s just one problem --- it’s not her family, it’s her husband’s. So when she and her husband admit their marriage is over, her pain goes beyond heartbreak. She’s on the brink of losing everything. Her job, her home, her friends and, worst of all, her family. Staying is an option. She can continue to work at the winery, be friends with her mother-in-law, hug her nieces and nephews --- but as an employee, nothing more. Or she can surrender every piece of her heart in order to build a legacy of her own. If she can dare to let go of the life she thought she wanted, she might discover something even more beautiful waiting for her beneath a painted moon.

Santa Cruz, 1953. Jean-Luc is a man on the run from his past. The scar on his face is a small price to pay for surviving the horrors of Nazi occupation in France. Now, he has a new life in California, a family. He never expected the past to come knocking on his door. Paris, 1944. A young Jewish woman's past is torn apart in a heartbeat. Herded onto a train bound for Auschwitz, in an act of desperation she entrusts her most precious possession to a stranger. All she has left now is hope. On a darkened platform, two destinies become intertwined, and the choices each person makes will change the future in ways neither could have imagined.