We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married and have children --- but no long-term relationship is as simple as “happily ever after.” THE COURSE OF LOVE is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. You experience, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter.

When a late-summer hurricane slams into Boston, Detective Eddy Harkness and his Narco-Intel crew are thrown into the eye of a very different kind of storm. Dark Horse --- an especially pure and deadly brand of heroin --- has infiltrated the gritty Lower South End. Harkness soon finds that the drug is also at the center of an audacious land grab by the city’s corrupt new mayor and his shadowy power brokers. Meanwhile, Lower South End residents displaced by the storm use an obscure bylaw to move into Eddy’s hometown, and soon enough tensions are running high along Nagog’s tree-lined streets.

Henry Quantum has several thoughts going through his head at any given time, so it’s no surprise when he forgets something very important --- specifically, a Christmas gift for his wife, which he realizes on the morning of December 23rd. Henry sets off that day in search of the perfect present for her: a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume. But much like Henry’s ever-wandering mind, his quest takes him in different and unexpected directions, including running into the former love of his life, Daisy. His wife, meanwhile, is hiding a secret of her own. And Daisy, who has made the unsettling choice of leaving her husband to strike out on her own, finds herself questioning whether she and Henry belong together after all.

Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten, but not far enough to escape from the world’s troubles. At the center of the island’s life is a café draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where the community gathers to gossip and talk. Amedeo Esposito, a foundling from Florence, finds his destiny on the island with his beautiful wife, Pina, whose fierce intelligence, grace and unwavering love guide her every move. An indiscretion tests their marriage, and their children --- three sons and an inquisitive daughter --- grow up and struggle with both humanity’s cruelty and its capacity for love and mercy.

All families have their myths and legends. For many years, Juliet Nicolson accepted hers --- the dangerous beauty of her flamenco-dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita Sackville-West, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. But then Juliet, a distinguished historian, started to question. As she did so, she sifted fact from fiction, uncovering details and secrets long held just out of sight.

For the lovely Billy Harper, Butternut Lake is the place she feels most at home, even though lately she feels that the only one listening to her is Murphy, her faithful Labrador Retriever. Her teenage son, Luke, has gone from precious to precocious practically overnight. Her friends are wrapped up in their own lives, and Luke’s father, Wesley, disappeared before his son was even born. But Billy is about to learn that anything is possible during the heady days of summer. Coming to terms with her past --- the death of her father, the arrival of Cal Cooper, a complicated man with a definite interest in Billy, even the return of Wesley --- will force her to have a little bit of faith in herself and others...and realize that happiness doesn’t always mean perfection.

In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the “almighty dollar” plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the “bancor.” In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. What little remains to savers is rapidly eaten away by runaway inflation. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies. Once the inheritance turns to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment, but also the challenge of sheer survival.

It is 1870, and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower who travels through northern Texas giving live readings to audiences hungry for news of the world, is offered money to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Johanna, raised by a band of Kiowa raiders who killed her parents and sister, has forgotten the English language and refuses to act “civilized.” But on their 400-mile journey, Captain Kidd and Johanna forge a deep bond, making it difficult for Kidd to give her up to her reluctant aunt and uncle when it’s time. But can he risk becoming --- in the eyes of the law --- a kidnapper himself?

Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life --- by being the conventional one. But all that changes when her father dies, and she inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property "Nicotine." The Nicotine residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she’s desperately lacking. As the Baker family’s lives begin to converge around the fate of the house, Penny grows ever bolder and more desperate to protect it until a fateful night when a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.

Fifteen-year-old Catherine Quick longs to feel once more the warm waters of her home, to strike out into the ocean off the Torres Strait Islands in Australia and swim, as she’s done since she was a child. But now, orphaned and living with her aunt Louisa in London, Catherine feels that everything she values has been stripped away from her. Louisa, a London surgeon who fought boldly for equality for women, holds strict views on the behavior of her young niece. She wants Catherine to pursue an education, just as she herself did. It takes the enigmatic American banker Manfred Lear Black to convince Louisa to bring Catherine to New York where Catherine can train to become the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Faith has never come easy for Brigid Fitzgerald. From her difficult childhood with drug-addled parents to her career as a doctor healing the wounded in Sudan to a series of trials that test her beliefs at every turn, Brigid's convictions and callings have made her the target of all those who fear that the Church has lost its way --- dangerous adversaries who abhor challenges to tradition. Locked in a deadly, high-stakes battle with forces determined to undermine everything she believes in, Brigid must convert her enemies to her cause before she loses her faith...and her life.