Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.

Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She's lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years--longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.

Bryden and Sam have it all: thriving careers, a smart apartment in a luxury condominium, supportive friends and a cherished daughter. The perfect life for the perfect couple. Then Sam receives a call at his office. Bryden–working from home that day–has failed to collect their daughter from daycare. Arriving home with their little girl, he finds his wife’s car in the underground garage. Upstairs in their apartment her laptop is open on the table, her cell phone nearby, her keys in their usual place in the hall. Except Bryden is nowhere to be seen. It’s as if she just walked out.

Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together—much to Ash’s dismay.

Ashley Bowers is shocked by the sudden death of her sister, whom she hasn't seen or heard from in years. Grieving for the bond they once shared and wallowing in the knowledge that any chance of reconciliation is gone forever is one thing. Welcoming her sister's thirteen-year-old daughter—a girl Ashley has never even met—into the home she shares with her husband and two children is another.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution. Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of thirteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served. But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her. Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends. When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that. But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young.

Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist... until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again…

In seven days Jet Mason will be dead. Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has time. Until Halloween night, when Jet is violently attacked by an unseen intruder. She suffers a catastrophic head injury. The doctor is certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a deadly aneurysm.

Talia Kemper is on death row for murdering her husband. She had an alibi and no known motive, yet Talia’s unwavering protestations of innocence have always been ignored. Then one day in the visiting area, she sees a recognizable stranger she’s certain is her husband. It turns out the man she’s been convicted of killing may not be dead after all. But as the days tick away toward Talia’s execution, what will it take for her to be believed?

Nell Masters is certain someone is following her. The hairs on the back of her neck rise when she travels to and from work, there are silent calls to her office, and a huge bouquet of flowers arrives without a card. And Nell has a reason to be looking over her shoulder, because she has a secret that she’s hiding from everyone in her life, including her new partner, Alex. But Alex also has secrets of his own.

A year after the tragic death of her four-year-old son, Charlotte Fleming is sleepwalking through life, trapped in a spiral of devastating grief. Then, she sees something online that jolts her awake: her son, Sebastion, alive and well . . . in a stranger's social media post. Charlotte desperately wants to believe that what she sees is real, that her son is out there somewhere waiting to be brought home. After all, Sebastion's body was never recovered from the accident that supposedly killed him.

If you ask Jill Tingley, she'll tell you she and her husband Jack are college sweethearts living the dream in Southern California. Newly empty nesting with their daughter Maggie away at college, Jill suggests a road trip to reconnect. Jack would rather do anything else than drive to Utah with his wife. He's only stayed in this marriage because of a shared secret, a tragedy in the past he wanted to keep buried. But Jack is finished with the charade of his marriage. He's filing for divorce as soon as they return, no matter what. But he doesn't realize what else Jill is hiding.

Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?

Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Radcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together—much to Ash’s dismay.

For fifteen years, Joanna Sokol filled private notebooks with her confusion, humor, and anger about the strange world of American street medicine. As her career progressed, she found herself taking notes on scraps of paper, backs of gloves, and margins of EKG printouts. She read about the history that brought ambulances into their current role as the caretakers of society’s forgotten, and spoke to her colleagues about their own experiences and perspectives. Those reflections are collected here, in a series of raw, powerful essays about the state of American medicine.

At age thirty-eight, Jonathan Gluck, a new father with a promising journalism career, was shocked to learn he had multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable blood cancer. He was told he had eighteen months to live. That was more than twenty years ago. Gluck isn’t just something of a medical miracle. He’s also part of a growing population. Thanks to revolutionary medical advances, many cancers and other serious illnesses are no longer death sentences but chronic diseases people can often live with for years.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.

A year after the tragic death of her four-year-old son, Charlotte Fleming is sleepwalking through life, trapped in a spiral of devastating grief. Then, she sees something online that jolts her awake: her son, Sebastion, alive and well . . . in a stranger's social media post. Charlotte desperately wants to believe that what she sees is real, that her son is out there somewhere waiting to be brought home. After all, Sebastion's body was never recovered from the accident that supposedly killed him.

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles. Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

When Milan Patel visits his parents at their family-run motel in Montana, he's expecting the usual drama. But shortly after he arrives, his father mysteriously dies in the motel pool. Now everyone's a suspect. What was meant to be a quick trip becomes Milan's worst nightmare, as he races to solve his father's murder while confronting the past he tried to leave behind.

1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

Ashley Bowers is shocked by the sudden death of her sister, whom she hasn't seen or heard from in years. Grieving for the bond they once shared and wallowing in the knowledge that any chance of reconciliation is gone forever is one thing. Welcoming her sister's thirteen-year-old daughter—a girl Ashley has never even met—into the home she shares with her husband and two children is another.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her. Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends. When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that. But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young.

If you ask Jill Tingley, she'll tell you she and her husband Jack are college sweethearts living the dream in Southern California. Newly empty nesting with their daughter Maggie away at college, Jill suggests a road trip to reconnect. Jack would rather do anything else than drive to Utah with his wife. He's only stayed in this marriage because of a shared secret, a tragedy in the past he wanted to keep buried. But Jack is finished with the charade of his marriage. He's filing for divorce as soon as they return, no matter what. But he doesn't realize what else Jill is hiding.

Ever since she was a teenager, Tessa Nilsson has been consumed by the story of four friends who disappeared. As her true crime fervor turned into a wildly popular podcast, Tessa covered Sweden’s most gruesome cases, but could never find the answers behind what happened to these women who disappeared. Now Tessa’s podcast has crashed and burned, any chance she had at uncovering the truth vanishing with it.

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.