Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val suspects foul play. When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility --- a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands --- Val is his first call. Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val journeys to the Arctic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

Lily Bushwold thought she’d found the antidote to endless foster care and group homes --- a teaching job in Cochabamba, Bolivia --- but unfortunately that gig falls through. Tired of hustling and already world-weary, crazy love finds her in the form she least expected: Omar, a savvy, handsome local man who’d abandoned his life as a hunter to try his hand at city life. When Omar learns that a jaguar has killed his four-year-old nephew in Ayachero, he gives Lily a choice: Stay alone in the unforgiving city, or travel to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns in the jungles of Bolivia. She follows Omar to this ruthless new world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction.

Stifled by a soul-crushing job, devastated by the death of her beloved brother, and lonely after the end of a 15-year marriage, Winifred Allen reluctantly agrees to join her three best friends on a high-octane getaway for their annual girls’ trip. What starts out as an invigorating hiking and rafting excursion soon becomes an all-too-real nightmare. A freak accident leaves the women stranded, separating them from their raft and everything they need to survive. A fire on the mountainside lures them to a ramshackle camp that appears to be their lifeline. But as Wini and her friends grasp the true intent of their supposed saviors, long-buried secrets emerge and lifelong allegiances are put to the test.