They call themselves the May Mothers—a group of new moms whose babies were born in the same month. Twice a week, they get together for some much needed adult time. But when the women go out for drinks on this hot Fourth of July night, something goes terrifyingly wrong. One of the babies is taken from his crib. Now he is missing. What follows is a heart-pounding race to find the baby boy, during which secrets are exposed, and friendships are destroyed.
This is the story of a love affair that begins on the coast of Italy in 1962 when a young innkeeper meets an American starlet, who he soon learns is dying. The story begins again when an elderly Italian man shows up on the set of a movie studio searching for a mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. From the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.
A terrible constructions site accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. Trying to get away, Edgar leaves his home and rents a house on Duma Key, off the coast of Florida. He draws and paints feverishly, but it isn’t until he meets elderly woman, Elizabeth, that he realizes the power that his paintings have, and the damage they are truly capable of.
Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorhome that he father won in a poker game. She’s failing out of school, and left fending for herself in a town where she’s never felt at home. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and ends up in Ithaca. She finds a kindred sense of belonging, and as April moves through the world, meeting people who make her feel at home, she discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be.
Two truths and a lie. Emma and her friends played it all the time at Camp Nightingale. But the games ended the night that Emma watched the others sneak out into the darkness. That was the last time they were seen. Fifteen years later, Emma is a rising painting star, and the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale asks Emma to return as a painting instructor. Emma agrees, and tries to find out what happened to her friends, but her closure could come at a deadly price.
Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, ten people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in. “Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says. “I am the Lord,” the man whispers. Is this man who he claims to be? It falls to the island’s chief inspector to solve the mystery of what happened when the empty life raft, and a notebook, washes up on the island of Montserrat.
Roya finds literary oasis in Mr. Fakhri’s stationary shop. With a keen instinct for budding romance, Mr. Fakhri introduces Roya to Bahman. Their romance blossoms, but on the eve of their marriage, Roya is left waiting in the town square for Bahman. Roya tries desperately to contact Bahman, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart she moves on, but more than sixty years later, fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him questions that have haunted her for more than half a century.
Harmony Resort promises hope for struggling marriages. Johanna and Ben have a marriage that looks perfect on the surface, but in reality they don’t know each other at all. Shell and Colin fight constantly, but what has really torn them apart is too devastating to talk about. When both couples begin Harmony’s intensive program, it becomes clear that Harmony is not all it seems. As a deadly storm descends the coast, not one person will remain unchanged by what follows.
One December evening, Autumn Spencer’s twin sister, Summer, walks to the roof of their home and is never seen again. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing woman, Autumn must pursue answers on her own, all while grieving her mother’s recent death. Autumn pretends to hold up through the crisis, but after starting an affair with Summer’s boyfriend, she begins to unravel, becoming obsessed with murdered women and the men who kill them.