In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the maidservant to the enigmatic Reverend Zacharias Engel, appointed by Rome to cure the village of suspected diabolism and save every God-fearing soul.

Hollywood, 1955. As head costume designer for Lux Pictures, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from the biggest movie stars. She knows how to keep their secrets—after all, none of their scandals can match her own. Lena was once Elsie Gruner, the daughter of an Ohio dressmaker. Her gift for fashion design helped her win a coveted spot at an art academy in Rome. While in Italy, she became enthralled by the charismatic Julia, who drew her into a shadowy world of jazz clubs, code words, and mysterious deliveries.

Cannabis kingpin Burl Spoon has reigned over the Jackson County area for three decades, building a powerful backwoods empire. But behind a well-run organization, his personal life is crumbling—his daughter can’t stay clean; his son has hated him since coming out; and after enduring years of infidelity, his wife is straying too. The only person not on his payroll who still adores him is his six-year-old granddaughter, Chelsea.

A decade ago Special Forces warrior Jason Morgan parachuted into the Central American jungle on an anti-narcotics raid. He'd served with the famous Night Stalkers on countless such missions. This one turned out very different. Months later he regained consciousness in a US military hospital, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. The first words he heard were from his surgeon, telling him he would never walk again. The determined soldier responded, "Sir, yes, I will."

As the hurricane batters the house and the waters rise, Callum is found hanging from an ancient oak, murdered in the same way as the notorious villain in his most popular book. Cut off from the outside world, the guests soon realize that the murderer might strike again, and everyone at the plantation could either be the next victim or the killer.

A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than for love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?”

Connie can't deny she's nervous about meeting her boyfriend's family. Spending the weekend at their ritzy woodland summer home, Evan's already given her fair warning that his parents are cold, snobbish, and especially unpleasant toward those outside their usual social circles. So when Evan's mother warmly greets them with open arms, Connie is as confused as he is. They're so friendly, in fact, Evan himself can hardly believe they're real. Then, while helping Evan's mother with dinner, Connie overhears strange noises coming from the basement—what almost sounds like voices calling out for help.

At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built.

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.

Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse—offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster. But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines.

Comedian Pierre Novellie was on stage when a heckler suggested he was autistic. Usually, this disruption would be water off a duck's back but two things made this heckler different: first, he was himself autistic. Second, he turned out to be absolutely right. This random encounter led to a diagnosis of autism at the age of 31 that unravelled his world, explained his struggles and answered questions that had bothered him for his entire life: why were the other kids obsessed with Britney Spears instead of The Goon Show? Why don't people ever say what they mean? Why is everyone chewing so loudly?

Gemma Guillory has lived in the Australian Outback enclave of Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny, red-dust town’s ins and outs by heart, knows the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She also knows her once charming town is now remembered for one reason and one reason only: three innocent people died there at the hands of a serial killer. The last stop on the Rainier Ripper’s trail of deaths fifteen years ago was her picturesque little tea shop.

When buried bones are unearthed by a storm in North Yorkshire’s picturesque coastal town of Whitby, Black is drawn into an investigation that takes him back to the late eighties and the fiery demise of a popular pub. Frank is no stranger to vulnerability. With a shattered daughter, he lives with it. With an outsider in Detective Inspector Gerry Carver, he works with it. And in Charlotte Wilson, a young, eighteen-year-old musician discarded and buried near the old whalebones of Whitby, he recognizes it.