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In these stories spanning six centuries, we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary’s corner of 16th-century Madrid, a young apprentice’s pre-Revolutionary Boston, and Edward Hyde’s London. With civil engineers and destitute veterans, we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina, and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee. The title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and “queen of bad influences,” as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania.
When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in a park, the city of Edinburgh is stunned. The shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with the murder. Rumors of bullying are overshadowed by something more wicked and frightening: whispers of dark rituals, feverish obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong. Matthew Phillips is a respected heart surgeon picked for the jury. As the trial unfolds --- and the girls’ lawyers offer a surprising and unsettling defense --- the reluctant Matthew finds himself questioning everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgment. Then he begins to have strange visions of terrifying things --- hallucinations he tells himself. After all, witchcraft isn’t real. Or is it?
Jamie Newcross wants to disappear. His wife and baby girl have abandoned him, and his only wish is to retreat from society. As it turns out, Jamie is also being haunted. Every house, condo or apartment he moves into is plagued with ghosts. But Jamie has a plan. He posts queries online and finds someone wanting to get rid of their Lion --- the world’s most advanced self-driving car --- a sleek, private, contained vessel that is a hundred percent safe. Or so he thought. Because now, Jamie has woken up to the Lion speeding down a dark road, the hood is dented (wait, is that blood?), and the car will not respond, or stop, or let him out. As the miles rack up and Jamie becomes increasingly complicit in his car’s choices, he is forced to face the tragic past he has kept buried.
Bree Wagner has spent her life behind the scenes --- as a ghostwriter, an aunt, and a woman scarred by tragedy. When her former best friend Miranda, now the wildly popular lifestyle influencer Randi F. Alexander, begs for help with her next book, Bree reluctantly agrees. It’s a chance to reconnect after 18 years of silence following a devastating accident in Amsterdam. But just as Bree steps back into Randi’s world, a viral misstep sends the influencer’s career into a tailspin. While Bree tries to steer clear of the spotlight and the toxic whirlwind of cancel culture, old secrets begin to surface --- ones that make her question everything she thought she knew about Miranda and their shared past.
Who was Glinda the Good Witch before she floated down in her bubble to greet Dorothy? Who was Glinda before she became Elphaba Thropp’s magnetic and popular roommate at Shiz University? The youngest of four children in a high-born family down on their luck, Galinda is both pampered and ignored. Her natural grace promises to elevate her in the district dance competitions. But these efforts distract her from seeing the growing resentments of local merchants who disapprove of her family’s business strategies. As her father deftly pivots around the snares and nets laid for him by his competitors, Galinda begins to dance toward a life that might lift her above her proud, if hardscrabble, childhood.
It’s 1967 in Los Angeles, and Lee Clarke has received his draft notice, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War. A straitlaced, apolitical 23-year-old, Lee is studying at UCLA until a fistfight leads to his expulsion --- and his removal from the deferment list. Although he is happy in California and loves his girlfriend, he will leave the country and head for the border. Bringing only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines, he makes his stimulated progress against the width of the country, pining for the life he’s left behind and wondering what his decision will mean for his future. But he's not just saying goodbye to the country of his birth. In four different towns strung out along the northern United States, Lee visits each member of his immediate family.
SFPD Homicide Inspector Raquel Laing lives with her adoptive sister, Dee, an online investigator for organizations all over the world. Trouble arrives with an all-too-common case for Inspector Laing: the homicide of a drug dealer in a deserted corner of San Francisco. But the everyday rapidly spirals into complications --- just as a simple search into the family’s ancestry is throwing Dee into her own world of turmoil. Raquel’s case blows up far too close to home. While her unique skills are too valuable for the SFPD to suspend her entirely, she is removed from Homicide and put onto the Cold Case Unit. This leaves her free to look at some disturbing facts about her past --- and at the devastating news that Dee has uncovered in her own search for the truth.
A new US administration has taken office, installing a brash and unconventional CIA director. When the axe falls on the chief of London Station, the agency veteran decides to spy for the Brits --- a betrayal uncovered by his replacement, Artemis Aphrodite Procter. Caught between a turncoat spymaster and a ruthless new boss back at Langley, Procter now must navigate a tense environment as old friends become adversaries and no one knows whom to trust. Adding to the chaos is a new breed of private intelligence agency: a secretive and powerful company run by a reclusive billionaire. When assets begin dying, Procter and her team in London Station must find out who is leaking the sources’ identities --- and why --- before both agencies go blind.
Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic 300-acre farm. But behind every perfect image is a secret. And in this case, the secret is a horror. Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to expose the deception behind Mia’s curated life. But soon, Jenny has more to contend with than staged videos and camera-ready poses. There’s something wrong at the farmhouse. Something slithers through Jenny’s dreams, and at night, the children sing strange nursery rhymes. She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.
Drawing on newly discovered archival materials and previously overlooked documents, Thomas Meyer tells the story of an intellectual icon whose character and ideas continue to captivate and challenge us to this day. Tracing anew Hannah Arendt’s journey from Königsberg to Paris, where she fled after being imprisoned in 1933, and finally to New York in 1941, Meyer illuminates her formative years and the development of her radical and brilliant books, as well as her lifelong philosophical debate with Martin Heidegger, whose Nazism was a permanent challenge for her. Meyer’s account centers on two pivotal phases: Arendt’s years in Paris after fleeing Nazi Germany and her time in the United States leading up to the landmark publication of THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM in 1951.
