Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.

Lila De is on the verge of a career breakthrough when she gets a call from her mother in Kolkata, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate–so she returns home after a decade with no contact. Her extended family isn’t so easy to win over, and to make matters worse, Lila is caught between her old boyfriend and her occasional lover–her star author–who suddenly wants to define the relationship. As Lila come to terms with both past and present, suppressed family secrets emerge, culminating in a shocking act of violence. Lila has no choice but to finally address her family.

The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity.

Cats are mysterious creatures, and the relationship between humans and cats has never been simple. Curious and affectionate, independent and uninterested, predator and prey. Their true nature continues to elude us, and their subtle and complex behavioral problems can often seem unsolvable or incomprehensible. So, how can we tell if a cat is suffering? What are the root causes of feline aggression? And how can we treat patients who can’t speak for themselves?

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care.

Listeners will be awestruck by the hive as superorganism and how the individual bee lives and behaves within it, perfectly suited to each specific job it performs. From their intricate dances and information-rich pheromones to how they sense and respond to their environment, learn, and remember, this immersive journey into the world of bees offers an entirely new perspective on the wisdom of nature and our relationship to it.

Always on the periphery, looking on, young Frankie Howe was never quite sure enough of herself to take center stage—after all, life had already judged her harshly. Now old, Frankie finds it easier to forget the life that came before. Then Damian, a young Irish caretaker, arrives at her London flat, there to keep an eye on her as she recovers from a fall. A memory is sparked, and the past crackles into life as Damian listens to the story Frankie has kept stored away all these years.

It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour's mother once knew is changing, and it isn't long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighborhood. More than 800 years earlier, Rawiya, 16 and a widow's daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune.

Hecate Goodwin, Kate to her friends, has curated the perfect life as a hedge witch, living in a secluded cottage with only a black cat for company. She spends her days foraging herbs from the Ipswich forest, gardening, and creating tinctures to sell at the apothecary she owns. Most evenings pass without her speaking to another human being, an arrangement she quite prefers. Kate’s solitude is thrown into disarray when her older sister, Miranda, reaches out and asks her to host their coven’s annual Halloween gathering.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Since her husband’s death six months ago, Yesica Diaz-Taylor seems to be taking her grief in stride. Then an angry outburst at work shatters the illusion. Her mandated support group counseling doesn’t help much. Yesica has always kept her feelings close, so even when an unlikely friendship blossoms with the group’s facilitator, she still has reasons for holding back. She’s just not ready to share.

1800s China. Tightly bound feet, or "golden lilies," are the mark of an honorable woman, eclipsing beauty, a rich dowry and even bloodline in the marriage stakes. When Little Flower is sold as a maidservant—a muizai—to Linjing, a daughter of the prominent Fong family, she clings to the hope that one day her golden lilies will lead her out of slavery. Not only does Little Flower have bound feet, uncommon for a muizai, but she is extraordinarily gifted at embroidery, a skill associated with the highest class of a lady.

Influencer Whitney Golden has it all: beautiful, photogenic children; a handsome new boyfriend; a gorgeous house; and designer clothes and beauty products that arrive on her doorstep every day. After spending years building her brand as a widowed mother of four (including twins!) to over a million followers, the thirty-seven-year-old is at the peak of her career. But it all comes to a screeching halt when Mia, her teenaged daughter, announces she’s tired of the social media life.

Emlyn doesn't let herself think about the past. How she and her best friend, Janessa, barely speak anymore. How Tyler, the love of her life, left her half dead on the side of the road three years ago. Her new life is simple and safe. She lives alone in her Airstream trailer and works as a fishing and hunting guide in scenic Idaho. Her closest friends are the community's makeshift reverend and a handsome Forest Service ranger who took her in at her lowest.

Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat pairings: Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten.

It was 1970 when thirteen-year-old runaway Kit Walker was abducted by Manny Romero, a smooth-talking, low-level criminal, who first coddled her and then groomed her into his partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny were infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome.

Carter is a young mother, recently separated. She is curious, angry, and on a quest to find out what the heritage she only learned of in her teens truly means. Allie, Carter's mother, is trying to make up for the lost years with her first born, and to protect Carter from the hurt she herself suffered from her own mother. Lucie wants the granddaughter she's never met to help her join her ancestors in the Afterlife. And Geneviève is determined to conquer her demons before the fire inside burns her up, wih the thelp of the sister she lost but has never been without.

When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, drenched to the bone in the bitter cold and able to speak barely a word of English.

In Parson, Texas, a small town ravaged by a devastating hurricane and the Vietnam War, twenty-nine-year-old Lou is diligently renovating a decaying old mansion for Miss Kate, the elderly neighbor who has always been like a mother to her. Mourning her brother’s death in Vietnam, Lou dreams of enjoying a more peaceful future in Parson. But those hopes are crushed when Miss Kate is murdered, and no one but Lou seems to care about finding the killer.

As a teenager, for a moment, Ella Fitchburg found love—yearning, breathless love—that consumed both her and her boyfriend, Jude, as they wandered the streets of New York City together. But her life was unexpectedly upended when she was accused of trying to murder Jude’s father, an imperious superior court judge, and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. When she learns she’s pregnant shortly after sentencing, she reluctantly decides to give up the child. Ella is released after serving six years. While she is desperate to turn the page on a new life, she can’t seem to let go of her past.

In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god.

For children’s book author Imogen, an idyllic life in the English countryside seems like the perfect fit for her and her husband. But when tragedy strikes, Imogen is left widowed, and finds herself moving into Storybook Cottage alone with only her monstrously narcissistic cat for company. After discovering she is pregnant, Imogen grows determined to embrace a new start in Middlemass, with its duckpond, cricket matches and village fêtes. The only thing Imogen can’t seem to shake is her neighbor—a brooding, artisan blacksmith named Gabriel—who she can’t quite decide is friend or foe.

Though they look like any other family, they aren’t one—not quite. They are three sets of parents who find themselves intertwined after adopting four biological siblings, having committed to keeping the children as connected as possible. At the heart of the family, the adoptive mothers grapple to define themselves and their new roles. Tabitha, who adopted the twins, crowns herself planner of the group, responsible for endless playdates and holidays, determined to create a perfect happy family.

Dani Campbell is the latest darling of the Manhattan art scene. As a self-taught photographer, Dani is loving every minute of her sudden popularity, but has no idea how she got there, or a clue as to how to stay. On a shoot at an antiques barn, she discovers an envelope of old photos and sees in them what her photos are missing. Her search for their source leads Dani to a small Rhode Island town, a dilapidated American Gothic beach house—and Lawrence Sinclair.

French countryside, Present Day: Blythe Bricard is the daughter of famous fashion muses but that doesn't mean she wants to be one. She turned her back on that world, and her dreams, years ago. Fate, however, has a different plan, and Blythe will discover there is more to her iconic mother and grandmother than she ever knew.

Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton’s life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune.

The Aylward women of Nenagh, Tipperary, are mad about each other, but you wouldn’t always think it. You’d have to know them to know that—in spite of what the neighbors might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes—their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world. Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It involves wives and widows, gunrunners and gougers, sinners and saints. It’s a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love.

Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility—something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love.

Funny and touching, 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’ve 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.

Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she’s quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what’s possible when all else fails. Elizabeth McKenzie, the National Book Award–nominated author of The Portable Veblen, follows Penny on her quest for a fresh start.