Adult

London, 1962: Celia Duchesne longs for a career, but with no means or qualifications, she passes her time working at a dusty bookshop. The day a handsome American enters the shop, she thinks she might have found her way out of the monotony. Just as the excitement of a budding relationship engulfs her, a devastating secret draws her into the murky world of espionage. France, 1942: Nineteen-year-old Anya Moreau was dropped behind enemy lines to aid the resistance, sending messages back home to London via wireless transmitter. When she was cruelly betrayed, evidence of her legacy and the truth of her actions were buried by wartime injustices. As Celia learns more about Anya --- and her unexpected connection to the undercover agent --- she becomes increasingly aware of furious efforts to protect state secrets.

BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA brings us into the homes and lives of three main families --- the Baladis, the Salamehs and the Ammars --- Palestinian immigrants who have all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode. The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

As the summer of 1993 begins, Sam and Swami Brecht roll into town with a 26-foot Winnebago camper van, their three kids, and the deed to Woodchuck Rafting Company. The town of Thunderwater, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, could be the fresh start their marriage needs. But Woodchuck, once the property of Sam’s eccentric uncle, has seen better days and will need a serious overhaul. Soon Sam and Swami learn they are not the only ones looking for change and profit on the river. A competing rafting outfit, clashing raft guides, stubborn townsfolk and an exploratory mining company begin to threaten their tenuous livelihood. Then nature intervenes, in the form of historic floods throughout the Midwest. Amid tumultuous currents both on and off the river, Sam and Swami struggle to maintain the new life they’ve built.

Shanghai, 2007: Feeling betrayed by her American mother's engagement to their rich landlord, Lu Fang, teenager Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American School --- a potential ticket out --- is not what she imagined, and she's surprised to discover an institution run by an exclusive community of expats, and the ever-wilder thrills of a city where foreigners can ostensibly act as they please. Qingdao, 1985: Newlywed Lu Fang works as a lowly shipping clerk. Though he aspires to a bright future, he is one of many casualties of harsh political reforms. Then China opens up to foreigners and capital, and Lu Fang meets a woman who makes him question what he should settle for.

Jack Swyteck’s latest client, Imani Nichols, is a Grammy-winning pop star whose career has skyrocketed. Despite her success, she’s the most underpaid superstar on the planet because of an onerous record contract she signed as a teenager with her now ex-husband, Shaky Nichols. Preferring to see thieves profit from her music than let her ex-husband pocket one more dime, Imani takes to social media and tells her millions of fans to “go pirate” and download her music illegally. Her hardball tactic leads to scorched-earth litigation, and now she needs Jack’s help. The case takes a deadly turn when salacious allegations of infidelity send Imani and Shaky down a path of mutual assured destruction, each implicating the other in the unsolved murder of Imani’s extramarital lover 12 years ago.

In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them. Months later, as the village tries to rebuild, Irini stumbles upon the man who started the fire, a land speculator who had intended only a small, controlled burn to clear forestland to build on but instead ignited a catastrophe. He is dying, although the cause is unclear, and in her anger at all he took from them, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her.

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, and wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past --- toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words --- and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa --- Khaled eventually embarks on a journey to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh. There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode into tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured and clinging to life. When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life.

Oscar-winning actress Ardith Law is a Hollywood icon. Radiant at 62, she is the epitome of glamour and a highly respected artist. But her success has come at a price: She has a strained relationship with her daughter, Morgan, who at 38 still blames Ardith for putting her career before being a mother. Morgan is a successful plastic surgeon in New York City --- and the distance from Ardith’s Bel Air mansion is not lost on either of them. As each woman navigates an unconventional romance, they cautiously approach each other on new terms and attempt to put aside their past for a new future.