During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial battle of attrition to neutralize the Luftwaffe as a fighting force prior to the cross-channel invasion, planned for a few months later. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this aerial offensive quickly became known as “Big Week,” and it was one of the turning-point engagements of World War II. In BIG WEEK, acclaimed World War II historian James Holland chronicles the massive air battle through the experiences of those who lived and died during it.

A series of nuclear strikes has left huge swathes of the country uninhabitable. It’s a level playing field now: both Hater and Unchanged alike have to fight to stay alive. Both have retreated to their camps to regroup, less than 20 miles away from each other. It’s here that the last major battle of the final war will inevitably be fought, but neither side has any idea what’s waiting for them just around the corner. Both armies are ready to fight to the death, each of their leaders hell-bent on victory. Their tactics are uniformly simple: strike first, get the enemy in a chokehold, then strangle the life out of them.

In a little village nestled in the Balou mountains, 14-year-old Li Niannian and his parents run a funeral parlor. One evening, he notices a strange occurrence. Instead of preparing for bed, more and more neighbors appear in the streets and fields, carrying on with their daily business as if the sun hadn’t already set. Li Niannian watches, mystified. As hundreds of residents are found dreamwalking, they act out the desires they’ve suppressed during waking hours. Before long, the community devolves into chaos, and it’s up to Li Niannian and his parents to save the town before sunrise.

At a party hosted by a wealthy young activist in late summer 2000, dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumplings and champagne. The evening shines with the heady optimism of a progressive new millennium. A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate --- and they begin to fall in love. Kate lives with her head in the clouds, so at first Ben isn’t that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she’s had since childhood. In the dream, she’s transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman in Elizabethan England. But for Kate, the dream becomes increasingly real, to the point where it threatens to overwhelm her life. As she tries to make sense of what’s happening, Ben worries that the woman he’s fallen in love with is losing her grip on reality.

After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father --- who she hadn't heard from in decades --- Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half-sisters she never knew existed and who aren't the least bit welcoming, despite Ilka's efforts to reach out. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the unfortunate victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.

A blues singer, Boratin, attempts suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus Bridge, but opens his eyes in the hospital. He has lost his memory and can't recall why he wished to end his life. He remembers only things that are unrelated to himself, but confuses their timing. He knows that the Ottoman Empire fell, and that the last sultan died, but has no idea when. His mind falters when remembering civilizations, while life, like a labyrinth, leads him down different paths. From the confusion of his social and individual memory, he is faced with two questions. Does physical recognition provide a sense of identity? Which is more liberating for a man, or a society: knowing the past, or forgetting it?

A woman is found murdered in her new apartment in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Living a quiet life, with nothing remarkable in her past and no known enemies, this newcomer’s murder is as baffling as it is unlikely. Detective Kyochiro Kaga of the Tokyo Police Department is also a newcomer to the area. Assigned to the task force investigating the murder, Kaga interviews the various local people somehow connected to the victim. But the more he pulls on the loose threads of a simple life, the greater the number of potential suspects emerge. To prevent the murderer from eluding justice, Kaga must unravel all the secrets of the local residents, finding out the truth behind their interactions with the victim. Buried somewhere in the woman’s seemingly uncomplicated life is the one clue that will lead to the murderer.

A psychopath the police have dubbed “Billy Dead Mates” is targeting pairs of best friends, and killing them one by one. Before they die, each victim is given a small white book. For months, detectives have failed to catch Billy, or figure out what the white books symbolize and why the killer leaves them behind. Then a woman, scared by what she’s seen on the news, comes forward. What she reveals shocks the investigators and adds another troubling layer to an already complex case. Stand-up comedian Kim Tribbeck has one of Billy’s peculiar little books. A stranger gave it to her at a gig she did last year. Was the stranger Billy, and is he targeting her --- or is it something more nefarious?

Draper, Utah: Now that all five of her sons have left home, Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has quite a bit of time on her hands. She has befriended Gwen Ferris, a woman in her ward who is quickly losing faith in the church. Gwen has a calling in Draper’s local “Spanish ward,” which is made up of both legal and undocumented immigrants who Gwen feels don’t always get the support they need from their bishop. When Gabriela Gonzalez, an undocumented mother of three, is found strangled at a gas station, Gwen decides the police aren’t doing enough and resolves to track down the killer herself. Fearing for her young friend’s safety, Linda reluctantly joins her, but what they find during their vigilante investigation may put them both in danger.

Texting while driving across Memorial Bridge, Tom Booker loses control and crashes into an oncoming minivan carrying his own daughter and three of her friends. A young couple approaches and offers him a rewind. The crash would be averted, the children saved. All he must do is kill someone every two weeks. A moment later, Tom is back in his spinning car but avoids the deadly crash. He laughs about the hallucination, attributing it to bumping his head on the steering wheel when his car came to an abrupt stop. But his encounter wasn’t a hallucination. Two weeks later, the minivan driver is brutally murdered. Tom receives a text: one down, four to go. He has never shot --- much less owned --- a gun in his life, and now must turn himself into a serial killer or his daughter and her friends will die.

For half a century, Eric Clapton has been acknowledged to be one of music's greatest virtuosos, the unrivalled master of an indispensable tool, the solid-body electric guitar. Winner of 17 Grammys, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame's only three-time inductee, he is an enduring influence on every other star soloist who ever wielded a pick. Now, with Clapton's consent and access to family members and close friends, rock music's foremost biographer returns to the heroic age of British rock and follows Clapton through his distinctive and scandalous childhood, early life of reckless rock 'n' roll excess, and twisting and turning struggle with addiction in the ’60s and ’70s.

It’s 1988, and Shelley Cooper is in trouble. He’s broke, he’s been fired from his construction job, and his ex-wife has left him for their next-door neighbor and a new life in Kansas City. The only opportunity on his horizon is 50 pounds of his brother’s high-grade marijuana, which needs to be driven from Colorado to Houston and exchanged for a lockbox full of cash. The delivery goes off without a hitch, but getting home with the money proves to be a different challenge altogether. Fueled by a grab bag of resentments and self-punishment, Shelley becomes a case study in the question of whether it’s possible to live without accepting yourself, and the dope money is the key to a lock he might never find.